THIS IS A OLD ZEISS IKON MOVIE THEATRE FIRE GATE.


Nitrate film base was the first transparent flexible plasticized base commercially available, thanks to celluloid developments by John Carbutt, Hannibal Goodwin, and Eastman Kodak in the 1880s. Eastman was the first to manufacture this for public sale, in 1889. Unfortunately, nitrate also had the drawback that it was extremely flammable (being essentially the same chemically as guncotton) and decomposed after several decades into a no less flammable gas, leaving the film sticky and goo-like. As this happened, the likelihood of auto-ignition increased even further. Projection booth fires were not uncommon in the early decades of cinema if a film managed to be exposed to too much heat while passing through the gate, and several incidents of this type resulted in audience deaths by flames, smoke, or the resulting stampede. While an accident of this sort was famously recreated in Cinema Paradiso, the risk was certainly not fictional; in one instance, the Laurier Palace Cinema in Montreal was the site of a fire on January 9, 1927 that occurred during a kids' film program and resulted in 77 children between the ages of 4 and 18 killed. 1978 was a particularly devastating year for film archives when both the National Archives and George Eastman House had their nitrate film vaults auto-ignite. Eastman House lost the original camera negatives for 329 films, while the National Archives lost 12.6 million feet of newsreel footage. Because the ignition of cellulose nitrate creates its own oxygen, nitrate fires can be very difficult to extinguish.

The US Navy has produced an instructional movie about the safe handling and usage of nitrate films which includes footage of a full reel of nitrate film burning underwater. The base is so flammable that intentionally igniting the film for test purposes is recommended in quantities no greater than one frame without extensive safety precautions. Most nitrate films have been converted in recent decades to polyester copies, and original nitrate prints are generally stored separately to prevent a nitrate fire from destroying other non-nitrate films. Sometimes nitrate collections are even split up into several different fireproof rooms to minimize damage to an entire collection should a fire occur in one part. Usually a theater today needs to pass rigorous safety standards and precautions before being certified to run nitrate films; this includes a fireproof projection booth, fire chambers surrounding the feed and take-up reels, and several fire extinguishers built into the projector and aimed at the film gate should a trigger piece of fabric ignite. Nitrate film is classified as "dangerous goods", which requires licenses for storage and transportation.