Movie director Quentin Tarantino told the Cannes film festival screening films in digital is like forcing audiences to watch television in public on Friday, adding that the lush 35-millimetre cinema he grew up with was "dead," the Associated Press reported.
Tarantino, who is not competing in this year's event, spoke to journalists and film critics before a 35mm screening of his hit "Pulp Fiction" on the beach on Friday night, according to the AP.
"The fact that most films now are not presented in 35mm means that the war is lost," Tarantino said, the AP reported.
Most of the films in Cannes are projected in digital largely because of cost, but aficionados like Tarantino still sing the praises of the old-school film reels, according to the AP.
"Digital projections, that's just television in public. And apparently the whole world is okay with television in public, but what I knew as cinema is dead," said Tarantino, the AP reported. "I'm hopeful that we're going through a woozy romantic period with the ease of digital and I'm hoping that while this generation is completely hopeless, that the next generation that will come out will demand the real thing," he added.
The director known for the energy and violence of his films said digital did mention some of the pros to screening and distributing through digital formats, according to the AP.
"The good side of digital is the fact that a young filmmaker can actually now just buy a cellphone and if they have the tenacity to actually put something together ... they can actually make a movie," Tarantino said, the AP reported. "But why an established filmmaker would shoot on digital, I have no fucking idea at all," added Tarantino.
The director said he has a "pretty terrific" collection of 35mm prints at home, and an even bigger 16mm one, "and I screen them all the time, I'm always watching movies," according to the AP.
"One of the nice things about my life, because I've done fairly well in cinema, it's kind of afforded me a chance to almost live an academic's life, and so my feeling is I'm studying for my professorship in the history of world cinema and the day I die is the day I graduate," the AP reported.
