Pictured: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), courtesy of Warner Bros.

Museum of the Moving Image and MUBI will present the tenth edition of See It Big: 70mm, New York City’s only annual 70mm film festival, which takes place in the Astoria museum’s grand Sumner M. Redstone Theater each summer. Running July 31–August 24, the series features a thrilling selection of classic and contemporary titles, opening with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that influenced the architecture of the Museum lobby and Redstone Theater and whose prescient depiction of A.I. has only become more relevant; the action blockbusters Top Gun and Days of Thunder, directed by Tony Scott and starring Tom Cruise; Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller North by Northwest; and Ryan Coogler’s horror blockbuster Sinners.

MUBI is the Presenting Sponsor of See It Big: 70mm.

At a time when digital projection is the norm, the analog widescreen 70mm format (“70mm” refers to the width of the large-format film strip) delivers a remarkably crisp, luminous image and great color fidelity. With a higher resolution and more light hitting the frame, 70mm film offers a bigger, brighter image, compared to 35mm. It is the ideal film format for ambitious cinematic spectacles and panoramic vistas, while also offering incredible intimacy.

While it is increasingly rare for movies to be filmed in 70mm, some filmmakers continue to champion the format, most famously Christopher Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson. With Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman to shoot a film in IMAX 70mm, and the first cinematographer to combine IMAX 70mm with Super Panavision, thus capturing images in the tallest and the widest film formats. In addition, Coogler and Arkapaw shot on IMAX EktaChrome film stock, created by Kodak just for their film and known for clean and crisp images with rich and accurate color hues. The Museum’s presentation will be in five-perforation 70mm film in 2.76:1 aspect ratio, a version that Arkapaw called “gorgeous” and Coogler dubbed “the rarest format” of all the many theatrical release versions of Sinners.

Schedule and descriptions are included below and online at movingimage.org/see-it-big-70mm-2025.

SCHEDULE FOR SEE IT BIG: 70MM, JULY 31–AUGUST 24, 2025
All screenings take place at Museum of the Moving Image in the Sumner M. Redstone Theater, 36-01 35 Ave, Astoria, NY, 11106. Advance tickets are available at movingimage.org.

2001: A Space Odyssey 
Thursday, July 31, 6:30 p.m.
Friday, August 1, 6:30 p.m.
Saturday, August 2, 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, August 3, 5:30 p.m.
Sunday, August 10, 5:30 p.m.
Sunday, August 17, 5:30 p.m.
Sunday, August 24, 5:30 p.m.
Dir. Stanley Kubrick. 1968, 149 mins (plus intermission). U.S. 70mm. With Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood. As brilliantly engineered as the space program itself, Stanley Kubrick’s mysterious and profound sci-fi epic—“the ultimate trip”—is about nothing less than the beauty and the banality of civilization, blending cool satire, an elaborate vision of the future, and passages of avant-garde cinematic inventiveness. Set in a future that is already the past, 2001 envisions space travel as both hilariously routine and mind-bending, a journey to the infinite and beyond that forever changed the way we see the universe and cinema itself.

Top Gun
Saturday, August 2, 3:30 p.m.
Sunday, August 3, 12:30 p.m.
Dir. Tony Scott. 1986, 109 mins. U.S. 70mm. With Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards, Tom Skerritt, Meg Ryan. A box-office smash and cultural touchstone of Reagan-era America, the original Top Gun was, and remains, an unapologetic turbo-engined Hollywood spectacle. Cruise plays Maverick, a cocky naval fighter pilot in training who feels the need for speed—and for his beautiful astrophysics instructor (McGillis). Featuring a blockbuster, multiplatinum soundtrack (including the Academy Award–winning “Take My Breath Away”) and head-spinning aerial cinematography by Jeffrey L. Kimball, Top Gun fully launched Cruise into the stratosphere and director Scott onto the A-list.

Days of Thunder
Friday, August 8, 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, August 10, 1:00 p.m.
Dir. Tony Scott. 1990, 107 mins. U.S. 70mm. With Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall, Nicole Kidman, Randy Quaid, Cary Elwes, Michael Rooker, John C. Reilly. Tony Scott brings his virtuosic talent for hyper-real sound and image to the NASCAR stadium in this summer 1990 flashback from Simpson-Bruckheimer, which reapplies the Top Gun template to the world of auto racing with verve and style, casting Cruise as a hotshot young racer. The film that brought together Cruise and Kidman (as his neurosurgeon love interest), Days of Thunder is a shrewd application of formula, glossy and eminently pleasurable in its details and seriousness. The script is by Robert Towne, the supporting cast (including Duvall as a car builder coming out of retirement and Elwes as a rookie rival) is devilishly on-point, and the crew is a who’s-who of the era’s top-notch studio talent, including composer Hans Zimmer to editor Billy Weber (The Thin Red Line), resulting in a rousing entertainment that demands the big screen.

Sinners
Saturday, August 9, 2:30 p.m.
Saturday, August 16, 3:45 p.m.
Dir. Ryan Coogler. 2025, 136 mins. U.S. 70mm. With Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Li Jun Li. One of this year’s most accomplished and wildly popular films, Coogler’s beautifully crafted, multilayered genre mashup takes place in 1932 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a town on the Delta known as the birthplace of the Blues. Here, Coogler traces a gripping, unpredictable story about Black folklore, cultural inheritance, the legacy of popular music, and, yes, vampires. Michael B. Jordan gives a compelling star turn as twin brothers Smoke and Stack Moore, who have returned to their hometown to fire up a juke joint after years of shady dealings in Chicago. Back home, they get more than they bargained for. Featuring exquisite cinematography from Autumn Durald Arkapaw that makes sun-scorched plains and inky nighttime equally haunting, and a dazzling, genre-defying soundtrack and score by Ludwig Göransson, Sinners is a thrilling sensory experience that demands a large canvas for its remarkable attention to visual detail, its brilliant dance sequences, and its raucous horror action.

North by Northwest
Friday, August 22, 6:30 p.m.
Saturday, August 23, 3:30 p.m.
Sunday, August 24, 2:00 p.m.
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. 1959, 136 mins. 70mm. With Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau. Hitchcock’s breathless, almost improbably entertaining suspense thriller is his ultimate “wrong man” movie, with Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill, an unassuming advertising executive on the run from a dastardly group of spies who have mistaken him for a government agent. Shot in Technicolor and featuring as many vertiginous angles, great escapes, and witty bits of dialogue as one could conceive for a single film, North by Northwest was the culmination of his extraordinary run of masterpieces in the 1950s. From its cornfield set piece to its Mount Rushmore climax, this is Hitchcock at his most dizzyingly huge.

About Museum of the Moving Image
Founded in 1985, MoMI celebrates the history, art, technology, and future of the moving image in all of its forms. Located in Astoria, New York, the Museum presents exhibitions; screenings; discussion programs featuring actors, directors, and creative leaders; and education programs. It houses the nation’s most comprehensive collection of moving image artifacts and screens over 500 films annually. Its exhibitions—including the core exhibition Behind the Screen and The Jim Henson Exhibition—are noted for their integration of material objects, interactive experiences, and audiovisual presentations. For more information about MoMI, visit movingimage.org.