SEGUIN, Texas — David Pierce loves movies — especially all the gadgets that make them run. Projectors and film reels are his life. They’re on full display inside the old Palace Theater in Seguin. Pierce co-founded the Cine Museum.
“This museum is really more about the nuts and bolts: how to make films, not focusing on the stars, but the people behind the camera, people who make things happen. That’s what this story is about,” said Pierce.
Pierce’s story started when he was a kid. His very first movie projector was child-sized and cranked by hand. Pierce is deaf, so when he saw the images, he was hooked.
“It had captions. But TV didn’t have captions, but these films did. So I was fascinated with films because they were accessible to me,” said Pierce.
That fascination grew to a huge collection of cameras and projectors. To get the whole story at the museum, you go back to the 1800’s with the Praxinoscope. It’s a spinning contraption that animates still images.
“In the 1900’s, that’s when they came up with 35mm as the standard for showing movies. But nothing would’ve happened without the hard work of all the people and all the inventions that happened throughout history,“ said Pierce.