Culture

CineLabs, the EU's latest analogue film studio

Bucharest (Romania), 3 July, EFE/EPA, (Camera: Robert Ghement).- A decade ago, when digital technology was beginning to take hold and many people thought that celluloid cinema was dead, Rodrigo Ruiz-Tarazona decided to opt for a studio that would continue to make films as they were made before, and in 2013 he acquired CineLabs Romania, the last studio in the European Union still capable of making films on celluloid. FOOTAGE OF CINELABS ROMANIA, AND THE LATEST EU STUDY CAPABLE OF MAKING CELLULOID FILMS. INCUDES STATEMENTS BY INDEPENDENT FILMMAKER CRISTI PUIU; CORNELIA POPA, GENERAL DIRECTOR OF CINELABS; AND RODRIGO RUIZ TARAZONA, OWNER OF CINELABS, "THE LAST STRONGHOLD OF CELLULOID".Translations:1.- "I come from painting and photography, and someone like me should in principle choose film unconditionally, but this is not my case. In my opinion, film has qualities that digital does not have and vice versa. But in absolute terms, in an ideal situation where I had the budget and the freedom to choose any medium, I would choose film".2.- "This laboratory located in Bucharest, Romania, is the only one in the entire European Union that offers Kodak celluloid film and all the services to process it, from A to Z".3.- "This is a Calder 16 mm and 35 mm negative film processing machine. And here you can see the 'soft touch tower' type rollers, which protect the negative when running".4.- "When you film on celluloid, every shot counts, and you work in a more responsible way. When you film in digital, certain things can be corrected later, and everyone is more relaxed and tends to be negligent in some way".5.- "I have observed that relaxation does not only affect the actors, but also the camera operators. When you work with film you give the utmost importance to all the details, so that you don't endanger what you film. When you work on film, all operators must respect the highest standards of their profession. The calculation is permanent, as is the attention. When you work in digital format you can see in real time what you are filming. When I was filming The Death of Mr. Lazarescu we couldn't see exactly what we were getting on film. When you film in digital you suffer from a kind of perversion of perception. When Felini was filming he didn't have the possibility to see on a monitor what he was filming, and the relationship of trust with the operator was at maximum. In a way, it was a kind of marriage between the two.6.- "Of the 2,000 films submitted to the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, the projects we worked on won four awards. One of them was The Mimosas, a film shot in 16 mm by Oliver Laxe that was made from start to finish with our laboratory. Another was Dogs, a film by French-based Romanian director Bogdan Mirica."7- "Digital is trying to reinvent the wheel. Film on negatives have existed for 140 years, it's very evolved, so it has the kinds of qualities that are impossible to achieve. In terms of human retinal perception. In terms of the perception of the retina in a human being, a human being captures the negative image with much more quality than any image of any digital format".8.- "The growth of projects on film has been 400 percent since 2015-16, especially in 16 mm".