Starting from 2002, the Olympion Theatre will be converted into a Digital Cinema, while at the same time continuing its traditional screening programme. As the Director of the Festival, Michel Demopoulos said yesterday in the context of the two-day conference titled "Digital Cinema and Creativity", the International Thessaloniki Film Festival boldly enters the new digital age, with the first Digital Cinema in the Balkans and the eleventh in Europe.

Director Nikos Yiannopoulos, who is in charge of the two-day conference, said that in the next two years Thessaloniki will also acquire its first two IMAX theatres to be located in the city's Technological Park.

Although during the first day of the conference there was a mutual agreement between the participants that traditional filmmaking will continue to exist, at least for a while, it was made clear that the new digital technology is quickly gaining ground.

As Nikos Yianopoulos explained, directors are turning more and more towards digital technology because of the low cost involved. Digital technology also provides filmmakers with new means of expression such as tools to easily edit and process video, as well as to have access to a multitude of settings that were otherwise difficult with the use of conventional equipment.

Producer and director Tasos Boulmetis, who created the first video-to-film transfer (Dream Factory), said that digital technology doesn't alter the language of cinema, but rather, the essence is whether it intervenes or not in the process. "The idea of random access, which is the ability to instantly access any data, is actually the main principle of digital technology." He didn't rule out the possibility of the audience being able to play an active role in future digital films by intervening -like in a video-game- in the film's progression or ending. This, though, might question the filmmaker's actual role, as he said.

"Digital cinema is just another medium, like so many others available to a filmmaker. Whether we do it right, is another matter", said Yiannis Kalogeropoulos, director and producer of experimental films, and quoted Francis Ford Coppola who had once said that he would be extremely happy when an ordinary housewife would be able to grab a camera and go out in the streets to shoot a film. "This has already started to happen. We might have a bunch of films, many of them bad, but that's not necessarily the technology's fault", he said.

Just like Trotsky's face next to Stalin was erased after his execution, the Twin Towers are being "erased" from Hollywood pictures, even from photographs and post-cards. The French director, Patrick Prado, although characterising the new technology as "chaotic and schizophrenic" was in favour of it, as long as, "we don't create similar or cloned images", as he said, and added that digital cinema grants filmmakers a new-found freedom.

He went on to claim that a new wave of theorists will emerge to deal with the style, aesthetics and themes of digital cinema.

Julius Friede, the director of Eclair studios in France, with his acclaimed collaborations with Bertrand Tavernier, the Cohen brothers, and Stephen Sontenberg in Traffic, was also in the conference panel. Working as colourist with cinematography directors, the renowned director Julius Friede collaborates with Gavras in his new film, adding the finishing touches. Although he doesn't particularly make use of the new technology, he admitted that digital image processing is simpler than the traditional photo-chemical method. "Of course, if you're happy with what you've shot, the new medium is useless. Digital technology is very helpful, though, in the instances when shooting takes many hours and you have to use many cameras to adapt to the changes in light."

Stefan Uhrik, a journalist from Prague and Supervisor of a section in the Karlovi Vari Festival similar to Thessaloniki's Festival's New Horizons section, predicted that in a few years 35mm cameras will cease to exist. The point of interest according to him lies in the aesthetics of digital cinema. "Someone had said that if Nouvelle Vague had the chance it would have used digital means. In fact they claimed that Godarde's Breathless, could have been filmed with digital technology." The question for Uhrik concerns the thematic appropriate for digital cinema and the relative budget of each film. Shooting with digital means is fitting for "everyday scenes", but the Czech journalist advised new filmmakers to stay away from them. "Don't shoot such scenes. They are boring!" There is a danger of vainglory, though, since "many people will consider themselves directors and the directors themselves will think that they can do anything in a film." When young filmmakers want to shoot a film without the hassle of traditional production, Uhrik proposed that "all good films require preparation."