The Future of 70mm cine film

AgX

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Can't access that site. But here in Germany there is no more a show of a full feature film in 70mm.
 

fdonadio

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I don’t believe we ever had a theater that screened 70mm here in Brazil. Maybe the early IMAX theaters did, but all of them have been converted to digital.

A couple of years ago, I almost scored a free 35mm movie projector. Fortunately, the city of São Paulo found a better option: they opened public movie theaters in poor areas of the city and the projectors were donated by the private movie theaters that were about to sell them as scrap.

Still kinda sad I won’t have my home theater, but it was a really good cause, which I totally support.
 

cmacd123

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there was a fairly large effort to restore and rebuild enough 70mm Projectors when the Movie "The Hateful Eight" came out, and those machines are apperently available if any producer wants to release a movie in 70mm.

"Dunkirk" was the last one i heard of in IMAX with any effort made to have selected sites on film.

I have heard that a film version of Dunkirk will be coming this winter to the cineshere in Toronto. Although the same theatre will also be showing "North of Superior" using Digital IMAX.

{Just to clarify, "70mm" movies are shot on 65 mm film, and printed on stock that is 70mm wide, but perforated 65mm. the original reason was to leave space for magnetic sound tracks, although magnetic striping is no longer available and so a DTS time code is used to synchronise a digital sound track.}

{also to clarify, although the Cinesphere is wonderfil, Toronto is also where the Cineplex folks got started}
 

CMoore

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twelvetone12

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Some months ago I visited a lab here in Europe that had just re-started a 70mm line. They had to start running double shifts because they could not keep up with demand! I hope it still goes on like this for them.
 

fdonadio

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I would love to get a Hasselblad 70mm back and shoot perforated film. Those backs are kinda cheap now. Sadly, the only fresh stock one can get is Ilford HP5, once a year, at their annual ULF campaign.

Some color slide film would be awesome!
 

Richard Man

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OK, now I want to see 2001 in 70mm projection. Hateful Eight, while the movie is a bit too Tarantino-violencey for me, is glorious. Nice to read shoutout to the Somerville Theater, where we were one of the few Americans who saw Laputa in the large screen in the 1980s and Coolidge Corner, where we similarly saw Totoro, AND they host the Museum of Bad Arts!!
 

AgX

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twelvetone12 said:
Some months ago I visited a lab here in Europe that had just re-started a 70mm line. They had to start running double shifts because they could not keep up with demand! I hope it still goes on like this for them.
Click to expand...

What demand? Did I miss something?
 

AgX

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We most likely refer to the same lab, but that is processing 65mm film.
 

twelvetone12

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Sorry AgX, you are right. 65mm it is (I'm too used of calling the camera film "70mm", my bad)
I visited them at the beginning of the year, I hope they are still doing well.
 

AgX

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Often "70mm" is used as synonym for the whole shebang. But this taking in 65mm not necessarily means releasing in 70mm. Or with other words, a large production in 65mm might use only as much print film in 70mm (in Europe) as camera film in 65mm.
 
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Kilgallb

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I saw Dunkirk in 70 mm at the IMAX in Calgary. Beautiful. I actually called and asked the manager if it was really film. He said he took possession of the film reels himself. I paid an extra $11.00 for the ticket. Well worth it.
 

Theo Sulphate

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The article states "Counterintuitively, it’s the most recently developed skills that may be the most vulnerable to disappearing forever.", but all of the examples which follow show that the "ecosystem" that needs to exist in order to preserve 70mm projection is equally at risk and fragile.

So, oddly, they disprove their own statement.

However, I am totally supportive of preserving old skills and knowledge.
 

dutchsteammachine

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The EYE film museum in the netherlands has regular 70mm screening. I saw The hatefull eight there.

Last summer they screened 2001 in 70mm, it sucks that I missed it and hopefully I will get to see it next year. I would not mind watching 'Interstellar' in 70mm too.

https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/about-eye/news/2001-a-space-odyssey-in-70mm-exclusively-screened-in-eye

It is also the only place in the benelux that can screen Ultra Panavision 70 because they have the projection screen width and anamorphic lens for it.
 

AgX

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One cinema in Benelux (doing a single special projection), none in Germany. What are we talking about?

A big market for 70mm film had been the Eastern Block, by the way.
(Small GDR alone had 21 70mm cinemas.)
 
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