International 70mm Publishers
Johan Wolthuis was the founder and publisher of the “70mm Newsletter” from December 1988 till December 1995.
In October 1994 he invited Thomas Hauerslev from Denmark, to make a 70mm Promotion Tour to Los Angeles and San Francisco. The trip was sponsored by the Kinepolis Cinema group in Belgium. For this tour Johan produced a special edition of the 70mm Newsletter in a large format, which was presented to the people we met. Thomas wrote a very inspiring introduction article “Why 70mm?”
We met a lot of people working in the film industry and had a lot of interesting talks. They all agreed that 70mm was a beautiful medium, but at the end the tour showed no visible results!
Thomas took over the 70mm Newsletter in December 1995.
In 1996 Johan founded “International 70mm Publishers” based in The Netherlands, in cooperation with Paul Rayton from Los Angeles and Wouter de Voogd from Amsterdam. Johan met Paul Rayton in about 1994 because of their common interest in 70mm filming and presentation.
In 1996 a large format “70mm PROMOTION” book (size 30x42 cm / 11.5x16.5 inches) was published and presented to a lot of companies in the States. And in April 1999 another promotional book, with the extremely long title: “Film Presentation for the 21st Century: 70mm Super Definition Cinema”, was launched. This publication had its official presentation in the Todd-AO studios in Hollywood where it was accompanied by some 70mm film clips. A lot of people got a copy of this book on that occasion, but again nothing happened.
A few years later research had been started for another book, called “The Cinerama Story”. But halfway we found out that we couldn't find any sponsors. So this book has never been published. That was a disappointment for us but also for all the people who had sent us a lot of information!
In the meantime Johan has written different articles for the British magazine Cinema Technology, such as reports on the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, the Kinepolis 25 screen complex in Madrid, the opening of the renovated Seattle Cinerama, the Tuschinski cinema in Amsterdam, Le Chateau du Cinema, near Lille in France and many more.
In 2009 he decided to start again with the research for a new 70mm publication, about the future of the (digital) cinema in combination with the history of 70mm. The work for this publication was inspired by a visit to the successful 70mm Retrospective during the Berlinale 2009 where a lot of new 70mm prints were screened.
This publication “Digital & 65mm” with the subtitle “Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Cinema” is also the only book dedicated to the history of 70mm. It has a lot of historic illustrations in full colour and black and white. It has been published in March 2010 with great acclaim.
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