35 mm: the format in question

Film reels © Eric Cabanis / AFP

Laurent Cormier, the director of film heritage at the National Centre of Cinematography and the moving image (CNC), outlines an analysis of the situation and issues related to the 35 mm format, whose use has been in continual decline faced with the advent of digital.

Can we hope for the return of 35 mm?

35 mm has never disappeared completely. Usage has declined, but certain renowned and new-generation directors continue to use it. In my view, shooting on 35 mm won't disappear completely: 10% to 15% of long and short films are shot on 35 mm for artistic reasons. Some directors also like to mix it with digital. There are advantages to shooting just on film, but the two technologies can co-exist.

What are the issues related to 35 mm?

The first question is about the progressive closures of laboratories working with photochemical film. We have a lot less industrial tools in this area: in France, we only have Digimage and Film Factory. So from this point forward, it's tailor-made. The other big question is the availability of film from manufacturers. Kodak has already greatly reduced its range, while continuing to supply what we currently need. They are the only large supplier in the market, with the others being slightly more anecdotal.

For how much longer will manufacturers continue to supply film?

There have been agreements between Kodak and the American Studios to guarantee an order volume. The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) is devising an approach more or less similar to its members, film libraries and heritage institutions. So we can guess that the production lines will be maintained, especially as with Kodak, we understood that they could be used for other things.

Are students in film schools made sufficiently aware of the use of film?

Unfortunately, the trend is leaning towards the disappearance of film, including in the more classic schools. Digital is a technological shortcut it is interesting to train students to use, but we can't forget how cinema was born.

Even more so because we don't know how long a digital file can be stored for…

There aren't that many durable preservation tools, for the long term. The only tangible one is film. If a polyester roll of film is stored in good conditions, in a dry place with good ventilation, it can be stored for several hundreds of years. For digital film, we don't know. You have to constantly move and transfer. That requires the stored object being permanently observed.

The classic films market is growing. Is that not a way to bring film back into cinemas?

Yes and no, as the advances in digital technology have enabled us to accelerate the pace of restorations and to improve their quality and distribution. Lots of rights holders restore their films and transfer them onto digital files without thinking about the future. We encourage them to copy the scans back onto film, at the least.

“The progress is obvious and we can’t abandon that, but film remains a rich and useful format. The quality of a good screening on 35 mm is unparalleled.”

Is there not also a distribution problem?

Digital distribution has supplanted everything else…which enables screening conditions and distribution to be uniform, as the copies everywhere are in good condition. This enables wider distribution and the use of other tools, such as online distribution. There are no drawbacks to using digital technology for distribution. The image quality is constantly improving, as well as the quality of the restored image. The progress is obvious and we can't abandon that, but film remains a rich and useful format. The quality of a good screening on 35 mm is unparalleled.