Film News: Experience the 70mm Film Fest at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre, Sep.14-27, 2018

CHICAGO – When a filmmaker creates a new work, they use the templates that are available to them, past and present. As films become more digitized and portable, Chicago’s historic Music Box Theater reminds us of the one format that filmmakers used (and still use). The 2018 70mm Film Festival runs from September 14th through the 27th. For more details and tickets, click here. [17]

70mm Film Festival at Music Box Theatre to Screen ‘Lawrence of Arabia’
Photo credit: MusicBoxTheatre.org

The 70mm format is a wide, high resolution film gauge (the image is actually 65mm wide, the extra 5mm is for stereophonic sound tracks), and projects at a 2:20:1 ratio. The format has been around since the beginnings of film, but got a big push in the late 1920s with the “Grandeur” format for the Fox Film Corporation (soon to merge with 20th Century Fox), but the Depression stalled that effort. The “Todd-AO” system followed in the 1950s, with “Around the World in 80 Days” being an example of that 70mm offshoot. Super and Ultra Panavision 70 soon followed, and it became the standard to shoot the wider screen format.

During the two week festival, the historic Music Box Theater will be screening, in proper ratio, a number of older (“West Side Story,” “Lawrence of Arabia”) and more contemporary (“Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” “The Remains of the Day”) 70mm films. Click the link above for a complete schedule.

[19]	By PATRICK McDONALD [20] Editor and Film Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com [19]