ELECTRONIC CINEMA FEST SHOWCASES HDTV WORKS
Peter Ustinov presided over the awards ceremony closing the April 23-28 meet. A small, closed-door industry event, the IECF alternates yearly between Swiss and Japanese venues, attracting top execs from Tokyo, Europe and the States who are involved in high-definition television.
Not surprisingly, the fest's viewing theater was packed with NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corp.) directors. But a healthy sprinkling of American execs also showed up, convinced HDTV is on the verge of a boom.
"The next two years are going to see many more high-definition productions," said CBS' HDTV expert, Barry Zegel. "The technology is there and the prices are coming down."
On view at the festival were productions from around the world, but especially from Japan, which made its commitment to the medium in 1959 at the Tokyo Olympics. Pubcaster NHK came up with the first HDTV camera and VCR in 1981, and has since been increasing its HDTV broadcasting time (now 14 hours a day) and audience.
Winner of the Grand Prix Astrolabium as well as the UNESCO award was an NHK feature shot for HDTV, "Osamu's Summer," while the web's dark, sophisticated drama "Bus for Two" took home the city of Montreux prize.
The one U.S. winner was David Thomson's film history "Musicals Great Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit at MGM." The co-production with Japan and France took home an entertainment Astrolabium. Germany topped the documentaries with EuroArts' "Eric Satie --- False Traces."
While the U.S. has been pushing ahead on high-resolution video, boosted by the FCC's Christmas decision to make digital television the wave of the future, and while the Japanese make plans to switch their HDTV analog broadcasts to digital, Europe has lagged in the sweepstakes. European financing bodies jumped ship on HDTV in the early '90s, when it became apparent that the analog system under development was going to be outdated before it began.
In Europe, the cutting edge in technology is now widescreen, 15x9 programs.
"What's interesting about the Europeans," said Barry Rebo of New York's Rebo Studio, a leader in high-definition equipment rental, "is that they came to the conclusion that television is a widescreen, 15x9 medium. So why not have the vision and confidence to do it in high resolution?"
