In film schools around the world where celluloid acquisition is taught, a time-honoured ritual occurs in the first workshop of the course. Handing each student a short strip of motion picture film, the teacher asks the students to feel, smell and generally examine the piece of celluloid. As the examination proceeds, the teacher draws attention to various elements and features of the sample. The students are then asked to place the film, emulsion side up, between their lips. As the tacky emulsion sticks to their top lip, laughter ripples through the class as the students encounter the substance and materiality of the medium. This initiation into the world of celluloid - its tangibility, tactility and texture - introduces one of the medium's most intrinsic qualities: its physicality. Paradoxically, if the teacher conjures the appropriate setting, the ritual also draws attention to the metaphysical, illusory, and the paranormal nature of the cinematic experience. It can recall film's first audiences who ran from the cinema when confronted by big close-ups of a character's head, or looked behind the screen for the actor - The seductive illusion of reality.