Tarantino’s defence of celluloid brings together an aesthetic experience and material choices. To understand it, you need to separate how a film is shot, how it is shown and how it is preserved.
The Cannes statement and what it was really about
At the Cannes press conference on 23 May 2014, Quentin Tarantino expressed his rejection of the replacement of photochemical projection by digital projection. He described that change as the disappearance of cinema as he had known it and compared digital exhibition with television. It was a personal view of the cinematic experience, not a technically accepted universal definition.
Precision about projection matters. Shooting on film does not guarantee that audiences will see a photochemical print: images can be digitised and shown from a file. Conversely, the format of an exhibition print does not necessarily reveal every process used to produce it. Camera, post-production and projector belong to related but different stages.
His argument is better understood as a defence of a complete practice. The capture medium preserves a texture and working decisions; the projected print adds materiality; the auditorium organises an audience’s attention. For Tarantino, losing one of those parts affects the meaning of the whole. That position can be understood without claiming that a digital work is no longer cinema or lacks artistic value.
It is also worth distinguishing the director’s preference from a comparison of quality between two specific screenings. The result the audience sees depends on the condition of the materials, the preparation of the print, the equipment and the conditions of the auditorium. Format is an important choice, but it does not replace exhibition work. A prestigious medium name does not, on its own, correct a badly presented image.
The Hateful Eight: turning a preference into a release
The Hateful Eight offers one of the clearest examples of that material commitment. The film was shot on 65 mm using the Ultra Panavision 70 system and had a special release in 70 mm prints. The difference in numbers is not a contradiction: it describes capture and exhibition formats. The project required restoring projection conditions that many cinemas no longer used regularly.
Kodak devoted two discussions to its production and exhibition, published in December 2015 and January 2016. They covered both the photochemical work and the challenges of projecting 70 mm again in different cinemas. The case shows that the decision did not end with choosing the camera: it needed a chain capable of bringing the image to audiences in the intended format.
The breadth of the image is especially interesting in a film dominated by an interior and a group of characters. A wide format can organise simultaneous relationships, distances and glances, as well as show landscapes. There is no aesthetic rule that reserves large format for mountains or armies. The analysis of Ultra Panavision 70 in The Hateful Eight explores that specific application.
The versions of The Hateful Eight require another distinction: medium and edit are not the same thing. A presentation may alter running time, structure or elements of the screening, while another difference affects the print used. Confusing the two dimensions makes it harder to know what each viewer has seen and attributes to the format changes that belong to the edit.
The New Beverly Cinema carries the defence of film stock into the practice of exhibition. Maintaining a programme of prints means that the preference is not reduced to statements at festivals. The decision affects which materials are available and how each screening is presented. Audiences can thus compare real experiences, not merely imagine the difference from a controversy.
Preserving does not mean choosing a side
Preservation introduces its own problems. A physical film needs storage and care; a digital file needs management, verification and technological continuity. The Hollywood Academy has studied these differences and notes that preserving digital materials requires active infrastructure, with updates and transfers to new media. The existence of a file does not on its own guarantee its indefinite survival.
Nor does a projection print automatically replace the negative or preservation materials. It may have historical value, preserve a version or allow a screening, but its use and condition must be considered. Collecting, restoring and preserving are related activities that are not interchangeable. The defence of an analogue experience does not eliminate the usefulness of other tools for studying and recovering images.
Within his own films, celluloid also appears as a narrative subject. The cinema of Le Gamaar in Inglourious Basterds turns exhibition into part of the action; the damaged-film effects in Grindhouse evoke a memory of circulation and wear. These are expressive uses, not technical proof that all deterioration improves a work.
Tarantino’s position can therefore be read as a defence of possibilities he does not want to lose. His words are deliberately forceful; his shoots and cinemas allow us to observe what he does with that conviction. The discussion becomes more precise when it distinguishes taste, professional practice and preservation, instead of turning every photochemical or digital film into a mandatory representative of a single aesthetic.