The beginnings
ULTRAANALOGIC was born in the womb of the passion and habit of the daily use of film by its founder, Massimiliano Monnecchi. Born and raised as a photographer in the moment of transition between analog and digital, he is lucky enough to learn “the trade” with photographers of the film golden age. But the world of photography and cinematography begins to change considerably, upset by the convenience and affordability of digital shooting, and also the workers, the laboratories begin to disappear. Those who remain are less and less attentive to the quality of development and by necessity, ’cause he was actively and commercially working with medium and above all large format cameras, he decided to put “everything at home”, setting up a development camera to treat the increasingly rare reversal films with which he usually shot, and set also acquisition up to 4×5 “format …
The Renaissance
Even as the years pass, the film never leaves the bags of the founder, on the contrary, it becomes the absolute companion of the “important shots”, those that will remain over time, indifferent to the passage of voracious technology and its rapid obsolescence or complete disappearance in the event of unforeseen events. .
But these motivations are not enough to endorse the physical thinking of the film, without officialization by the institutions. And this happens in the middle of the 2010 decade when two important events determine and fix the survival and above all the need to keep alive the image fixed on film: the decision of the German Ministry of Education and Culture to oblige the largest German Cultural Institutions to pour many works “stopped in digital” on analog support and the considerable amounts donated by private foundations and invested by financial groups for the acquisition and maintenance of photographic and cinematographic archives all over the world.
In the meantime, the film also returns to the hands and hearts of the new generations of photographers and filmmakers and alchemy begins to become interesting …
Towards the New Analog Era
The times were ripe even for a country like Italy, where the New Arts such as Cinema and Photography (in particular) were already often considered “secondary” to the Traditional Arts, and the advent of digital canceled the use of film and decreed the decline of the workers who dedicated themselves to it.
Something that was not felt on international photographic and cinematographic (and video) sets, where the use of analog tools and specific workers was still consistent and alive.
This is how the idea of modeling a service company dedicated to the valued users and supporters of analog and magnetic tapes begins to take shape, offering them what they were used to finding in their countries of origin and/or professional adoption.
In fact, in Italy, there were only those who could make it clear that nothing was missing … there was to join several pieces of a puzzle worthy of the Italian production network, and try to concentrate various and complementary professional requirements in a single “center. “. Only 4 years later, precisely on 1 March 2020, in the middle of the pandemic crisis, ULTRAANALOGIC was officially born, and it immediately gained a prominent place among internationally renowned photographers, being one of the few development and scanning laboratories open and available to those who, in those nefarious moments, they worked to document that piece of history (a little thanks to us, ed)…
Today…
In these few years since its foundation, our network, our virtuous network, the services that have gone to cover more and more specific fields, and the desire to spread and share knowledge and skills in the analog field, have allowed ULTRAANALOGIC to always become a point of reference for companies, newspapers, production and advertising agencies, studios, colleagues, professionals and young photographers/filmmakers who find in us an attentive and reliable professional partner in the treatment of sensitive material, for the “extreme” requests of equipment for hire, for professionals dedicated to development and acquisition even on the set, for the supply of props for the scene, purely cine / photographic, for assistance and specialized consultancy in film shooting, for the acquisition and transfer of almost all existing and existing formats in the audiovisual field, for the reconstruction and supply of par you mechanical and electronic and for several other valid reasons.
But ours is not just a question of mere economic revenue. The will to keep this “antiquated world” alive is fueled by its own gain becoming the re-generating thrust with which future prospects must be reached …
…and Tomorrow…
Even if talking about the future of the film may seem anachronistic and paradoxical, we believe and think that it will never really end as it is a “physical and material” means of representation, irrefutably tangible.
It is also true that we strongly criticize, even against our interest, the abuse that is sometimes made of the film itself, sometimes used only for “current fashion” or to imitate alleged stylistic references of some professionals, because this approach produces the opposite effect: reducing the film shoot to a mere possibility only for those who can afford it economically (given the significantly higher costs of the chemical process rather than the digital one) but without certainly better results. And even if this attitude should persist (but we do not think it at all) already now we continue to preserve, we continue to cultivate, and nurture those skills and knowledge of trades that are often much older than the advent of Photography, enriching them and perhaps improving them with new ones. and more modern technologies, such as 3D printing and microcontrollers, both for mechanical and electronic and/or electrotechnical parts so that Time does not make this world inexorably irrecoverable.
Because nothing is destroyed, nothing is created but everything can be transformed (and why not: improved).
