70mm Cinema and Film in Australia

CINEMIRACLE & CINERAMA

My "Windjammer" Story
By Sven Libaek
The world premiere was a typical Hollywood event, and there we were, three young Norwegian boys, who a year earlier could only have dreamt about attending such a spectacle.

Cinerama at the Melbourne Plaza
By Eric White
For twelve years, from 1958 until 1970, Cinerama was exhibited at Melbourne’s Plaza theatre. It was very popular in a period when the cinema business was struggling. The Plaza basked in the glow of this popularity. As the 1960’s progressed however, changing tastes in film and presentation meant that cinemas like the Plaza, and its big brother upstairs the Regent, were no longer needed. This is the story of the Plaza’s Cinerama period and its final days.

Cinerama Downunder
By David Coles
My fascination with that most cumbersome of widescreen oddities began in 1961 when I saw "Seven Wonders of the World". I was quite unprepared for the you-are-there realism of sight and sound created by Cinerama's unique presentation format. From my very first hit I was hooked. I have tried substitutes Showscan, 70mm, IMAX 3D, IMAX Dome, Circlorama, but none of them come close to curing my irrational addiction to Cinerama.

IMAX

"Sacred Site", A short film in 65mm Omnimax
By The Big Frame
The film focuses on the 1986 apparition of Halley's Comet over central Australia. Set near the majestic Milky Way of the southern night sky and contrasted by the spectacle of a total lunar eclipse.

7OMM THEATRES

Camera 65 and the Metro Bourke Street Bigger than…
By Eric White
The Bourke Street Metro was a two-gallery theatre, like the Collins Street Athenaeum, and as was the case there, the projection rake was quite steep.

The Lost World of 70mm Theatres
By Ian Hanson
Not so long ago a movie would appear with the tag ‘Presented in 70mm and six-track stereophonic sound.’ Such descriptors have all but disappeared from newspapers, radio and television. This story is about the rise and fall of 70mm film presentations and some of the theatres that used to screen them regularly; a review from a personal perspective, aided by some input from other keen followers of the subject.

+ A comment to "The lost world of 70mm Theatres"

Inaugural Australian 70mm Festival - Film is back!
By Sam McCabe
To coincide with the launch of "Murder on the Orient Express" on 70mm, the Sun Theatre, Yarraville, Melbourne, Australia is hosting a whole week of 7 films on glorious 70mm. The festival will feature films new and old, classics and cult. Old style presentation is back at the sun too, with every film introduced, film programmes and intermissions on the longer films.

The Astor Cinema
By George Florence & Kevin Adams
My involvement has seen the culmination and fruition of a life-long dream, and a labour of love. It has been very gratifying that well over one and a half million patrons have passed through our doors in the years since we opened in our current format. That so many identified in this "real-cinema experience" is deeply appreciated, as it re-inforced my firm beleif that the Astor needed to be saved and preserved as a living museum to cinema-going at its grandest.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT

The H8 Down Under
By Brian Walters
The following day I attended the 1:30 PM session at the beautiful art deco “Rivoli Complex“ cinema one. Both of these cinemas showed off the great quality of the Ultra Panavision 70 process to audiences that had mostly never seen this film format. On display was not only the razor sharp grainless image, but also the solid saturated colour rendition that only film presentations can currently deliver.

The HATEFUL 8 @ the SUN theatre
By Bert Murphy
Getting the Projector into the bio was every bit the nightmare I had been imagining it to be. First, rolling it down the street on casters like an armoured shopping trolley got a few glances from passing traffic. Then into the foyer for the next challenge. It wouldn't fit in the lift. No problem; release the lamp house mount from the pedestal and carry it along behind.

PEOPLE

George Florence and 70mm at The Astor
By Eric White
George Florence, the cinema's long-time proprietor, has a deep passion for film in general and 70mm presentation in particular. He considers film to be superior as a medium to anything similar, particularly in the area of sound reproduction. Magnetic analogue recording and reproduction gives superior results to digital processes. Many digital remixes are inferior and George fears that unique original four and six track mixes for classic films may be lost.

A conversation with John Mitchell
By Cameron Glendinning
Let's go to Australia and meet a man who has a complete 3-strip Cinerama cinema in his garden. It all started when he heard on the grapevine that a certain storehouse was to be emptied.

+ Mitchell: Gallery of older pictures

Cinerama unterm Sternenhimmel
Von Cameron Glendinning
Es begann, als mir zu Ohren kam, dass ein gewisses Lager geräumt werden sollte, in dem sich viele Cinerama-Filme befanden. Ein paar bestimmte Jungs hatten die Leute dort belogen und ihnen vorgegaukelt, sie wollten das Magnetfilm-Material wiederverwenden, während sie in Wahrheit nur die Soundtracks anhören wollten.

John Mitchell gets his Academy certificate
By David Coles
I returned home to Australia with the parchment, and instructions from a man named Thomas to photograph the Award handover

Speech for John Mitchell
By Bill Lawrence
There were many people who made the 60th Anniversary of Cinerama celebrations at the Widescreen Weekend in Bradford a success, but the contribution made by one man was particularly exceptional.

Who is David Coles?
At the impressionable age of 12 my mother took me to the Sydney Plaza Theatre to see “Seven Wonders of the World” and I immediately became a Cinerama addict - determined to find out all about this wondrous process.

In The Picture - Tom Down Under
By David Coles
Tom March spent a week in Sydney and had been looking forward meeting in person John H. Mitchell - the man who has been keeping the 3-strip flame alive Down Under for over 35 years. A two night 'Cinerama Festival' was held, with "In The Picture" and a variety of 3-strip items shown on Friday evening, and a feature "The Best of Cinerama" being screened on the Saturday.

7OMM FILMS IN SYDNEY

• Go to In 7OMM with Doug Louden, Part 2
• Go to In 7OMM with Doug Louden, Part 1

In 7OMM with Doug Louden
By Doug Louden
Leaving school in 1975, I started as a projectionist for Hoyts Theatres as a spool boy winding 70mm reissues of "The Sound of Music" and "Hello, Dolly!". My dreams came true in 1976 when I worked at the Hoyts Plaza theatre with Tom Omaye as my head projectionist and in 1989 I got the life time ambition to run my own cinema on the south coast of Sydney before I moved to London in 1992

• Go to 70mm Films in Sydney by Mr. Peter Fraser

DP70

DP70s in Australia

Plaza | Astor |

DP70 Update from Australia
By Phillip Grace
Corrections to your page DP70s in Australia. The 70mm projectors at Horsham, Victoria are not DP70. They are Cinemeccanica Victoria X. They were originally installed new in the Chelsea Theatre, Melbourne, then moved a little way down the street to the Forum Twin Cinemas (Cinema One) also in Melbourne, and screened a lot of 70mm on both sites. When the Forum Twin closed in 1982 or 1983 the Victoria X machines were sold to Horsham.

What is the correct colour of a DP70?
By Clive Woodward
We are puzzled by trying to work out the correct colour to repaint them. Ours are a brownish 'hammertone' / 'hammertex' colour. I note from photos on your website many appear to be grey. Even the brown on our units varies from part to part. Do you know of the 'official' original colour for DP70 projectors?

SCENT OF MYSTERY

Scent of Mystery lives again!
By Tammy Burnstock
Fifty-five years after its original scented release, Scent of Mystery (AKA Holiday in Spain) lives once again in glorious Smell-O-Vision! In two special events: for the Widescreen Weekend Festival, Bradford UK and in front of a full house at the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen, the movie was screened with a new experimental participatory scent track.

THE 7OMM EXPERIENCE

The history of some cost- saving approaches to the 70mm experience
By Eric White
‘Blow-ups’ became popular as a sort of Claytons 70mm: the 70mm you have when you are not having 70mm.

Why 70mm Matters
By Brian Walters
The 70mm format has experienced a phoenix like re - birth due to the efforts of film makers like Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, who have against the odds, released films using the large negative 70mm release print format, after being instrumental in brokering a deal with the six major Hollywood studios to guarantee the availability of Eastman Kodak film negative for a further five years.

The 70mm Trailer Anomaly
By Brian Walters
Some of the excellent sounding 70mm trailer examples were for “The Fly“, “Commando“ and “Full Metal Jacket“, all wonderfully dynamic sounding trailers that far exceeded the sound of the feature presentations which were to be in 35mm stereo optical sound only. The picture quality of these trailers, even though only blow ups from 35mm, was also usually superior because of the improved brightness, picture stability and improved definition from longer focal length lenses employed with 70mm projection.

Around The 70mm World In Thirty Seven Days
By Brian Walters
While I did at times feel a bit like Phileas Fogg, having to make key connections for various forms of transport, including planes, trains, buses and ferries, my trip was a little less adventurous but very interesting none the less. When reflecting on all the 70mm presentations I watched on my trip it was interesting that all of them had been projected by the Philips DP70 projector, the original, most esteemed and enduring of all 70mm projectors.

• Go to An exceptional run at the Sun

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