Are small theaters punching a ticket to oblivion? Radical changes in the
traditional structure of the
lab processing and
exhibition sides of the film industry have been filling the lives of
small theater operators with uncertainty and worry for the last few years. Will
filmstock be the next
Kodachrome? (And what will that mean for the future of
film preservation?)
From the address by
Jonas Mekas - Lithuanian survivor of World War II, ebullient émigré to New York City, and groundbreaking maker of films and videos - in the last link. The sound of his voice adds a great deal to it, but some may appreciate a transcription of part of it:
"Cinema, filmstocks will disappear - fading out within five.. maybe a little bit longer. But whatever has been made on film should remain and be screened in certain, special places - institutions, museums -
only as film. Therefore, every country should build a lab.... Labs made, sponsored by their governements that should continue production of film stocks. All the necessary equipment to develop, to produce prints and projection methods and technology so that films can be projected as
films. I'm not [saying] that there should be labs and filmstocks produced for continuation of making films on film. I know that that is not going to happen. But whatever has been produced as film should be always projected, shown, and seen as film. Not as videos. It's completely different. There is a different energy - a different medium. That will have to happen, because what's recorded on film has been recorded during [the] last hundred and some - decades. It's part of our history, of our culture, of our memory. It just cannot be replaced. We have to experience it, see it, live with it.
I realize - [this] human obsession to keep everything into eternity. Everything has to survive, everything has to be seen 500 years from now, 1000 years from now. It is a beautiful obsession. And we know that everything falls to dust. Dust. What remains - the whole history of art - is just what is left after all the armies when through, all the disasters, all the dictators, all the fanatics. So whatever is left from past centuries, we treasure, we keep in the museums, and protect, we write dissertations about them. It's only fragments of what humans have left. The same will be with film, the same will be with cinema. Because it's so rare, what is still left. And so many films have disappeared. And it's so precious, what we still have, that we have to do everything to protect it as long as we can."
I can think of many, many exceptions to that rule.
Higher up the food chain, you don't hear a peep about 35 mm, except in comparison to buggy-whip manufacturers in the early days of the automobile. Chris McGurk is in the catbird seat; as chief executive officer of Cinedigm Digital Cinema Corp., in Woodland Hills, Calif., he's making millions in the business of installing digital cinema equipment. Is there any incentive for the six major film studios, plus all the other film distributors, to continue striking film prints for exhibition?
"None whatsoever. None," he says. "The studios will save over a billion dollars a year in distribution costs. It took probably five, 10 years too long to even get to this point in digital conversion because this industry is very resistant to change … a lot of talent was suspicious of the new medium. Some people were, and are, wedded to film, the arguing being that it's 'richer,' it's this, it's that, it's the other thing. Which is not true."
A billion dollars in distribution costs? That seems like hyperbole.
But even if not - measured against the ability to control how many copies are in circulation and where they are being shown - maybe one billion is cheap.
I mean, look at what happened to those audio companies when they walked away from vinyl.
posted by three blind mice at 3:53 AM on September 28, 2011