Digital Cinema a protagonist at the 64th Venice Film Festival

Once again the Venice Film Festival becomes the world capital of technological innovation. This follows the screenings of numerous films in Digital Cinema in recent editions of the Venice Film Festival, including Final Fantasy VII by Tetsuya Nomura, Bobby by Emilio Estevez, Children of men by Alfonso Cuarón, INLAND EMPIRE by David Lynch, Para entrar a vivir by Jaume Balagueró, The Magic Flute by Kenneth Branagh and Sanxia haoren (Still life) by Jia Zhangke. The first Film Festival in history continues to demonstrate its focus on Digital Cinema and stresses its ability to guarantee – through systems respecting the international specifications shared and ratified by DCI and SMPTE – screenings offering extraordinary purity of sound and a perfect image, thus offering the viewer films in their original quality, as desired by their directors and production teams. For the first time in the history of film festivals, the Venice Film Festival will screen an entire film in 3D Stereoscopic Digital Cinema. Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas will be shown with the use of highly advanced technological solutions to assure viewers in the Sala Grande the best possible visual quality, just as the film’s director wished. This has been made possible thanks to the constant work and collaboration of La Biennale di Venezia’s Digital Cinema Team and the Disney Production Team. If better-known and effectively managed, 3D stereoscopic cinema can lead the world’s film industry to new levels of excellence in the world of the digital era. For this reason too, in collaboration with SMPTE, the international organisation setting the standards for the film and television industry, La Biennale di Venezia has organised the 5th International Digital Cinema Forum, to be held in the Sala Volpi within the Palazzo del Cinema on 5th September. This year, the Forum will be dedicated to TheCase of 3D Stereoscopic Movies: Production, Distribution and Exhibition, with the participation of international experts who will illustrate the methods and solutions adopted in the examples hitherto seen of 3D Stereoscopic digital cinema.

Following last year’s Venice festival screenings many directors declared that they had never seen their films screened with such a good level of picture and sound quality. The Festival screened 86 digital films in 2006, and this year besides Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, the public will be able to see numerous films in digital quality in the six spaces equipped for screenings of this kind. These include: Blade Runner: The Final Cut by Ridley Scott, Cristovão Colombo – O enigma by Manoel de Oliveira,  Man from Plains by Jonathan Demme, Wuyong (Useless) by Jia Zhangke, San (Umbrella) by Du Haibin, Anabazys by Joel Pizzini and Palma Rocha, Xiaoshuo (The Oscure) by Lü Yue, Madri by Barbara Cupisti, Searchers 2.0. by Alex Cox, A Idade de Terra (1980) by Glauber Rocha, The Iron Horse (1924) by John Ford and many others. The Renaissance of (Digital) Cinema starts at the Lido.

Venice, 23 August 2007