ENGLISH

Cine Nostalgia and Cine Estelar: Our film library is meticulously remasterized

March 20, 2015

Maribel Ramos-Weiner


Cine Nostalgia and Cine Estelar have more than 10,000 hours to program among both channels. Currently, the company is remasterizing the main film collections, Vicente Fernández’s films, of which they have 30 titles, are among the first ones to undergo the process. “Vicente Fernández’s is one of the most valuable collections at the moment, not only of Mexican cinema, but also including Spain and Latin America”, told PRODU Carlos Vasallo, president and CEO of the channels.Vasallo explains that process of remasterization is an extremely complex and costly one. “The first thing you must have is the negative. Many people say, they already have it in HD but they are actually 16mm films that are passed on to a processor. It is not like what we are doing here, we are using the negative directly, cleaning it, transferring it to the hard disc, processing the color, editing frame by frame. It is tremendously painstaking. There are films we are processing which take up more time and effort than what it takes competitors to make a bad film. For this process, Vasallo devotes a team of 10 people with four islands.When he was asked about over the top platforms (OTT), he said that for his channels it represents a complement. “If you have the product, anything that is an extra income will be a benefit. On the other hand, I think people will be watching more films than ever”.He added that all these OTT platforms are joined or added to existing platforms: AT&T, Verizon, DIRECTV. ” We collaborate with them and hope that they collaborate with us producing additional income.”