L ast Tuesday I celebrated my three-year annivers-ary at the UPP. Three transformative years that have seen an incredibly rapid deployment of digital equipment to cinemas, our own building restored, and my own life completely turned around!

The very first film that screened under my tenure on April 29, 2011 (a Friday) was writer-director Richard Ayoade’s critically acclaimed and popular first feature Submarine. And I’m now looking forward to screening his second feature in a couple of weeks’ time. His new film, The Double, starring Jesse Eisenberg, transports Dostoyevsky’s novella to a surrealist modern-day America — and sounds like another idiosyncratic treat.

Back in the day, we screened Submarine on a 35mm print that we’d booked for two weeks after which it had to move on to another cinema. It was so popular with our audience that we wanted to get it back again as soon as we could — but the prints were in such high demand that we couldn’t physically get it back until the middle of June. Now if we want to bring back a film it’s a far, far simpler process . . . we just keep our copy on the digital server and the distributor simply has to email us a ‘key’ to unlock the file so we can play it.

We now get all of the current releases as digital prints — our last 35mm booking was last August (The Bling Ring) — but still try to screen classics on 35mm prints whenever we can. It’s good to give the old projector a workout, and it’s good for the projection room team to get the exercise too!

This week a veritable smorgasbord of classics are screening in both East Oxford and Jericho as the Oxford Mail brings the Billy Wilder film festival to both The Phoenix and ourselves at the beginning of May. Between us we are screening the ‘Big Four’ — Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard — plus a couple of slightly less familiar titles: The Fortune Cookie at the Phoenix and Stalag 17 with us. Again, I’m lucky enough to be showing a film that I know by reputation but have never managed to see, although in this instance it will be a digital screening. It won William Holden a best actor Oscar for his performance as a cynical black-marketeer suspected of being an informer in a typically Wilderian dark-edged comedy.

The Apartment is a great audience favourite. As James Luxford, BBC Radio Oxford’s film critic put it: “Ten Oscar nominations and five wins (including Best Picture) should tell you everything you need to know about this classic from the early 60s. Jack Lemmon stars as a frustrated office worker who attempts to curry favour with his employers by letting them use his apartment for their extramarital rendezvous. “Often overlooked when talking about the greats of American acting, Jack Lemmon’s performance inspired a generation of actors while Shirley MacLaine is feisty and energetic.”

Where will we be in another three years? There will be some new bit of digital kit we’ll have had to install and get our minds around, but I’m also certain that our 35mm projector will still be getting a regular opportunity to strut her stuff.