Many applications for 1,1,1-trichloroethane (including film cleaning) were previously done with carbon tetrachloride, which was banned in 1970.

William Salas completed the initial film cleaning and sprocket hole reparation.

PTRs are also used in some dedicated film cleaning machines, or mounted between rewind heads and used for manual cleaning.

Kantana's film lab provides overlay subtitling, negative cutting, color analysis, digital intermediate processing, optical effects, sound transfer, film cleaning and film print copying.

Trichloroethylene was marketed as 'Ecco 1500 Anti-Static Film Cleaner and Conditioner' until 2009, for use in automatic movie film cleaning machines, and for manual cleaning with lint-free wipes.