The premieres in 35 millimeters survive in a miraculous 'Cinema Paradiso' in Granada

Juan Torres-Molina, head of the Madrigal cinema in Granada, examines a strip of film on January 19. Fermin Rodriguez

Elena Torres-Molina enters the projection room of the Madrigal cinema, in the center of Granada, and her first task is not to turn on any computer. In the little room, in fact, there is no digital technology at all. Instead, the space is filled with cans and film strips. Two large resounding iron projectors preside over the center of the room, or so it seems. The one on the left was screened for the first time right there on September 24, 1960, although it has not been used for a long time. The one on the right still drags thousands of meters of film every day in the four projections that the cinema offers each day. It's a 35-millimeter Westrex model, a bulk and a rarity in today's theaters, where digital projection drove photochemical film out of theaters a decade ago.

In 2022, in Spain, the Madrigal cinema in Granada is the only one that shows first-run films in 35 mm.

Its owners say it is profitable, but acknowledge that its digitization will soon be inevitable.

In parallel, film libraries and a few theaters that can be counted on the fingers of one hand still project in this format with films that, in the case of private theaters, come mainly from collectors who saved the cans before they ended up in the garbage .

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More than 60 years ago Elena Torres-Molina's grandfather set up the Madrigal cinema.

Those were times of a single room and cellulose tricetate films, a delicate support, predisposed to

and inflammable, as seen in the popular Italian film

.

So much so that it was necessary to have two water outlets near the projector in case it caught fire.

El Madrigal, although in disuse, still has them.

Since the 1990s, the film is made of polyester and no longer burns or

.

Those were also times when, says Nacho Estrada, projectionist at the Spanish Film Library —officially, booth operator—, the projection of a film required constant attention.

It was projected roll by roll, and they did not last more than 20 minutes, so every little bit you had to be attentive to the change.

They came out of the projector backwards, so they had to be rewound and ready for the next showing.

In addition, you had to be careful that they did not burn.

“The change of roll is an art”, says Estrada.

Today, in the Madrigal room, the four or five reels that films usually have are put together before they are projected and the projection, all at once, no longer requires that constant attention.

Juan Torres-Molina, 56, is Elena's uncle and son of the founder of the Madrigal. He is the person in charge of the family business, who decides the programming and who, due to his romantic vision, insists on premiering in a format that has disappeared and is denied by the industry for theaters. On the shoots, on the other hand, there are still some directors who shoot on photochemical film, although when it comes to distributing and projecting there is no other option but to digitize. Torres-Molina's stubbornness is then a serious problem that requires planning, patience and negotiating skills. Distributors do not have premiere films in this format. Neither in 16 or 70 mm, the other possibilities of photochemical film.

While in the Phenomena theater in Barcelona, ​​which screens with some regularity in 35 and 70 mm, the programming depends mainly on the personal collection of its owner and film director, Nacho Cerdá, the path of the premiere films that arrive in Granada is tortuous.

The first hurdle is that the movies come out of the oven in digital format.

All.

And the big Hollywood distributors, the

, have been refusing to make a single print on 35mm for years.

That leaves, initially, the Torres-Molina catalog with fewer options.

However, the owner of the Madrigal adapts as long as it is good cinema: he projects European, Asian or whatever is necessary if it is of quality.

Projection room at the Madrigal cinema in Granada. Fermin Rodriguez

they need a certain presumption of success that ensures that the initial expenses are covered and that the film survives at least a week.

The supply of new films in 35 mm entails a series of drawbacks that Torres-Molina recounts with regret, but that have not yet been overcome.

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And why go to see a movie at 35 that, as those over a certain age will remember, is not nearly as perfect as today's digital projections?

Yuri Aguilar, owner of a collection of more than 1,200 feature films in 35 mm —8,000 references, he says, including short films, commercials, trailers…—explains that “this format offers a texture and depth that digital does not have.

The film is an organic element that offers us another sound, other colors.

There are imperfections, yes.

But that is also the experience that the photochemical offers.”

For Nacho Estrada, from the Filmoteca, this projection also allows an intangible: "The nostalgia of seeing the cinema again as many of us saw it in our youth."

In the image, Elena Torres-Molina Jimenez, Juan's niece, is in charge of editing the film on the projectorFermin Rodriguez

Nostalgia leads to collecting and the 35mm does not escape it.

Yuri Aguilar, who has a huge collection of material in this format, knows the market well because he is one of those who feed it the most.

One day this January, at todocoleccion.net, the center for buying and selling films, 1,559 references were offered, "of which 1,400 were mine," he clarifies.

The most sought-after film is, of course,

, of which there were no photochemical copies left in Spain.

From a digital version, Aguilar made five copies, some of which are the ones that circulate around.

According to him, approximately 150 people make up the core of 35mm film collectors in Spain.

The nostalgia of classic 35mm films can still be enjoyed here and there —Phenomena in Barcelona, ​​the film club of the Agriculture Casino in Valencia, Yuri Aguilar's own cinema in Catadau, 30 kilometers from Valencia, where private screenings are organized, film libraries, and sporadically in a few more theaters—, but in the premiere cinema it is in a severe phase of agony, and that is what the Madrigal is facing.

Bárbara Merino, sales director of Caramel Films, a regular supplier of films to the Torres-Molinas, is a stalwart of Granada cinema and of Juan, her manager.

She "she is a first-rate type who knows her audience, to whom she offers quality cinema", although she at the same time admits that the process of converting premiere films into photochemical film is increasingly difficult .

“It is a process that we only do for the Madrigal cinema and for Juan.

Detail of one of the films that are projected in the Madrigal cinema in Granada. Fermin Rodriguez

And that is where Juan Torres-Molina's meat opens up, who recognizes that there is no other option but to switch to digital, although he does not have the courage to do so.

Because, in addition, leaving aside the hard period of the pandemic, his cinema makes money.

It is not a business of melancholy, but has always been profitable.

Although the Saturdays in the seventies and eighties, when they sold all the tickets for each of the three or four sessions they offered, with a capacity of just over 500 seats, are far away, now people have returned to the cinema.

On a Saturday in January, in the session in which EL PAÍS comes to the room, 150 people meet to see

(2021)

by Benito Zambrano.

In 2019,

from

Hirokazu Kore-eda with Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche and Ethan Hawke, sold 400 tickets on Saturdays, like

Roman Polanski's

In the case of

, by Manuel Martín Cuenca, the Madrigal obtained the third collection in Spain, and that with tickets at three, four and five euros, depending on the day.

Bárbara Merino says that this cinema "is always among the top four or five in revenue and viewers in the films it projects."

Given the circumstances, the Madrigal is a cinema with a future, but perhaps the same cannot be said of 35mm.

While Elena Torres-Molina pulls the roll of around 3,000 meters

to link it in the complicated path that leads to the Westrex projector's viewer, down at the entrance is José Luis, a regular spectator who returns to the cinema after some time, and who greets the theater manager.

“I love this theater and I love its programming.

I have always trusted in the taste of Juan, who gives us precious things”.

As Quentin Tarantino, still faithful to the photochemist, said a few years ago in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, going to the movies 20 or 30 years ago was “an important thing, like going to the opera or the ballet.

Now, it seems like renting a seat for two hours” and little else.

The Madrigal cinema still works with that logic of decades ago.

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