The Digital Cinema Conference at MIT November 3-5, 2000 The Digital Cinema Conference at MIT on November 3-5 will bring together filmmakers, critics, and media-industry leaders to explore the nature of digital cinema and its likely impact on contemporary media culture. Filmmakers have begun to explore the implications of new digital technologies that enable them to produce low-cost movies and distribute them on the Internet, and their work is creating new genres of entertainment and documentary, and enlarging the potential audience for works made outside the mainstream entertainment industry. The conference will explore these phenomena through a combination of screenings of significant works of digital cinema with provocative panel discussions with filmmakers,academic and journalistic critics, and representatives from such companies as ALWAYSi, iCAST, Urbanentertainment and Atom Films. Among the works to be screened and discussed at the conference are Kevin Rubios TROOPS, Evan Mathers Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars, Vilma Gregoropouloss Could Be Worse!, Marc Forsters Everything Put Together, Jason Wishnows Tattooine or Bust, Hans Uhrigs Synchronicity and This Is What Democracy Looks Like by the Boston-based Big Noise film collective Panels will specifically address the political consequences of broadening media access, the shifting status of amateur filmmaking, the aesthetics of this emerging media form, the economics of digital film production and distribution,the historical antecedents of contemporary digital cinema, and the ways digital cinema may shape future developments in our media environment. The Digital Cinema Conference at MIT kicks off on Friday, Nov. 3, at 6 pm with a festival of digital films assembled by graduate students of MITs Comparative Media Studies program and a screening of Marc Forsters feature-length Everything Put Together. Following a full day of panel discussions on Saturday, Nov. 4., the conference features the opening night of the ALWAYSi Throwback Film Festival, which celebrates independent films from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The film festival will continue online until Dec. 3. The Digital Cinema Conference at MIT wraps up Sunday, Nov. 5, with a second festival of digital films. The Digital Cinema Conference at MIT is free and open to the public. A full conference agenda, detailed information on panelists and films, and an online registration form can be found at http://media-in-transition.mit.edu/digcinema. Please feel free to contact Conference Director Henry Jenkins of MITs Comparative Media Studies program at 617.253.3068 or at [log in to unmask] The Digital Cinema Conference at MIT is organized and presented by MITs Program in Comparative Media Studies and the MIT Communications Forum, and sponsored by ALWAYSi. -30- ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu