The ABC Cinema in a back garden

Every year the Channel 4 Amazing Spaces Shed of the Year throws up cinema designs that are ingenious or just plain wacky. They leave me slightly jealous (as well as wondering how people ever find the time and energy).

But this cinema shed is easily the most impressive I've seen for its attention to historical detail. It's not a cinema-themed entertainment room with a DVD player; it is a real, functioning facsimile of a 1930s-era supercinema. (The builder describes it as 1970s or 1980s era, but it hasn't been subdivided into lots of substandard smaller screens.) Not only does it look like a vintage ABC Cinema, but it is equipped with authentic fixtures and fittings such as genuine ABC carpets and signage.

The cinema has its own Facebook page.

Film vs Digital

In the Independent, the debate rumbles on. Or, rather, is endlessly repeated.

"No-one denies the magic of holding film or of feeding it through a projector."

Where this article differs from other recent efforts is in its focus on 35mm / 70mm / IMAX film as projection media, rather than shooting media.

"Prints for the films aren’t all in pristine condition but audiences don’t mind. In the same way that a new generation of music lovers are re-discovering vinyl, cinema enthusiasts are discovering, or re-discovering celluloid."

Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk is being distributed on 70mm

According to this Guardian article:

"Nolan’s second world war epic the most widely released 70mm film in 25 years. They are piggybacking, to some degree, on the Weinstein Company’s work convincing theater [sic] owners to procure functioning 70mm projectors in advance of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight."

The article goes on to applaud the "automatic prestige" of shooting on this format - an echo of my own sentiments comparing 16mm to camcorder shoots.