Pamela Gentile likes to work in the dark.

The first film she ever processed was 16 mm, meant for movies, her first love and the profession she trained for. She found she always shot stills on everyone else’s movies though.

Shooting the local music scene in San Francisco she got an assignment to go on tour with Chris Isaak where she focused on story. Her interest in stories brought her to SF Weekly where as photojournalist and photo editor she shot photo stories for ten years processing her own film and making prints in her darkroom.

Gentile kept her focus on her first love, the world of cinema.

Her archive is now thirty plus. Her subject matter, backstage, on stage, the red carpet, the marquee, the audience, screenings, and odd moments in between, is captured cinematically in an atmospheric visual narrative. Her portraits of filmmakers, actors and musicians shot simply and candidly, often in a makeshift backstage studio, form a historical record of influential figures in World Cinema. Her most recent capture of screens preserves movies in movie theaters which is fast becoming an endangered species.