Out with the old, in with the new?

Rising number of filmmakers trading analog for digital, but theaters still not equipped to screen

By Dimitris Rigopoulos - Kathimerini

It is early Thursday evening on Omirou Street in Kolonaki. Cars wait at the Panepistimiou Street traffic light, and people rush to get to shops before they close, make an appointment on time or catch a bus.

But some stand around the entrance of the Goethe Institute, looking at their watches, mingling with the students coming out of the German educational center. When the right time comes, they make their way into the auditorium.

For hundreds of Athenians this is a weekly date. A date with digital cinema — a huge pool of films shot not with the conventional 35 mm camera but with digital cameras that often are no more high-tech than the ones we find in people’s homes.

Ever since February 18, 2005, the Goethe Institute has held a steady stream of screenings (usually on Thursdays) of digital documentaries. The initiative has been extremely successful.

The whole thing began with CineNetEurope, a network of screens around Europe that exclusively show digital films. CineNetEurope, of which the Goethe Institute is a member, was conceived by Dutch film producer Kees Rynink three years ago. The aim is for this network to exchange films, documentaries and shorts, shot in digital format.

The Goethe is one of a handful of organizations in Greece that is equipped with the technology required to show digital films; the others are the French Institute in Athens and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, which uses the two screens of the Olympion on Aristotelous Square. Digital films cannot be shown on conventional screens and the equipment it takes to do so costs some 300,000 euros.

Greece, like most other parts of the world nowadays, is seeing an increasing use of digital technology in film production. Over 75 percent of local productions are not on celluloid and more than half the films that participated in the Thessaloniki Film Festival were shot originally on a digital camera and then transferred to film.

However, a rising number of festivals (such as the annual Video Platform, for example) are turning their attention to these new technologies. The Thessaloniki festival, as one case in point, organized its first section of digital films last year. The aesthetic of this new medium, which used to be restricted to nascent filmmakers and alternative artists, is rapidly making its way into mainstream production.

Digital films are thought to be cheap to make but, says Thanos Anastasopoulos, a filmmaker and director of the Greek section of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, “it depends. Not all productions are the same. You may save some money on the actual shooting of a film, but spend the surplus in other areas.”

Another cost a producer has to bear well in mind is that of transferring the digital film onto celluloid. “That is the only way that it will be screened at theaters and can participate in major festivals,” explains Anastasopoulos. The cost of this process ranges from 25,000-40,000 euros.

The transition from analog to digital technology is not quite as simple as it may sound. “There is a conflict of huge financial interests,” says Anastasopoulos. Moreover, the high cost of a digital film projector (around 300,000 euros) is prohibitive to the rapid development of digital cinemas. On the other hand, studios are pushing in the opposite direction because they know that the digital format greatly reduces the cost of reproducing copies and the films enjoy better technical quality.

Anastasopoulos, however, is not at all sure that the future will be fully equipped with digital cinemas.

“There is a very good chance that films will be not be screened via a tape, whether digital or analog, at all, but rather that each film will be transmitted through a satellite server to thousands of cinemas around the world simultaneously,” he says. But, he also asks the crucial question that arises from this possibility: “Will we keep going to the movies, or will technology allow us to stay at home?”

At the most recent Cebit, the world’s biggest annual trade show for information and telecommunications technology, he mentions seeing a Panasonic screen measuring 103 inches and three meters in length. Priced at 15,000 euros, Anastasopoulos notes that while the cost is very high, it is not entirely prohibitive, especially when people are known to spend 3,000 euros and more on a plasma screen in times of financial uncertainty.

The screening program for the month of May is as follows:

Thursday, May 4 (8.30 p.m.): Werner Herzog’s “White Diamond.” Though screened previously, the public demand for it was such that it has been re-slated. In this documentary, Herzog takes a mini-Zeppelin over the stunning canopies of tropical forests.

Thursday, May 18 (8.30 p. m.): Volker Koepp’s “Land of Shadows – A Journey to Masuria.” The acclaimed documentary filmmaker travels to Masuria in northeastern Poland, to record life in what is known in Europe as “unknown territory.”

Thursday, May 18 (10 p. m.): “So Near Yet So Far – Antigone of the Prince Islands” by Turkey’s Nedim Hazar. Following years of separation, Greek doctor and artist, Giorgos Aimilios Eden, meets his Turkish friend, theater actor Cunet Turel, on the island of Antigone, or Burgaz as it is known in Turkish.

Thursday, June 1 (8,30 p. m.): Walter Stokman’s “Based on a True Story.” Based on the 1975 fiction film “Dog Day Afternoon,” directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Al Pacino, this is the true story of John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile’s attempt to rob a bank so that they could bankroll the latter’s sex change.