Lilley said his dad had been in the cinema business and believed he had been destined to become a projectionist.
"As a young child I grew up in the cinema, watching lots of movies, then one day I got to go to the projection room and from the first day I saw my first projection room I just wanted to be a projectionist," he said.
John Lilley just finished putting together an exhibition at The Auckland Art Gallery involving film. Photo / Alex Burton
Lilley started at The Civic as an assistant projectionist on April 1, 1961, and the first movie he screened was Cimarron.
"I fell in love with my job, I just love showing movies, the soundtrack and bringing magic to the people," he said.
Contrary to popular belief, projectionists don't have the best seat in the house and despite having screened thousands of films, he did not get to see many.
"The room is noisy and smells of oil, and you can't really hear or see much of what's on the big screen," Lilley said.
Back in the day, going to the theatre was sometimes a whole-day affair where people would dress up and had pre-show drinks, he said.
It would start with short informative films and there would be an intermission before the main feature played.
"Movies took people to a different place, a happy place, that's what I like about old movies because they're about entertainment," Lilley said.
"I don't care about today's digital movies all that much."
Lilley reckons he is the only working projectionist left in New Zealand, and no other cinema except The Hollywood screens movies on film anymore.
"I've always thought of what I'm doing as magic, and for the last 60 years as sharing that magic. It just comes naturally to me," he said.
Tilly said the Art Gallery was so grateful to have Lilley here in Auckland.
"He is a 35mm film legend. He was able to directly converse with the artist's technician in the UK and bring his lifetime of specialist knowledge to the installation of Tacita Dean's looped 35m film," Tilly said.
"As the mainstream cinema industry increasingly dictates a digital paradigm, celluloid film and analogue technologies are becoming a dying art."
He said artists like Tacita Dean made a case in their practice for an encounter with the analogue medium of film to be a point of difference.
