At Milwaukee's Oriental Theatre, showing a movie on 70mm means treating the projection booth like a tiny film factory. The work is heavy, technical and occasionally nerve-rattling, but the payoff is an image that can make digital projection feel a little too clean.
The theater's Wednesday showing of The Odyssey will cap its current 70mm run, just weeks before Milwaukee Film launches its first dedicated 70mm series. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the Oriental is preparing to screen at least seven 70mm films in Milwaukee during 2026.
Milwaukee Has One Of The Country's Rare Year-Round 70mm Cinemas
Milwaukee Film promotes the Oriental as the only cinema in the city able to show 70mm year-round, and one of fewer than 20 such cinemas in the United States. Its upcoming 70mm series runs August 28 through September 4 at the Oriental, giving local moviegoers a full week of films built for a very large screen, according to Milwaukee Film.
That rarity is not accidental. The Oriental's Abele Cinema has a projection system capable of handling both 35mm and 70mm film, while the larger format is twice as wide as 35mm and can deliver more detail, scale and depth.
Those Giant Reels Require More Than A Quick Setup
Before the lights go down, Milwaukee Film's technical team spends roughly 15 to 20 hours preparing a 70mm screening over several days, the Journal Sentinel reports. The work includes cleaning the projector with compressed air and alcohol, assembling the print and carefully checking the equipment before the first frame rolls.
The physical film is part of the challenge. A 70mm reel can weigh about 45 pounds, compared with roughly 10 pounds for a 35mm reel, and the reels are changed during the movie instead of letting one enormous spool do all the work.
For The Odyssey, the scale is especially obvious: Christopher Nolan's film runs nearly three hours and uses five 70mm reels. The projector operators also have to watch for cue marks at the end of each reel so the changeovers happen smoothly, with little more than a flicker for the audience.
The Oriental's 70mm Week Brings Back Big-Screen Excess
Milwaukee Film's lineup opens with 2001: A Space Odyssey on August 28, followed by The Master and West Side Story on August 29 and 30. Sinners follows August 31 through September 1, and Lawrence of Arabia closes the series September 2 and 3, according to the theater's schedule.
Milwaukee Film reintroduced physical film projection at the Oriental after taking over operations in July 2018, later completing a multiyear renovation that restored the ability to show 35mm and 70mm prints. The theater's history and equipment now give Milwaukee something increasingly unusual: a place where the old machinery is not a museum piece, but the main attraction, as outlined by Milwaukee Film.
That is why the labor matters. A digital screening may take a couple of hours of technical preparation, but a 70mm presentation asks the theater to lift, clean, thread, monitor and protect a fragile physical object — all so the audience can see a movie that feels a little more alive.
