The return of the Digital Bolex

[Slothorp]

"A man of his time", a French film which was part of the official selection at Cannes and was very well received, was shot entirely on a digital Bolex. 

https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/a-man-of-his-time-review-a-superb-swann-arlaud-powers-emmanuel-marres-ambitious-overlong-vichy-france-drama/5217030.article

[Clark Nikolai]

Pretty cool. I found this article about the cameras used in each of the films at Cannes. It's pretty interesting. This film is shown. (Alphabetical under M. About two-thirds of the way down. )

https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/cannes-2026-cameras-lenses-arri-alexa-35/screenshot-231/

There's a picture of the director holding a camera. It's so rigged up that it's hard to see but looks like a Digital Bolex with the PL mount.  It says they used two of them, a PL mount one and a C mount one. The second one not rigged up and hand held. Looks like they used a variety of lenses too. In the picture it looks like a vintage Angenieux zoom. There's mention of a TV lens and  CCTV primes.  Here's a quote.

Quote

I think we really enjoy the process of finding the right tool for each project. The Digital Bolex D16 quickly emerged as a great choice as it offered something both close and different from 16mm film. We made our B camera very small, handheld… It allowed us long takes with a feel similar to footage shot with an original Bolex film camera.

That's been my experience as well. I shot 16mm some decades ago on a 1970s Bolex and a 1930s Victor (that had been fished out of a dumpster behind an NFB office.) so I'm familiar with that and of course many different video cameras over the years. The Digital Bolex is closer to a 16mm camera than to a video camera in both how you operate and how the image looks.

 

[Olivier Vanaschen]

https://www.afcinema.com/Emmanuel-Marre-director-and-Olivier-Boonjing-SBC-director-of-photography-discuss-the-technical-and-aesthetic-choices-made-for-Notre-salut.html?lang=en