" The E-Cinema Alert 2003 E- & Digital Cinema Awards.

– Exhibitor of the Year: CITY SCREEN (UK). Motivation: For boldly choosing the digital high road for art-house exhibition, Arts Alliance has not only been converting screens but also ensuring that they have a steady stream of content playing on them in digital.

– Runners up: Kinepolis (Belgium/Europe) and Eng Wah (Singapore) for taking a significant digital plunge late in the year.

– Cinema of the Year: PACIFIC THEATRE (US). Motivation: For the tireless work that the Entertainment Technology Centre and Dr Swartz have been doing in making it relevant and important to the Hollywood digital cinema community, whether screening test footage or holding its popular monthly digital film screenings.
Runners up: NFT’s Digital Test Bed (UK) and AFI Silver Theatre Culture Center (US) for showing how digital multi-screen operations can serve the repertory and film institute world.

– Film of the Year: ’FINDING NEMO’ (Disney/Pixar) Motivation: For being the flagship film of 2K projection, for being the opening film of more new digital installations than any other release in 2003 and for being a very, very good film in general.
Runner up: ’Shattered Glass’ (Lions Gate/DCS) A randomly selected title from the output of Digital Cinema Solutions, which has done a poor job of trumpeting just how many major indie films they have distributed digitally this year.

– Event of the Year: DAVID BOWIE CONCERT (September). Motivation: Going out to 58 cinemas in 22 countries, thanks to Quantum Digital, turned the concept of ’alternative’ entertainment in cinemas into the only high end alternative for promoting CDs and music DVD launches.
Runner up: UK Film Council plan to convert 250 screens to digital...but only starting in 2004

– Non-Event of the Year: 2K PROJECTION. Motivation: While not underestimating the awesome engineering feat that TI achieved, 2K projection was inevitable (sit far enough back and you will also not see any difference between it and 1.3K), as was the studios’ wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee moment of realising that they couldn’t leapfrog into 4K but had to accommodate 2K.
Runners up: The Technicolor-Qualcomm divorce - not even the end of Liza Minelli and David Guest’s marriage could have come as less of a surprise.

– Country of the Year: A tie between SOUTH AFRICA and INDIA. Motivation: Both took the lead in showing how the ’lower end’ road can create a successful new digital future for cinemas, particularly in the developing world. Spectrum VN held no less than four major film festivals simultaneously in several cities in ZA in 2003, while Mukta Adlabs had more than 100 digital screens running full time in India, with over 40 films having played by the end of the year.
Runner up: Singapore, for punching way above its digital weight in Asia (and the world) thanks to IDA, Eng Wah and (not forgetting) Cathay.

– Company of the Year: GDC TECHNOLOGY (Hong Kong). Motivation: For continuing to push the envelope in engineering and innovating server and solutions technologies, both for the high end digital cinema as well as practical lower end low-cost solutions.
Runner up: Dolby, for its slow but steady homing in on the digital cinema market.

– Writer of the Year: ANDREAS FUCHS (Film Journal International & Film Echo) Motivation: For consistently high quality reporting on the cinema events (digital and otherwise) on two continents and in two languages.

– Runner up: Dr Wolf Siegert, for bringing philosophy to the technology of cinema."

Mail from: E-CINEMA ALERT special 2003 awards and 2004 forecasts, Screen Digest, So 04.01.2004 19:44
Mail to: Patrick von Sychowski.