The George Eastman Museum presents its third annual Nitrate Picture Show on May 5-7 at the Dryden Theater in Rochester, featuring ten feature-length and short films on the now-obsolete nitrate film stock.
Film experts say the old nitrate films give the closest reproduction of what the cinematographers of classic films originally intended to show. They’re the original prints and hold more detail and less contrast than later copies, especially those made on safety film.
Nitrate film is no longer used because it was made of cellulose nitrate, the same stuff as smokeless gunpowder and magician’s flash paper. Under the wrong conditions it could catch fire and destroy a theater or film vault. The Dryden is one of only four theaters in the United States still able to screen nitrate prints, and the only one outside of California.