The Station Cinema has gone retro and is showing Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, from 35mm film.
All films in cinemas were once projected from 35mm film reels, but in 2011 studios began releasing all films in digital making 35mm film redundant.
Since then all films screened at The Station Cinema and most others around the country have been from a digital server, shown via a digital projector.
Rob Younger, cinema director, said they decommissioned their 35mm projectors at that time.
He added: But filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan have a passion for real film and prefer to shoot their movies using that format. They then go on to ensure that actual film prints are made available for those who can screen them.
“Once I heard that there would be 35mm prints of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood available, I made the decision to re-install 35mm kit at The Station Cinema.
“As an experienced cinema engineer, with 40 years’ experience in the industry, this type of work is second nature. We had retained most of our equipment, so over the last few weeks, I moved some of the digital kit around, to make room and re-installed a 35mm projector, together with long-play platter and Dolby Digital and analogue sound systems.”
Final alignments took place last week and the first screening from film was on Saturday evening.
“The show was very well received, enhanced by screening a reel of vintage adverts & trailers beforehand, together with a personal introduction,” added Rob.
“As far as we are aware, we are the only cinema in the North to be screening Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from 35mm, Quentin Tarantino’s preferred format.
“The film comprises nine reels, with a total length of 14,500 feet, which is almost three miles of film! The reels are spliced together to form a single reel, so that it can play in its entirety, with no interruptions.”
There is a further screening planned for this Thursday and potentially further shows next week.
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Good on you. Now if you ran two projectors and had to synchronise reel changeovers, I’d be even more impressed!