My intimate contact with COVID-19 started last December. Looking back, I remember I was trying to arrange interviews for a new business development director in Beijing. I would fly out for a full day of interviews plus a quarterly business review with our China general manager, Allen Xing. Harkness had been developing a partnership for a high gain silver 3D screen with a premium format cinema brand.
The Association of Moving Image Archivists has launched the AMIA Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship Program a new initiative designed to expand career opportunities, advance learning objectives and guide professionals from groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the field of audiovisual archiving and preservation.
As has long been expected, Korean manufacturer LG has announced plans to begin selling LED screens to mainstream movie theatres around the world. The news was first reported by the Korean media outlet Aju News.
CinemaNext has produced its own test Digital Cinema Package to allow cinemas to regularly test their digital projection and sound equipment to ensure they are in working order prior to reopening to the public. The company’s four test DCPs – one encrypted and three non-encrypted – are available to cinema exhibitors across Europe and internationally and can be downloaded free of charge via the EclairPlay content delivery platform at https://www.eclairplay.com/en_BEL/movies/cinemanext-test-dcp-package.
New York Women in Film & Television has received a significant grant from the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The funding will provide general operating support for the organization and will allow it to further its initiatives in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As movie lovers cope with the challenges of quarantining, entrepreneurs around the world have experimented with an almost endless number of variations of drive-in and pop-up theatres. No one knows if this is a trend that will sustain itself or a fad that will fade away once the pandemic has ended. But I thought it would make sense to get some perspective about what’s involved in that kind of business from the people at Cinemobiel in Belgium, a group of friends who, for the past 20 years, have been presenting movies from a fire truck in towns all across their country. Which is why I spoke, via email, with Simon Verschelde, Cinemobiel’s only fulltime employee.
Screenvision Media has announced a partnership with Volta, a company that provides 1,300 ad-supported electric vehicle charging stations – and growing – at 400 locations across the United States, including retail, grocery, sport venues and movie theater parking lots. The relationship will enable Screenvision to augment its audience engagement by complementing its existing cinema network with the high-impact reach of on-the-go media.
20th Digital Studio will premiere a series featuring 60 diverse, genre-bending short films for Halloween. These range from horror comedy to psychological thrillers and everything in between. The entire series will be screened in September and October across Disney’s digital and broadcast platforms including ABC, Freeform, FX and Hulu.
Everybody who loves movies longs for the moment that movie theaters worldwide will re-open again, because everybody knows there is no better place to experience a movie than in a cinema with friends and family.
Éclair Theatrical Services has partnered with France’s Superior Commission for Image and Sound (CST) and the Federation of French Cinemas (FNCF) by overseeing the DCP mastering of their “Test” film, produced specially to allow French cinemas to ensure their projection equipment remains fully functional prior to reopening.
