A Bittersweet Goodbye.docVIP

A Bittersweet Goodbye 　　At the end of September 2016， news from Shanghai Film Technology Plant （SFTP） spread across China： The studio’s final cine-film processing and printing line would wrap by the end of October. 　　Founded in 1957， SFTP is attached to Shanghai Film Group， one of the largest and most influential movie studios in China. As the first company in China to establish a professional film processing base， SFTP once led movie processing in annual output while releasing many Chinese classics such as Railway Guerrillas， Given the Choice， and The Letter with Feathers. Additionally， the company produced dubbed and subtitled versions of many imported blockbusters. 　　Cine-film production seems to be ebbing in China， as SFTP’s announcement follows news of the closure of the film processing lines in two other major Chinese studios： Changchun Film Studio and Beijing Film Processing Technology Plant. 　　 Pinnacle to Decline 　　The problem can be traced to SFTP’s Film Processing and Printing Department， the heart of the plant. “The department peaked in 2002 when China began to implement market reform of movie production，” explains Chen Guanping， director of the plant. “From 2002 to 2010， eight production lines were operated by over 100 workers. The emergence of digital technology has upended the cine-film industry and led cine-film processing down a slippery slope. In the past four years， over half of our film processing and printing lines were shut down， and the last one will be gone soon.” 　　“There is nothing we can do，” continued Chen. “Digital technology has created a marketing battlefield and squeezed out the medium of film. We must switch everything to digital.” 　　According to Chen， two or three film printers will be kept， but after a couple months of inactivity， they won’t operate normally anyway. 　　Qian Shun’an， 60， has been working with the film processing and printing line for 39 years. “In 2009， we had so much work that no one had a spare second t