Japan’s public broadcaster NHK has announced it will hold public screenings of its cutting-edge Super Hi-Vision (8K) format at the Cannes Film Festival, featuring the first 8K narrative comedy short Beauties À La Carte.
NHK is exploring 8K production in various genres. Most recently, it partnered with Brazilian commercial broadcaster TV Globo in February 2013 to shoot the Rio de Janeiro Carnival in 8K. Viewers at the public screening in Cannes will also be able to see this coverage of the Carnival along with content in the genres of wildlife, entertainment, arts, and sports.
NHK’s senior manager in charge of 8K content production Nobuhiro Haneda said that new technology is driving new content. “We learned from our 8K initiative at the London Olympics that viewers and broadcasters are tremendously excited about 8K. The production of Beauties À La Carte is part of our efforts to understand the technical challenges of producing drama in this new format. I hope we can work with film‐industry professionals to further explore the possibilities of using 8K for feature films.”
Beauties À La Carte, is a 26 minute comedy directed by Toshio Lee (of Detroit Metal City fame) and based on an original story by Kundo Koyama, writer of Departures, which won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.