Kolkata: Kolkata International Children’s Film Festival, for the first time, used an arc-lamp 35 mm projector to screen two films at Radha Studio on Friday and Saturday, respectively.
Jai Baba Felunath’ (1979), directed by Satyajit Ray, and ‘Gupi Bagha Phire Elo’ (1992), a sequel to the 1980 film ‘Hirak Rajar Deshe’ (1980), directed by his son Sandip Ray, were screened. “We have a number of celluloid films in our archive. Three of them were screened during the Kolkata International Film Festival 2023. We have revamped our projector and for the sake of heritage status, there were instructions from the top brass to use the 35 mm projector at the Children’s Film Festival too. Hence, we used the projector for exhibiting these two films,” an official of state Information and Cultural Affairs said. Both shows were full house. The 35 mm width was introduced around 1890 by William Kennedy Dickson and Thomas Edison using 120 film stock supplied by George Eastman.
Film 35 mm wide with four perforations per frame became accepted as the international standard gauge in 1909, and remained the dominant film gauge for image origination and projection until the advent of digital photography and cinematography. Eastman Kodak, Fujifilm and Agfa-Gevaert offered 35 mm films. The ubiquity of 35 mm movie projectors in commercial movie theatres made 35 mm the only motion picture format that could be played in almost any cinema in the world. Since 2010, there has been a complete shift into DCP (Digital Cinema Projection) format. “The post-production through 35 mm projection took 3 to 4 months.
However, in DCP, it is done in 15 days. So, the post production cost has come down drastically,” the official said. Presently, in the Mumbai film industry the 35 mm projector is still used in some documentaries and short films.