July 1 – July 31, 2022 ULTRA CINEMATHEQUE 70 FEST 2022 Festival | 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, THE MASTER, MALCOLM X, SHORT CUTS, DUNKIRK, STREETS OF FIRE, GERONIMO, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, AIRPORT, VERTIGO, STARMAN, HOWARD THE DUCK, SPARTACUS, KHARTOUM, THE HATEFUL 8, IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD and THE WILD BUNCH
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL: The Golden Age of 70mm filmmaking from 1955 to 1970 brought us nearly 60 Hollywood features, among them such masterpieces as VERTIGO, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (the AC has struck prints of the last two of these exclusively for our audiences). Our July salute to the large-screen format also includes newly struck 70mm prints from Universal of AIRPORT and SPARTACUS. In addition to films shot in large-format, many were released in the 1980s in special engagements as 70mm blow-ups, which offered sound and image quality superior to the original 35mm prints and enhanced the spectacle of the filmmakers’ visions, as in John Carpenter’s STARMAN and Walter Hill’s STREETS OF FIRE. Since then, 70mm filmmaking never really went away – Spike Lee put it to impressive use in 1992’s MALCOLM X, as did Robert Altman with SHORT CUTS a year later. A print of the latter film has been shipped in from the George Eastman Museum to make a rare West Coast appearance in our series. In recent years, a new generation has embraced large-format presentations. Paul Thomas Anderson’s ambitious period drama THE MASTER, Christopher Nolan’s WWII-set DUNKIRK and Quentin Tarantino’s THE HATEFUL EIGHT have all stretched the boundaries of the medium using 70mm’s epic canvas. The 2015 Western was the first film made in Ultra Panavision in more than 40 years and anchors a closing weekend devoted to that widescreen variant that also includes such favorites as IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD and KHARTOUM.