Christie®, a leader in creating and sharing the world’s best
visual and audio experiences, is pleased to announce that the film
Roma directed by Alfonso Cuarón and produced
by Netflix was recently screened before an audience of 3000 people in the gardens
of the Los Pinos Cultural Centre in Mexico, the former official residence of the
country’s president, using a
Christie CP4325-RGB pure laser projector with RealLaser™ technology.
Winner of the
Best Foreign Language Film and Best Director honors at the Golden Globes and Golden Lion Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, Roma premiered worldwide on December 14 on the Netflix digital platform.
Filmed in 6.5K format, the movie is also on a shortlist
for the Academy Awards foreign language film category.
For the space of a few hours, the Presidential Heliport
Garden turned into a vast open-air movie theatre where 3,000 people were able to see Roma free of charge on a screen
measuring 15 metres wide by 7 metres high with Christie RGB laser projection
and Dolby 7.1 sound. The screening was organized by Mexico’s Ministry
of Culture.
Two weeks earlier, Roma was shown
at the BlackBerry Auditorium in Mexico City, the former Las Américas film
theatre, in four separate screenings to a total audience of around 6,500. The
theatre was equipped for the occasion with another Christie CP4325-RGB projector,
and the box-office receipts donated to the Pienza Sostenible civil association,
whose mission is to reconstruct areas affected by the September 2018 earthquake
in Mexico.
“We knew straight away that if we were going to give spectators a truly
unforgettable movie-going experience, then the best pure laser projection
option was unquestionably Christie RealLaser,” explained Carlos Cuevas, founder of
Cactus Cinema Services, the company commissioned with the technical
production for the four screenings.
“This projector affords excellent image
quality, incredibly rich colours and spectacular contrast, and all this with a compact
form factor. We are convinced that it is the future
of cinema projection,” he added.
Netflix acquires two Christie CP4220
cinema projectors
Christie’s relationship with
Roma goes back much further. Last August, the movie had a limited
premiere in two independent theatres in Mexico City: Cine Tonalá in Colonia Roma, the neighbourhood in Mexico City after which
the movie was named, and Sala 4 at Cinemanía Plaza Loreto. Netflix equipped
both theatres with
Christie CP4220 4K lamp-based projectors, which added to the
importance of the occasion. The two theatres
were fitted with Dolby Atmos and Dolby IMS3000 integrated media servers. Cactus
Cinema Services supervised the integration, construction and implementation of
all systems.
“Christie CP4220 projectors were chosen for these
theatres because of the mainstream image quality they deliver, as well as the quick
response of the brand’s service team in Mexico”, recalled Carlos Cuevas, founder
of Cactus. “The new projectors updated the theatres’ existing equipment, providing
a 4K image with high quality brightness and colour contrast. Christie was on
board throughout the whole roll-out of the project, right from the initial conception.
Its team was on hand here in Mexico City at all times, working alongside us in
the installation and setting up to ensure the optimum quality of the projection,”
Cuevas added.
Ernesto Armus, manager of Christie’s Cinema Division
and Senior General Manager in Mexico, concluded: “We are especially delighted that our projection technology
is playing a key role in the screening in Mexico of such an important movie as Roma. And we particularly want to thank
our partner Carlos Cuevas of Cactus Cinema Services, who has a well-earned
excellent reputation in the cinema industry, for his enthusiasm and
professionalism throughout the whole project.”
