INT. APOLLO KINO - PROJECTION BOOTH - NIGHT
A cigarette burns in an enameled saucer. Grey smoke drifts into the beam of carbon-arc light.
The projector CHATTERS. Thirty-five millimeter nitrate film whips through the gate at twenty-four frames per second.
HEINRICH BRANDT (48), wearing a threadbare wool suit and round steel-rimmed spectacles, sits on a high drafting stool. His hands rest on the rewinder crank.
ON SCREEN: A silent street in the Leopoldstadt. Cobblestones wet with rain. A woman in a dark tailored overcoat steps out of a bakery doorway.
EXCEPT HER FACE IS GONE.
In place of her features, there is an oval void—cut out with razor sharpness directly from the photographic emulsion. Through the hole, the pure white arc lamp projects onto the cinema wall.
Brandt reaches out. He stops the motor with the brass handbrake.
The film frame FREEZES. Heat from the lamp begins to blister the acetate around the oval.
BRANDT (quietly, to himself) She was alive on Tuesday.