In the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF), a new category emerged this year called “digital films . Many viewers were unfamiliar with the term, and due to poor advertising this category was underestimated.
Digital films are those filmed with digital cameras, rather than the traditional 35-millimeter film camera used in cinema. Evidently these films cannot compete in the main category since digital production has not yet achieved the visual perfection as cinema, although it is improving more and more each day.
Many international film festivals have included a digital film category – the prestigious Cannes Film Festival is no exception.
On the eighth floor of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Cairo, in a tiny theater, some gathered to see some of the world’s top digital films. “In general this category was low-key, but some films like “Everything and “Driving to Zigzigland were very well attended, says Omar Shama who worked on the management team of the festival.
British filmmaker Richard Hawkins (known for scripting the high budget film “The Theory of Flight in 1998) attended the festival to show “Everything – a film about a man’s platonic relationship with a prostitute. The film actually ran in British theaters for five days, which is unusual for a digital film. At the CIFF, it won second place in the digital film category.
Italian digital feature film “Sotto La Stessa Luna (Beneath the Same moon) by director Carlo Luglio, won the grand prize at the festival in this section.
Although Nicole Ballivian’s film “Driving to Zigzigland did not win anything at the festival, it was perhaps the most talked about of these films. The American filmmaker tells the true story of her husband, a Palestinian actor who moves to Hollywood to pursue his dream. Instead he ends up becoming a taxi driver, and is eventually deported back to Palestine.
This pro-Arab film was shot between Jerusalem and Los Angeles in 15 days and cost a minimal $10,000.
Digital filmmaking is considered a revolution in filmmaking. Digital is much cheaper, and much simpler. Digital cameras eliminate the need for external reels; upload easily on to computers and make editing a lot less of a nightmare, compared to analogue, and makes it easier to synchronize audio and video.
According to filmmaker Ibrahim Batout, “digital makes filmmaking more mainstream. Film was an elite production, now anyone can do it.
Batout’s film “Ethaki (Laugh) was the only Egyptian digital film in the festival, although many locals have been using digital cameras producing short films like Rami Abdul Jabbar’s film called Beit Men Lahim (House of Flesh) and Sherif Nakhla’s “Miraculim .
Karim El-Hakim, who was director of photographer of both these films, believes that digital films are definitely the future. He told The Daily Star Egypt that digital will take over and “there is no question that cinema will get more and more boutique. within ten years it will be very extravagant.
“This is a new wave in cinema all over the world because anyone can make a film. Some are amateur some are professional but they are all people that feel they have good scripts and can now make good films while cutting costs. Digital films are more avant-garde, they are more trend-setting, says Shama.
El-Hakim explains that when you shoot using a 35 millimeter camera, all the money is spent up front and they end wasting about 90 percent of the budget on shots they don’t need. The beauty of digital is you can spend the budget in front of the camera, improving the set and the actors. After the film is finished, the filmmakers can then decide if it is worth converting to film, in that case keeping the budget within a certain price range, and spending only if it is worth it.
Although today high-budget films are made with celluloid cameras because of the high visual quality, in the next two years digital will catch up and be equal in quality. Already big Hollywood productions like “Superman Returns are have used digital cameras and quite rapidly film cameras will become vintage along with walkmans, record players and Rubik’s cube.
