At a Friday the 13th showing of the movie “Freddy vs. Jason” earlier this month, Screenland Armour’s largest theater was packed with people.
Anticipation buzzed for the 2003 horror flick — part of Screenland’s Friday Night Frights series — because, for the first time at the theater, it was projected on film.
“It did take me back to when I was 16 years old, sitting in that theater, watching it originally,” said Screenland owner Adam Roberts. “It just added to this environment, watching that movie on film, because it feels like a different time.”
Following months of fundraising, upgrades now allow Screenland to show old movies and new releases in a format not found anywhere else in the Kansas City metro. The new projectors cast movies in special film formats, 70 mm and 35 mm, while most theaters mainly show movies on digital projection.
“We took the plunge and were like, alright, let's invest in this old stuff,” Roberts said. “Let's do what nobody in the area does.”
Roberts, who has owned and operated the Screenland Armour in North Kansas City since 2013, believes moviegoers, particularly young film fans, want to see movies projected on film again.
“It was watching these trends of: people have an interest in older film and a different type of cinema, filmmakers returning to shooting on film, studios putting out more prints, and then this analog-generation resurgence of everybody wanting to get back to a different time where we're not just on our keyboard, smashing about,” Roberts said.
At the independent theater, where installing an IMAX screen isn’t an option, the pivot provides an experience many Kansas Citians under 30 may not have had yet. Stray Cat Film Center, a nonprofit microcinema in downtown Kansas City, can show movies on 16 mm film, a smaller film format.
“With nowhere to increase opportunities, it kind of only made sense to do something that nobody else will do,” he said.
Screenland’s first-ever 70 mm screenings began in March with showings of the Oscar Best Picture-winner “One Battle After Another.” Later this week, Screenland will show “Sinners,” which took home four Academy Awards, in Ultrapanavision 70 mm. Only a handful of theaters in the U.S. have been able to show the film in that format, though that’s how it was originally shot.
“That's the way it should be presented, right?” Roberts said. “This is the most authentic way to see the movie.”
A ‘particular and kind of magic’
Most movie theaters today show films digitally: a computer plays the movie that is projected onto the big screen.
Or, as “Sinners” director Ryan Coogler previously said in a video promoting the movie’s different film formats, “It’s basically a really expensive hard drive that has a file for the image and a file for the sound.”
Film projection is a more intensive and expensive format. It requires specific equipment and human hands to show a movie on film properly, because it involves handling heavy reels of film. The machinery is hard to come by — Roberts said only two companies in the U.S. can refurbish the projectors, install them and train theater staff on how to use them.
“There's something really special about it — 70 millimeters looks unlike anything else,” said Mitch Brian, former film professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “The clarity of the image because of the light being blasted through the celluloid onto that screen is particular and kind of magic.”
When moviegoers watch “Sinners” on 70 mm at the Screenland, they’ll notice a brighter, better and cleaner image, Roberts says.
“When we go to night, that's really when this movie is going to shine,” Roberts said. “The colors of this movie are already beautiful, but the richness of the oranges and the blacks, the deep blacks of the barn and the shadows, and the vibrant reds of the blood are going to really pop in a way that's very unique for film.”
Projecting movies on film, particularly the large-format 70 mm, is prohibitively expensive for many theaters. Brian Mossman, co-owner and operator of the Glenwood Arts Theater in Overland Park, said his mostly older clientele aren’t clamoring as much for movies projected on film.
But Screenland’s younger customers, who may never have seen a movie on film, are more likely to be drawn to the special format.
“I think it'll be good for him, because film has a different look,” Mossman said of Roberts. “He's the only game in town.”
Screenland’s setup involves a hybrid machine that can show films on both 35 mm and 70 mm through a “reel-to-reel system,” which means two projectors are placed side-by-side in the projectionist booth.
Roberts had to rent special lenses to show “Sinners” on the Ultrapanavision 70 mm format. A movie shown on film is projected using a changeover, “the original way of projecting,” Roberts said.
“To do that, you need two projectors, so that doubles the entire project cost,” he said. “This is, again, why no studio would do this or no chain would do this, because it's very expensive from a staff and labor perspective, because somebody's up there working the entire show non-stop.”
Viewers may notice when that changeover takes place: a cigarette mark in the top right corner signals to the projectionist to start the next reel.
Film projection comes with its own nuances. That could require slightly tweaking the focus or adjusting the frame rate. If a film reel has dust or a scratch, that may show up on the screen.
But it’s all part of the experience.
“There's something about just seeing something with your eyes that's different than everything you've ever seen the last 15 years,” Roberts said. “It feels less plastic. It feels more like something that's a memory that I'm going to remember, and something that I could fully engage with.”
Will film find a resurgence?
For Greg Dedrick, the 35 mm screening of “Freddy vs. Jason” brought a mixture of nervousness and excitement. Dedrick co-hosts the Nightmare Junkhead podcast, a show centered on horror movies. The podcast organizes Friday Night Frights at the Screenland, of which “Freddy vs. Jason” was a special selection.
“There is just something about that communal experience that makes a good movie even better,” Dedrick said. “When you add that personal approach to it — that you've got real people up in the projector booth working with real film — it just adds this other cool layer to it.”
Mitch Brian, the former film professor, predicts that Screenland’s new offerings will draw film fans from around the Midwest. With the Kansas City core losing several movie theaters in the past few decades, including the Tivoli and, most recently, the B&B Theatres in Power and Light, Brian said the Screenland has weathered many storms.
“There are many of us who hope that film will find a resurgence, that people will remember what kind of great memories can be had in a movie theater,” he said. “I hope that we find ourselves going back to the movie theaters together, because I think it's good for shared community and shared humanity.”
In Screenland’s first month of showing movies on film, the 70 mm screenings of “One Battle After Another” sold between 700 and 800 tickets, Roberts said. One showing of “Sinners” that includes a post-show Q&A with Shawn Edwards, founder of the Black Movie Hall of Fame in Kansas City, has already sold out.
Roberts said he predicts all five showings will sell out.
Future film screenings are already scheduled, like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” in 70 mm later in April. Roberts also plans to show Christopher Nolan’s upcoming blockbuster, “The Odyssey,” in 70 mm, the format in which the movie was filmed.
“It's gonna teach you the original history of film,” Roberts said. “Just seeing a movie like ‘The Odyssey’ that's made today, or seeing a movie like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ that's made 60 years ago, you're going to be able to see why these movies were made this way, on the format that they were originally shot and intended to be seen. And that's an experience that is very different from anything that you'll get at any chain.”
