The Museum of the Moving Image in New York City has announced the lineup for its annual 70mm festival, which, in an age of ubiquitous digital projection, celebrates the cinematic power that the high-quality analog film format brings to discerning cineastes.
Taking place at the Astoria museum's grand Sumner M. Redstone Theater July 18–August 18, the festival brings several classics to the big screen, both classic and contemporary. 70mm film cells offer nearly 3.5 times the area of 35mm film prints, delivering images that can be projected on huge screens while delivering the brightest and sharpest images. The IMAX 70mm format is even larger, but can only be shown in IMAX theaters on IMAX film projectors on 1.43:1 aspect ratio screens, whereas “standard” 70mm is easier to accommodate on convention screens.
Other films on offer during the festival include Playtime, , Lawrence of Arabia David Lean, 1962) Far and Away and Tenet .. Christopher Nolan has previously promoted an"unrestored version of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I'm sure he would agree that no 70mm film festival would be complete without a showing of this film.
"It's a kind of cumulative effect, isn't it? I saw it when I was seven years old and I think I understood it certainly as well then as I do now, maybe better. I think maybe better because you just take it for granted. You experience it and the beauty and the magnitude of the images and the feeling of travelling across the solar system... I mean, that's the point of the film… it's just experiential in that way.