Tri-continental premiere of 4K feature movie via network streaming at FILE 2009

The aesthetic potentials of 4K digital cinema are an impetus for creative practitioners of cinematic arts to undertake full investigations of the methods and expressive possibilities of this end-to-end digital medium. This includes new approaches to production, distribution and the forum of theatrical experience. A group of artists, film-makers and computer scientists have been developing a series of 4K digital cinema projects that have diffused and grown the manner in which 4K cinema is experienced between Brazil, the US and Japan. The recent culmination of this was an event in July 2009 in which a 4K feature length movie had its world premiere on three continents, streamed from Brazil to the US and Japan. This was accompanied by an HD video teleconference (VTC) between the three sites. To the knowledge of the participants, this was both the first uncompressed HD VTC between the northern and southern hemispheres as well as the first feature length 4K film to be streamed across three continents. Through this work, the new creative affordances of 4K cinema were highlighted, along with the new capabilities of cinematic distribution, production and experience.