Editor

XDC, Europe's Finest and Hoverlord have joined efforts to prepare five European classic films to be screened in digital format at the Ghent International Film Festival.

The Digital Content Lab of XDC in cooperation with Hoverlord and Europe's Finest - the 'Cinema-on-Demand' service for digital cinemas - has been selected for preparing the digital copies to be screened at the Ghent International Film Festival. With the support of MEDIA, Europe's Finest will present its program in Ghent. The presentation will be enhanced by 2k digital screenings of European classic films from Europe's Finest catalogue.

The movies to be screened have been compressed in JPEG2000 and have been quality controlled by the XDC Lab team.

On the evening of October 9th, 2008, "Daisies" a premiere film presentation of the Prague Spring Czech Wave film classic from 1966 SEDMIKRÀSKY will be projected in digital format to an invited audience and followed by a reception.

Serge Plasch, CEO of XDC, will also be part of the symposium addressing all the facets of the business model of Cinema on Demand with others key players from the European digital cinema area.

List of the 5 digital screenings

Daisies - Mélo (1986, Alain Resnais) - So Close To Life (1958, Ingmar Bergman) - The Swimming Pool (1968, Jacques Deray) and Orphée (1950, Jean Cocteau).

For more information visit the Europe's Finest website at HYPERLINK "http://www.finest-film.com" www.finest-film.com
Or for Europe's Finest screening information at the Ghent International Film Festival visit HYPERLINK "http://www.filmfestival.be" www.filmfestival.be

Cinema on demand - a viable business MODEL?

OCTOBER 9TH, 2008, 2 PM- 4PM, KINEPOLIS GHENT

Europe's Finest will stage a digital distribution symposium introducing the Europe's Finest 'Cinema on Demand' business model as well as providing insights into interoperability issues, perspectives for digitally equipped cinemas and highlighting the opportunities that digital cinema provides for classic and back catalogue titles. The symposium will discuss the viability of this model and the challenges faced in establishing such a service.


About XDC International

Created in 2004, XDC is a global provider of digital cinema solutions. XDC manages the operations for the deployment of digital cinema systems into theatres, as well as preparing and delivering the digital content distributed into the cinemas. XDC is also the manufacturer of advanced digital cinema products: server, theatre management system, central library, and more. XDC is an Official Partner of the Cannes and Locarno Film Festivals, and a founding member of the European Digital Cinema Forum. The company has offices in Belgium, Germany, Spain, and France. XDC is a member company of EVS Group which has more than 170 staff worldwide and is listed on Euronext. More info available at www.xdcinema.com.

XDC Marketing & Communication Department - Tel.: +32 4 364 12 00 - Email: marcom@xdcinema.com

About Europe's Finest

Europe's Finest is the name of the European film digitisation project to be carried out in 2008 by reelport GmbH based in Cologne / Germany. More info available at www.finest-film.com.
Project Director: Jennifer Jones jennifer.jones@finest-film.com

About Reelport GmbH
With the unique combination of rights clearance, encoding and digital delivery services - for distributors as well as for film festivals - reelport makes films accessible at all times to people from all around the world. Reelport is supported by the MEDIA programme of the European Union. More info available at www.reelport.com.
Managing Director : Tilman Scheel tilman.scheel@reelport.com

About Hoverlord
HoverlorD is a Belgian company based in Liège providing high technology services for Digital Cinema. HoverlorD covers the complete digital production workflow. From rental of acquisition HD equipment to projection in a theatre size room, as well as colour grading, SFX creation, graphic design for credits, HoverlorD produces a "Digital Cinema Master" which can be used for encryption and distribution by the XDC Digital Content Lab which will generate the DCP's (Digital Cinema Package)" for the theatres all over Europe.
More info available at HYPERLINK "http://www.hoverlord.com" www.hoverlord.com.
Managing Director : Louis-Philippe Capelle lpc@hoverlord.com