>>4407523So, there are two Kodaks. There is Eastman Kodak, which is the original company that owns all the manufacturing facilities, actually makes all the film, sells cinema film to motion picture productions, and makes film to order for companies like Lomography, Cinestill, and Fuji. Then, there is Kodak-Alaris, which is a spin-off company that basically just holds the rights to sell Kodak-branded film to still photographers, plus some trademarks and copyrights. It is just a rights holding and marketing entity, it doesn't actually manufacture anything.
Eastman Kodak was basically exploiting a loophole in their legal relationship with Alaris in order to sell film directly to consumers, which technically they are not supposed to do, by selling Vision 3 cinefilm stock in (by movie production standards) hilariously small quantities on sites like Amazon, B&H, Adorama, etc. and claiming that it was totally for movies, honest, we swear. The respoolers (other than Lomo, Cinestill, Fuji) were running janky, fly by night operations where they were just buying vision 3 in bulk through normal consumer channels just like you or I or anyone else with a bulk loader, putting it into cartridges, and slapping a label on it. Cinestill, Fuji, and Lomo are different, because they have an actual legit contract with Eastman Kodak to manufacture custom film stock to their specifications. Cinestill, for example, used to be one of those janky fly by night operations, but started directly contracting for custom production of a "unique" film stock even if it's just vision 3 but manufactured without a remjet layer. That's why they can sell their film in other form factors, like 120 and 4x5, which you won't see from any respooler (although their 4x5 is jank and shit because it's on roll film base, not real sheet film base which is thicker).
Alaris just caught on to Eastman Kodak skirting their agreements, and probably threatened legal action if they didn't knock it off.
