Vintage 3-D on blu-ray

[Robert Furmanek]

Happy New Year from Greg Kintz, Jack Theakston and Bob Furmanek of the 3-D Film Archive.

2014 was a great year for the Archive. We were honored to have our restoration of THE BUBBLE premiered in New York City on November 7 at the Museum of Modern Art as part of “To Save and Project: the 12th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation.”

Our first two releases on 3-D blu-ray – DRAGONFLY SQUADRON from Olive Films and THE BUBBLE from Kino-Lorber – were a great success and have opened many doors for us. As a result, 2015 will be the best year yet for vintage 3-D on blu-ray as we celebrate the centennial of stereoscopic motion pictures.

We begin the New Year with big-screen premieres of THE BUBBLE in Los Angeles at the Aero Theatre on January 22 and Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center on January 30. THE BUBBLE will also return to MoMA in New York for a full week beginning January 18.

Our next restoration project will begin in February. We’ll be working with the Toronto International Film Festival on preserving THE MASK, a classic 1961 horror film with incredible 3-D sequences originally conceived by Slavko Vorkapich.

The first documented exhibition of stereoscopic motion pictures took place on June 10, 1915 at the Astor Theatre on Times Square in New York. The 100th anniversary celebration will begin with our release of 3-D RARITIES from Flicker Alley in June. This amazing collection has taken thirty years to amass and will include 2-1/2 hours of shorts, tests and trailers dating back to the earliest extant stereoscopic footage from 1922. You’ll be seeing some incredibly rare material that has not been shown anywhere in more than sixty years. Meticulously restored shot by shot for flawless 3-D alignment, this unique archival material has never before looked this good.

Starting in the fall, there will be a steady stream of vintage 3-D releases on blu-ray. I’m not at liberty to announce the titles just yet but rest assured: there will be some amazing Golden Age gems coming to 3-D blu-ray in the near future. It’s all very exciting and we could not be happier.

Here’s a photo of Greg and I with an original 24-inch 35mm reel used for projecting 3-D films theatrically in 1953. In fact, that reel holds part one of the left side of a feature that we will soon be restoring…

Thank you very much for your interest, encouragement and support of our 3-D preservation efforts. Greg, Jack and I wish you peace, happiness, and abundant good health in 2015.