Photo: Courtesy of China Theater Association(CTA).

The 2024 Beijing International Theatre on Screen Week kicked off in Beijing on Thursday, bringing together top professionals from China, UK, Russia, and South Korea. 

The two-week event features seven lectures and three round-table discussions, with nearly twenty high definition (HD) screenings scheduled at six venues, including the Beijing International Theatre Centre, the Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center, and the China Film Archive. This includes one global premiere and four national premieres.

During ten consecutive days of HD screenings, the lineup features five domestic productions including Chinese opera The Long March, the musical On the Road, as well as fifteen international productions like the Macbeth starring Ralph Fiennes , and a new adaptation of Gogol's Government Inspector by Russian director Yury Butusov. Many of these are making their debut, with Edward Scissorhands being a global premiere.

As the world's first international event focused on HD stage screenings, Ma Xinming, executive vice chairman of the Beijing Federation of Literary and Art Circles expressed his impressions: "We look forward to HD stage screenings making new contributions to the thorough implementation of a national cultural digital strategy and fostering new productive forces in the performing arts industry."

Photo: Courtesy of China Theater Association(CTA).

During the opening ceremony, participants discussed the impact of the development of the HD stage image industry on stage art creation, the filming of high-definition stage images, and the further industrialization, specialization, and internationalization of Chinese HD stage images.

During the opening ceremony, several theaters shared their experiences on HD stage images use. Since its introduction in 2014, the Beijing People's Art Theatre has utilized 5G+8K technology to record and broadcast self-produced performances and anniversary celebrations, firmly establishing a path of using technology to assist in cultural dissemination. This is one positive example. 

As the world's first systematically produced and distributed brand of HD theatrical images, Leo Jordan, market and distribution director of "National Theatre Live" at the British National Theatre, shared insights and developments in operating models over the past 15 years with attendees.

In fields of theatrical and musical productions, this year Chinese director Teng Junjie's film The Height of the Early Tang Dynasty brought a novel approach to Peking Opera by presenting it in an immersive 3D sound film format, thereby attracting new audiences and offering fresh perspectives; Shin Yee-ji, head of a South Korean HD stage art image production team, shared her experiences in works like musical Anna Karenina and China's dance show A Mere Touch of Green.

Photo: Courtesy of China Theater Association(CTA).

HD stage images have emerged as a new form of stage art appreciation in Europe and US over the past 20 years, selecting the best works from stages worldwide, employing multi-camera shooting, and broadcasting and recording in high-definition via satellite and high-speed network transmission equipment to theaters and cinemas worldwide, thus enabling more audiences to appreciate outstanding stage art from around the world.

Song Baozhen, vice chairman of the Beijing Theater Association and director of the Institute of Drama Studies at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, emphasized the importance of HD stage images as it can break the constraints of time and space, allowing audiences to witness the latest developments in foreign theaters across great distances. "Our own performances can also use high-definition images to tell Chinese stories, shape a friendly, accessible, and lovable Chinese image, and promote Chinese theatrical art," Song said.