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70mm Film in Gartenbau Kino | Read more at in70mm.com The 70mm Newsletter |
| Written by: - | Date: 02.09.2012 |
 The Gartenbau, 31.12.2010. Image by Veronica Gottlieb Mortensen.THE BIGGER PICTURE The Gartenbaukino and the Viennale present the first 70mm wide-format film in Vienna in 20 years The pinnacle and apotheosis in film projection culture is 70mm. Compared to the normal 35mm film, the so-called wide-format has three times as much picture area and thus more richness in detail and scope for higher resolution. Seventy millimeters is the overpowering experience, a spectacle of viewing, the epitome of a large and luxurious cinema. The format that has existed in the cinema industry since the early days was used in extravagant feature films like Ben Hur, Lawrence of Arabia and Cleopatra and popular musicals like Sound of Music, West Side Story and My Fair Lady by studios as a “wonder weapon” against the competition of TV and the constantly growing pop-cultural competitive offers. Yet 70mm was too expensive to be able to assert itself consistently in a big way. It remained an ennobled version of cinema, an exception for cinemas that were particularly cumbersomely endowed, and for special occasions. The format was very popular up to the 1970s and then only used again occasionally – most recently in the films of Terrence Malick or Christopher Nolan, who were determinedly looking for the outstanding quality and physique of the analog film grain. | More in 70mm reading: Now showing in 70mm in a theatre near you! DP70s in Austria 70mm film projection at the “Leokino” Internet link: Gartenbau Kino Parkring 12 1010 Vienna Austria |
 At its opening in the year 1960 with the film Spartacus by Stanley Kubrick, the Gartenbaukino was the first cinema in Austria to make a profit out of the technical revolution. The projectors installed back then still do their job to this day, by the way. Two Philips DP70 combination devices for 35mm and 70mm, with the serial numbers 2032 and 2038, frequently seen as the most stable and reliable projectors of their kind and more or less unchanged in 50 years.The last time this wide-format equipment was regularly used was at the end of the 1980s – and after that, one more time for the screening of the restored version of Spartacus as part of the Viennale, thus closing the circle again. Since then, the system has been in repose; the sound system was disconnected, the screen made smaller, the horizontal lining affixed. The year 2012 marks a year of a huge paradigm shift within worldwide cinema culture. Digitalization is making progress in leaps and bounds; analog devices are being eliminated; film copies destroyed. Those who can’t accept the changes get left behind. The Gartenbaukino is one of the few Austrian cinemas still able to play the 70mm. And especially in this year of supposed progress, the Viennale and the Gartenbaukino have decided that it is time – now more than ever – to make it possible in Vienna to relive a chapter of legendary film culture for the first time in two decades. Cinema the way it hasn’t been for some time, on the biggest and finest screen in the city that still has unbeaten picture and sound quality, despite 3D and digitalization. VIENNALE, Siebensterngasse 2, A-1070 Wien, Tel: +43 (0)1 526 59 47, Email: office@viennale.at | |
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