It seems to have been a very busy year since last we spoke, including the closure of the Pictureville, until recently. Can you tell me what it means to have it open again, and how the disruption may have changed things?
The main museum building is closed. We were successful in receiving National Lottery heritage funding, so we’re having new galleries and a lot of overdue building maintenance. It’s due to open in 2025 to align with Bradford: City of Culture. So we were always prepared to lose the Cubby Broccoli screen and IMAX for a little bit. But we didn’t predict that Pictureville would have to close with immediate effect in November last year, and this was because of findings of RAAC in the roof over the projection box and the bar area. So, we had to close, and it’s been closed ever since. It’s been 10 months.
At the start of this year, in January, we started doing off-site programming and off-site screenings, and we took up a residency at the Alhambra. They have a studio space where we set up a screen, and we did regular screenings from Thursday through to Sunday. That was really nice. We could still interact with our audiences. Our cinema team was still in position, and we programmed a lot of classic and repertory cinema, so that’s always fun. And we also did a stint up at Bradford University, at the space called “Theatre in the Mill”. We did that through May. It was fun.
But we’re itching to get back into Pictureville. I mean, it was such a great experience having these pop-up screenings in around Bradford, but nothing beats Pictureville. It’s due to open on the 31st of August and we cannot wait. Widescreen Weekend will be the first big event or festival that’s going to happen since Pictureville closed, and obviously, we’re putting it through its paces with all of the prints that we have and Cinerama! So yeah, we’re excited to be back.
One of the spotlights is on VistaVision, Paramount’s rival format to CinemaScope (last year’s spotlight). What can you tell us about VistaVision? What are the unique qualities for you?
I think, with us being Widescreen Weekend, and with us being based on the homage of the 1950s widescreen race, when all of the studios were scrambling to get people back from their homes and back from TV, into the cinema spaces, it’s so interesting to see which studios adopted what process and their thought process behind it all. And it’s just really interesting to see that fight, and VistaVision was Paramount’s attempt at that, and it didn’t last long. The other widescreen processes didn’t last that long either but it’s quite unique.
The film stock is flipped on its side, so it gives a wider picture and a wider space. It means the image is clearer and brighter, and I think it paved the way for IMAX because I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an IMAX film, but that’s flipped on its side and has the sprockets on the side as well. It was a bigger, brighter, clearer image, which obviously was the whole point of trying to bring people back into the cinemas. They wanted to provide something different to what TV could do. So that absolutely did it.
But also, with VistaVision, it meant that theatres could screen the film in three different aspect ratios, which made it more accessible. It meant that a lot of theatres could show the prints, but it also means, technically VistaVision isn’t true widescreen because it could be shown in different aspect ratios. Only one out of the three options was over 2:1, which is what we class as true widescreen. So it means that with us having this focus of VistaVision, we could show a lot of films this year that we haven’t shown before, and I think all of the VistaVision films that we’ve included in the program we’ve never screened at widescreen Weekend before. And so it gave us that opportunity to really expand the program and diversify the program a bit.
It still completely makes sense in the story of Widescreen Weekend, but it does mean that we can show these different types of films, and some films that I’ve been wanting to show for ages as well. And so I’m really glad that we could have this focus this year and it’s 70 years of VistaVision as well. So that’s why we hooked onto it, but the more research we did about it, the more we felt it was important to tell its story.
A big part of your season is this focus on Hitchcock. This is the first season I have seen with an auteur focus and you have all four films that he shot in VistaVision.
You’re right. Well spotted! This is the first time that we’ve done a specific focus on a director or artist. We always tend to have a focus on a format or a genre or country, but we’ve never really done a filmmaker or director before. But I felt like we couldn’t really focus on VistaVision without acknowledging Hitchcock, because he was such a huge fan of VistaVision, and he used that format impeccably. We’re showing four of his VistaVision films, arguably probably the more famous Hitchcock films, and we’re so happy that quite a lot of them will be in print. So we’ve got an archive print from the BFI for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). And then we’ve got brand new prints for Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959). So brand new 70mm for North by Northwest, and a new 35 mil print for Vertigo, which got struck as part of the BFI keep film on film campaign. I think their target is 100 new 35mm prints and so they’re slowly making their way through the catalogue and Vertigo was their next one. So we’re going to be the first venue outside of London to use that print. I think it’s only screened at BFI Southbank as part of their campaign. So we’re so excited to have that, I think it’s just gonna look great.
But in spite of all the VistaVision you are still making use of the very unique Cinerama screen, and I’m particularly excited to see the three-strip Cinerama screening of How the West Was Won (1962). Are you actually running three film strips through three different projectors and projecting them side by side for this?
Yes! We’ve got two opportunities to see Cinerama as part of the festival. One will be digital Cinerama, which is Seven Wonders of the World (1956). So that’s like a traditional travelogue. And then How the West Was Won will be on three-strip 35mm Cinerama. So yeah, it will be projected with the three projectors side by side simultaneously. Sadly, I think that’s probably the only film that we can show in that way. We did used to have The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), but we had to put that back into cold storage, because it’s just getting really ropey. And it got restored onto digital a couple of years ago. Luckily, How the West Was one still looks great. The colour is still there. It’s still pretty intact. So even though it feels like we do wheel that out every widescreen Weekend, it, sadly, is the only print in good enough condition for us to be showing in that way. And plus, it’s a great film, and it looks great anyway, but yeah, it will be shown in the traditional 35mm way.
It is important to keep it in the Rota because this really is the only opportunity to see that film as it was meant to be seen. I mean I have the DVD of it, and I’ve caught it on TV, and it’s always a little absurd with the letterboxing. It is very thin, and you can tell from the way the cinematography works that this isn’t quite right because it’s totally distorted.
Yeah, and if you look closely, the viewpoints of the actors and actresses are always a bit off. I guess it’s because they’re looking at three different cameras, which you probably wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know, but also just the sound as well. The sound is amazing when you’re watching it on print, and like in Cinerama, it’s true surround sound. And we show it with the Overture and we have the intermission. So it’s definitely very different to watching it on DVD or on TV.
It has to be said that digital Cinerama is also just spectacular. Last year, we had Windjammer (1958) in digital Cinerama, and that was, I think for me and some of the other people I spoke to who hadn’t been to Widescreen Weekend before, the surprise hit of the festival. It starts with one projector in the middle, and then when they set out to sea, the image pulls back and expands…
Oh yeah, I love that bit. It always gives me goosebumps when it starts off in the centre and then pans out. It is interesting to watch both sides-by-side because the digital Cinerama has been restored from original three-strip films. But I do quite like seeing the print when you can see the joins, and it’s a bit fuzzy there. You can see where the three films are separate and where they match up, whereas with digital Cinerama, because it is shown through one lens, you don’t have that separation, which a lot of people prefer, and I understand that, but I think it’s also nice to be able to see the original three-strip stuff as well, and seeing where those lines are, and seeing where those divides are, and understanding that there are three 35mm projectors working with three projectionists, and it really hits home when you’re seeing it on film.
It really plays with this idea that cinema is a hyper-mediated experience, where in any given moment, you are aware of the fact that you are watching characters within their own world, actors performing on a set, and you’re sat in a room watching light projected onto a screen, and you’re having those three experiences all simultaneously. Seeing the slight flickering line just reminds you to not only fully invest within the characters and the diegetic world of the film but also to be impressed by the feat of this feat of projection.
That’s what Widescreen Weekend is all about. To an extent, it’s all part of the same experience. You’re enjoying this great film on the big screen, but it’s all part of the show in terms of the red curtains and the people that are projecting it, and the history of the print and where that’s travelled and been. And when you have an intermission, it gets to the point where viewing the film on the big screen is like a small part of it, and actually, the rest of it is down to the people involved, the skills involved, and the objects.
I’m glad you mentioned the curtain as well because I’m absolutely obsessed with the way in which cinemas use what I call “curtain play” to punctuate and build into the experience. An overture comes to an end, and then the curtains pull back as the music transitions to the actual score…
Yeah, and there’s so many…I don’t know all of them, you’d have to ask one of our projectionists, but there are so many rules and regulations. With the curtains, you can’t open them on a blank screen. You’ve got to wait to a certain point of the overture. So it’s a whole thing. The curtains definitely play a big part of the experience.
Okay, let’s talk Italian cinema. Because you have this Italian strand with three films from Italian cinema widescreen. What made now the time to show films and have this focus?
We started to take those steps last year when we were looking at CinemaScope, and we looked at the Japanese version (Tohoscope) and also the French version (Francoscope) and how different countries adopted that process. Because the widescreen process and those widescreen wars in the 1950s were very much American cinema. The golden age of Hollywood. So it is really interesting to see how it trickled through into different countries. Our collaborator, Dr Pasquale Iannone (Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh), helped us with the Italian widescreen strand. He’s been a friend of the festival for a while. He’s done some intros for us, and we got talking a couple of years back where we were just talking about Italian cinema and how they were actually one of the early adopters of the widescreen process.
And actually, the way that they use widescreen is really epic and really cinematic. There are some great Italian films that are shot in widescreen, and it just made sense for us to do a bit of a focus. We’re always a bit pushed for time at Widescreen Weekend because we only have three to four days. A lot of the epics are really long, and we have intermissions, so we’re showing three films, though I would have liked to do more. Pasquale came back to us with this huge list, and they all sounded amazing, but we have managed to narrow that down to just three. But it means that it gives audiences a taste of how other countries were using the format, and they use it differently to the classic American films.
Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) is just a perfect example. This grand epic and it was a happy accident, but we decided to program it on the Saturday, and then we found out it was actually the centenary of Marcello Mastroianni, and actually that would have been his birthday. Once we found that out, we thought, “We have to show it on Saturday” because we have to honour him and that centenary. And so that was just a happy accident. And then, obviously, we’re showing Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) with Sophia Loren. You think of Italian cinema, you think of her, so it would feel wrong not to have Sophia Loren in the festival. But also, we wanted to bring in some contemporary Italian widescreen as well. So hopefully, with the three films, we’ve tried to show the diversity of Italian cinema with the big epic; the classic that everyone seems to know about, which is La Dolce Vita, and then we’ve got another classic, and then the contemporary. Hopefully that gives people a taster until we can maybe revisit it in another year.
You have this History of Romance strand in there with some fabulous films lined up. This feels like a genre that doesn’t really get into the IMAX screens anymore and is more likely to be found on streaming services. The big, sweeping romantic epics feel like a thing of the past.
It is and it isn’t. We started when we were thinking about this genre, first in terms of the program, because we needed to keep it tight-knit and well-curated. We have these three pillars. First we have the technical aspect, which obviously was the VistaVision focus. Then, we wanted to pick a country to include more world cinema in the program and diversify the program a little bit more, so that was Italy. And then we wanted a genre focus, which was our history of romance. So we’ve got these like three pillars that run through the program, which is like the technical, the country and the genre.
And so when we were thinking about the genre focus, quite a lot of people in the office are big fans of Bridgerton, and how that has brought back the period costume drama, and how that is very much present in widescreen cinema, especially the early films. But also what romance on screen, and what costume dramas meant to other people. So, for some people, it is that Bridgerton, Pride and Prejudice, Jane-Austen-type period dramas. But then, for some people, it’s Cleopatra (1963); the big epics and those costumes, Egypt and that sort of thing. And that’s very much period romance. It’s in A period. And then we started this conversation about other films like Dr Zhivago (1965), and even The Apartment (1960). People might not think of The Apartment as like a period romance, but for us, it very much is because it’s very much of a time. It’s very 60s. So we just started exploring all of that, and it all made sense to us.
And you’re right, it is quite absent from big blockbuster films at the moment. It is often a side story. So it definitely allowed us to bring back some of those big, epic love stories that people haven’t seen for a while, like Cleopatra, which has stories of romance on and off screen with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. So it just made sense to us and like with the Italian widescreen strand, we could have shown a million and one different films. Once you start digging into what a history of romance means to other people, what period dramas, costumes and sense of time mean to other people, you do have this whole spectrum of film. We’ve even got Peter Strickland’s Duke of Burgundy to round that off because, again, for me, that’s very time-specific. It’s very beautiful and cinematic. So even that fits within that genre, I think.
People can buy tickets for single events, but I know from experience that a lot of people go for a season ticket for the entire thing. It is interesting how many people commit themselves to that because it is a very full-on program. From your experience, speaking with people, and from your own habits, why are people so excited to do this very long-form entertainment completely back-to-back?
It’s definitely something that’s unique to us and our festival. I go to other festivals, and I definitely don’t sit back-to-back. I eat lunch, and I’m often done by eight o’clock because it can be quite exhausting sitting and watching all of those films all day. But I guess it’s just that people are really, really passionate about these films in that format, and they just don’t want to miss anything. A lot of these people who come back year after year remember watching those films on the big screen for the first time. So for them, it’s complete nostalgia, and I don’t think they would want to miss it. Being a part of the festival is sitting and watching those films back to back and in the proper way, with the intermission and the overture and guest speaker, especially because I don’t think there are other opportunities to watch those films anywhere else. I think it’s a blend of the audience just being really passionate, really dedicated, wanting to have the full experience, but then also the fact that they can only have that experience at our festival, and they know it’s going to be projected correctly.
As the lead programmer, it makes it really hard, because you’re timetabling these films with it in your head that people are going to sit and watch ALL of these films. So you almost have to build in breaks and lunch breaks, which makes things even more difficult because you’re already battling with these really long films, and then when you’re having to put in breaks to almost make people take a break. It eats into your program a lot. But I just know that it’s not like any other festival where you’re picking and choosing and you’re making your own path. You’re going to miss that film, but it’s okay, because you’re going to go watch this film later. People just don’t do that at Widescreen Weekend. But I mean, we love our audiences. We love that they come back year after year. So if we have to build them in a lunch break, then that is absolutely fine by me.
You’ve got the Indiana Jones all-nighter this year, but last year, you had the Lord of the Rings Marathon. And I remember the following morning, I forget what the very first thing of the following morning was, I think it was the exhibition of Cineramacana, and I remember the presenter asking how many people here were at the Lord of the Rings all-nighter and I was just amazed at the hands that went up.
I know, it’s crazy. I remember coming in at half six/seven in the morning and seeing people asleep in the Pictureville bar, tucked up in the corner and thinking “Oh, wow, people have actually stayed to the end!” The fact that people then stayed for the first screening on the Sunday is just craziness to me but I guess I just love sleep as much as film. So I don’t think I could ever be one of those people, but they’re definitely there, and they come to Widescreen Weekend.
Find out more about Widescreen Weekend here: https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/cinema/widescreen-weekend