Chinese film producer Lucky Film has said it intends to release new colour negative film as soon as the end of this year.
The comments were made last month at a tour of Lucky Film Chinas factory in Baoding, in China’s Hebei province, where a group of film photographers were given a tour of the facility.
Comments and photos from the tour have recently been widely shared on the Chinese social app Redbook and have also made their way to Reddit’s r/AnalogCommunity subreddit.
Shuai Shao, who posted the comments on r/AnalogCommunity, gave Kosmo Foto more information about what was said.
He said a representative from Lucky Film China told the assembled photographers: “We are doing market research and evaluating the demand. the production line of colour films still exists and is ready to go into production in any minute.
“The biggest obstacle of reproduction was the raw materials. Making colour film requires 110 different raw materials. After the production has been stopped for over 10 years, 1/3 of the raw materials are not being made (by different companies) anymore.
“However, suppose the market research has positive feedback, and we can secure the necessary materials from the manufacturers. In that case, we are optimistic to have the colour film production re-started at the end of the year.”
Shao was not on the tour himself, but saw the material being shared on the Redbook app.
Lucky Film produced three colour negative films – GBR 100, GBR 200 and GBR 400 – between 2003 and 2012. Its colour line-up was produced initially with the help of Kodak, who signed a 20-year partnership with the Chinese manufacturer which was abruptly terminated in 2007 because of the rapid uptake of digital photography in China.
Lucky Film has recently reinstated production of its SHD 100 and 400 black-and-white films
Shao said: “There was only one official timeline mentioned during the tour, which was ‘end of this year, at the earliest’; however, a large quantity of rumour and off-the-book online chat conversations with Lucky Film’s product manager have suggested that they have already started the project, and is very optimistic about the market at the moment.”
Shao provided images of some online conversations in Mandarin, which can be seen below:
Shao said no particular film had been mentioned, but he believed the most likely would be GBR 200, as it was the most popular of the films in the 2000s.
Comments on Redbook quoted Lucky Film’s representative saying that the intention was to offer the new film for around 40rmb (£4.40/$5.60) – considerably less than the cost of Kodak colour films in China, Shao said.
Lucky Film’s announcement has been welcomed by Chinese film photographers, Shao said. “People are excited to hear that Lucky is going to ‘beat down’ on the price of colour films. However, there are also concerns that they will mark up their colour film’s price similarly to ColorPlus or Gold200, and thus there’s no point in buying this experimental stock, rather than just using Kodak.
“Personally, I think they won’t do that; it seems to be a stupid business move. As described by one of the comments: “Thirty years ago, the official news outlet had described the reason why Lucky’s film and paper exist – that is to end the market monopoly of Kodak, Fujifilm and Agfa (at the time) that they won’t be able to charge whatever they want with Chinese consumers.”
Shao said the Lucky Film announcement came in the wake of an earlier story about Kodak China setting minimum prices for colour negative films in China, and telling retailers they could not offer the films for less than the recommended price.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
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