please empty your brain below

The term overhead projector was usually used to describe a projector which was once very common and used by speakers during presentations. It had an illuminated glass panel which you could place large transparencies on or write on with a felt tip marker pen. There was a small mirror and lens assembly above the panel which projected the image onto a screen. Although you can still buy overhead projectors they have been replaced by digital projectors, either LCD or DLP types, connected to a laptop and PowerPoint or similar used for the presentation.
For showing a movie a DLP projector would most likely have been used.

Oh god, is there really now a whole generation who don't know what an OHP is/was and need it explained in such detail? Anyway, they seem to be making a bit of a comeback in the form of 'visualisers' and 'document cameras'. I like to confound people by referring to them all generically as epidiascopes.
Pop up cinema is not just for rural oaps!

Stow film lounge provides a very similar service in Waltham Forest, until recently one of the few boroughs in the UK not to have a cinema.

http://www.stowfilmlounge.com
What a fascinating read,DG. I didn't know that these village hall filmshows still existed. Wonderful! Long may they continue.
I wrongly would have assumed that most viewers own a method of seeing films in their own homes.
Sarah- you reminded me, my Dad had an epidiascope,which he converted to a photographic enlarger. It was the reason I have always used that word and not newer overhead whatnots. 📽📽
And before the OHP was the blackboard, a vertically oriented slab of dark material, usually black but sometimes another dark colour such as green or blue, on which the presenter would use sticks of compressed but friable calcium carbonate, usually white but sometimes coloured, to create a temporary narrative of illustrations or text to accompany and supplement the spoken word. The marks on the board could be erased using a hand, or more effectively using a cloth or brush. In an educational contex, a truculent speaker might a sometimes throw a hard blackboard eraser (often wood-backed) at an inattentive miscreant in the audience, or attempt to impose discipline by requiring a younger classroom participant to clear the board after the formal end of the teaching period. Sometimes the board was arranged on rollers or runners so a new clear area could quickly replace a used area without it being erased. The more modern version would be a whiteboard, drawn on using non-permanent and thus erasable felt tip marker pens, sometimes digital or interactive, or indeed a digital tablet with suitable software linked to an epidiascope of some sort. (Great word, thanks Sarah.)
These film shows very much still exist up here in Orkney - great to read they are part of the fabric of other rural communities elsewhere. As to the film - a Powell & Pressburger perhaps?
When down in Devon I try and go to the monthly film at Littleham village hall. It is much as your description, but no B movie. Instead the main feature is paused in the middle, for the drinks and the ice cream. After the interval is the raffle of donated item, to which you donate, but hope you don't win.

We may have seen the same film about the making of a film about two sisters going to Dunkirk. Much enjoyed by the OAP audience.

A major reason for these film shows is for the older residents to meet and chat, helps to banish loneliness when people don't get out much in the winter.
Out where my relatives live this is marketed as "Flicks in the Sticks".

You are free to bring your own cushions so there is the slightly surreal sight of villagers converging on the village hall with each carrying a cushion.

They announced the film for next time would be "Kinky Boots". I had fun explaining what that was about to the little old lady who asked me.
Wonderful!
When we lived in America 10 years ago, my kids elementary school would do similar as a fund raiser. We saw Kung Fu Panda on one of those newfangled DVDs at one.
When I was first teaching, and we wrote on acetates with special OHP pens, a well known local tip for erasing the indelible ink was by rubbing it on the very abrasive carpet in the library.
In my post grad year in the late 1960's we had a short module on 'how to use the OHP' at the end of which we had to present our OHP transparencies for assessment. Multiple transparencies, each with a different colour, all seemed so modern at the time. Remembering not to move the projector otherwise the bulb would blow. The more sophisticated units were pre-loaded with a spare bulb so one just had to move a lever to resume normal service-assuming/hoping there was a spare loaded.
Yes, I remember using an epidiascope in the early 1970's which looked positively ancient even then - but at least you could use it to view opaque objects.
Of course, about to arrive on a large scale in education, was the Kodak Carousel, but that's another story.

GB

I help out at the North Norfolk Music Festival (www.northnorfolkmusicfestival.com) every year and there are occasionally screenings of music-related films in the local village hall and they're always very well attended. Never any problems with people making phone calls though because mobile coverage in the area is non-existant ...
Way off topic as I think DG just meant a projector positioned overhead, but I was intrigued at a meeting last week in my local council offices to see a real OHP in the corner of the room. Does anyone still use them?
At least I knew I was off topic!

Back on track,
a similar delight is a visit to one of the few remaining independent cinemas in a small town, often only showing films once or twice a week. The town is generally quite remote from other cinemas which is why the cinema has survived and the locals really appreciate it. I still treasure the memory of a short break in Southwold one bleak February, when I saw a lovely film called Venus Peter at their cinema. Such a different atmosphere from a multiplex.
There's a great local cinema in Rye, East Sussex
There is all the difference in the world between an overhead projector and an OHP. TLAs take on a life of their own once born, and cease to be synonymous with the original words.
Evidence: whatever is a Personal Identification Number Number?
Actually, 70% of the places I have visited as a tourist have people "past state retirement age" composing the majority of visitors. The Roman Bath and attractions in central London are notable exceptions.
@ Malcolm, a Personal Identification Number Number is something you need to get cash from an Automatic Teller Machine Machine.
An overhead projector shines light through a largely-transparent sheet (like a slide projector).

An epidiascope shines a bright light onto normal printed paper and displays the reflected image.











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