AFC Newsletter Editorial, July-August 2017

And now, at this moment, I recall, the words Emanuel Lubezki AMC ASC’s said in Cannes on the occasion of the presentation of a six-and-a -half minute virtual-reality experience from Alejandro González Iñárritu Carne y Arena, which places the "spectator" glasses VR in front of eyes, bare feet on a ground covered with sand, in the middle of a border crossing from Mexico to the United States, deep inside the world of illegal migrants and its often tragic outcomes.
“I think it could be less than 10 years when kids look at a ‎movie on a [traditional] screen and say, ‘You used to watch things on that ?’” Coming from "Chivo" these words do raise questions. Does it mean that the idea of people gathering in theaters to watch two-hour slices of edited film could appear archaic in the next ten years ? I had already previously "experimented" other VR installations and remained rather sceptical but in spite of my efforts, I was not able to share this Carne y Arena experience, there was no free slot, one needs to be a journalist or a VIP to be invited. Several “happy few,” (journalists) I met later and who shared the experience, express a great enthusiasm. For them it is, obviously a revolution similar to the one brought by the invention of cinema by the Lumière brothers. For them , undoubtely VR will quickly takes off as a storytelling medium as in the meantime‎, filmmakers are ranging around to match content and medium, scriptwriters and artistic creators are already on a war footing. And they add that this technique threatens much more the existence of the movie theaters than the Netflix style platforms which fed the controversy during the festival. This will be interesting to watch.

While waiting for this hypothetical future, our present duty is to take advantage of the progress of the HDR which looks like a big enhancement of the quality of the screening in theaters. Eclair, our faithful associate member will organize a comparative screening session of its Eclaircolor system on June 29th, in the Etoile-Saint-Germain des Prés. And this coming Fall, in partnership with our color timers friends, members of SHADE, we plan to carry out a one day workshop around the HDR.
And nearer, we hope to see numerous AFC members at Amazing Digital Studio on June 26th, for the preview of Claire Denis’s movie, Un beau soleil intérieur, cinematography by Agnès Godard AFC. A good pretext for spending a pleasant evening together around an « AFC movie ».
I wish you a nice and sunny Summer, and a lot of “cool” good movies to watch.