35mm Prints

35mm was the backbone of the cinema industry for over 100 years and the canvas for creating the greatest movies of all time. With access to many classic film prints, we present many of now obsolete formats, used to present the most memorable images of all time. Print processes such as Technicolor Dye Transfer used for some of the classics we present (a now obsolete format) creates color and saturation unobtainable in digital formats. The Astor is committed to ensuring the celluloid format lives on, as it was the format many film makers intended their work to be seen in. Our projectionists maintain the tried and true techniques used for decades, committing to keeping close eyes on the presentation for the highest quality showing, in a time when the majority of the industry has unfortunately gone completely automated.

Chapel Distribution
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70mm Prints

The Astor Theatre is the only cinema in Melbourne screening standard 70mm films on a regular basis and is superbly equipped for 70mm presentation with it’s giant screen and a state–of–the–art sound system.

Why Do 70mm Films Look Better?

The illustration on the left shows a standard, 35mm print of Ben-Hur with an anamorphic (“squeezed”) CinemaScope-type image. On the right is a 70mm print of the same film. It is immediately obvious that the picture-area on the 70mm print is much bigger than on the 35mm film – in fact, it is more than three times bigger!

This means that the 70mm film has to be magnified far less than the smaller film to get a screen-filling image. The result is a brighter, sharper picture with more detail and better colour.

The Astor Theatre is dedicated to the best-possible presentation of all films, and with 70mm you get the best of the best!