It’s been six years since Kodak announced its plan to end production of Kodachrome colour film on June 22, 2009. The announcement was a result of the decline sales of Kodakchrome, which was launched in 1935 for movies and slides. The increasing popularity of digital over the last decade slowly but surely sounded the death knell for film.
Film stock is now rarely used in show business, it has just become a romantic notion. Hollywood and Bollywood has majorly moved to digital both in filming and projection. Only a handful of filmmakers can now afford to fulfill their whim of wanting to shoot on film. Tarantino had once said that the day the New Beverly (an art house theatre that he funded) betrayed 35mm film, he would “burn the place down”. According to reports, his theatre too has a digital projector now, and Tarantino can do little about it.
Renowned cinematographer Ravi K Chandran (Dil Chahta Hai, Black, Ghajini, My Name Is Khan) made a short film titled The Deadly Farewell as a tribute to the 35mm film. Watch it here:
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