It seems amazing, especially in the context of a film festival, that there might be a time in the not so distant future when young people will think of films as something they can download onto their mobile devices and view on their mini screens. Films as big screen events may never completely die, but clearly the trend towards miniaturization has made the wide screen epics of yesteryear seem quaintly anachronistic.

Well, as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, the Zlin Film Festival turns back the clock and presents four film classics in their original wide screen 70mm formats.....a potent reminder of the power that the larger-than-life image once had before films were first reduced to our television screens, our laptops and finally onto the postage stamp size display of our mobile phones. Bucking this trend, the Festival is showcasing four classic wide-screen films in the Grand Cinema, a movie palace that used to regularly screen films in this format but now needed to have special double projector equipment brought in to present the films in their original 70mm glory.

Among the films to be feted are the multi-Oscar winners WEST SIDE STORY (1961), an adaptation of the Broadway musical milestone co-directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962), the supreme epic and acknowledged masterpiece of British director David Lean; as well as more recent 70mm fare THE UNTOUCHABLES, director Brian de Palma's 1987 gangster classic, and BATMAN, the 1999 big budget telling of the superhero story by Hollywood bad boy Tim Burton.

Long live 70mm!!!!! 

Sandy Mandelberger, Festival Dailies Editor