In the 2010s, America’s Eastman Kodak and Japan’s Fujifilm seemed to have the colour film market to themselves.
Once mighty such as Germany’s Agfa and Italy’s Ferrania had foundered. With colour film production being such a ridiculously complicated process, few companies appeared to relish the idea of pouring millions of research dollars into what looked like it might be an ever-shrinking market.
In the 2020s, new shoots started showing, Harman – the makers of Ilford and Kentmere-branded black-and-white films – introduced their first colour film, Phoenix 200. Adox in Germany released a limited-edition film called Color Mission which bore a striking resemblance to Agfa colour print films from the 2000s. And fellow German company ORWO has started adding new films into the mix with their NC range, apparently based off old Agfa cinema film formulas.
These films are relative cottage industries in terms of colour film sale when compared to the behemoth that is Eastman Kodak. But the American giant may soon have some very serious competition: China.
For years, a Chinese film resurgence has seemed highly unlikely. China’s film production industry only really came of age in the early 2000s, just in time for the majority of the photographic market to switch over to digital.
Now the factory to the world, it has since hoovered up much of the market for consumer electronics, including all manner of photographic equipment. Some of the dwindling number of analogue cameras currently available are also made in China; Chinese plants build Lomography’s products (including the reborn LC-A+) and any number of “reusable disposable” cameras.
Companies like TTArtisan, 7 Artisans and Light Lens Lab have released a series of well-regarded lenses, and started pivoting to produce photographic accessories aswell.
But amid this analogue renaissance, one thing has been most mostly missing: Chinese-made film. That may be about to change.
Reawakened
The most prominent development in China’s reawakening film industry is the biggest name from its yesteryears, China Lucky Film.
It was founded in 1958 and for many years was China’s leading producer of photo-sensitive materials. In 2003, the year the film market is believed to have been at its strongest, China Lucky Film signed a 20-year, multi-million-dollar deal with Eastman Kodak, which included massive investment in a colour-film-producing plant.
The company then produced a trio of colour negative films (ISO 100, 200 and 400) for around a decade from 2003 before pulling the plug; their deal with Eastman Kodak ended up only lasting four years.
The return of China Lucky Film has been paved by the re-release of two of their black-and-white films SHD 100 and 400. Intermittently available for a few years prior to the pandemic, these films are now back in production
Those hints are no longer very subtle. As Kosmo Foto recently reported, China Lucky Film now thinks its new colour negative film will be available in the second quarter of this year, just in time for the Northern Hemisphere’s summer.
It’s an ambitious stretch. We don’t know what the film itself looks like – there have been no samples shared with the public. It has been more than a decade since Lucky produced colour film, and nearly two since its colour films were developed with the help of Eastman Kodak.
It might be worth looking at Harman Technology’s recent experiences making their first colour negative film from scratch as to how this resumption of colour film might look. Harman Photo Phoenix 200 emerged in late 2023: the British film producer had warned that this was a film that would look very different to standard colours films like Kodak Gold. Phoenix 200 is being gradually improved with each batch, but the film is definitely still a work in progress.
A distributor for the film in North America and further afield, Luckyfilm.net, announced that it would be selling the film through retailers at the end of January – and that the first film would be Lucky Color 200. Since that announcement, however, there’s been no updates. Whether China Lucky Film makes good their original (ambitious) release date remains to be seen.
From lenses to film
Light Lens Lab have released some exceptional lenses, predominantly for Leica shooters: it appears they are thinking bigger.
It was something of a shock when it announced earlier this year that it had plans to enter the film market. The beginnings of a film production project was unveiled in January. A follow-up post showed the first fruits of this project with samples from it’s first film, a black-and-white negative film with tabular or T-grain.
Light Lens Lab has said it is creating an entirely new emulsion and not just rebadging an existing one. How, and where? Has it created its own production line, or is it paying to use another facility?
Seizing the moment?
The promise of new Chinese film production comes on the heels of Fujifilm announcing that production of its C200 and C400 films – which had been moved to the USA in recent years – will now take place in China.
In any other year, this would be interesting enough, but 2025 has seen the global economy have to wrestle with widespread tariffs. US President Donald Trump’s administration has unveiled a raft of tariffs to be levied on imported goods, and many of these countries have responded in kind.
Kodak films, as an American-made product, may become more expensive as a result in many countries. Chinese-made Fujifilm and China Lucky Film products may rocket in price if the high tariffs on Chinese goods remain.
but outside of the US? China Lucky Film’s colour film – if it does indeed come out in 2025 – may be cheap enough to tempt some photographers away from pricier Kodak films.
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.
