It’s the first time the festival has been live streamed and it relies on bandwidth that can be scaled up or down, on demand
Colt Technology Services (Colt) is to live stream the 75th Berlin International Film Festival opening gala event on 13th February for the first time to cinemas in seven cities in Germany using its Network as a Service (NaaS). Colt has been the event’s Digital Cinema Partner for more than 15 years.
Cinemas in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart, as well as in Berlin, will show the opening gala live. This includes the hosted international jury and actor Tilda Swinton receiving the Berlinale’s Honorary Golden Bear. A screening of festival’s opening file, The Light, directed by Tom Tykwer and delivered by Berlin-based film distribution company X Verleih, marks the occasion.
The IT team at Berlinale will access the service via the user interface of Colt’s On Demand Network as a Service solution, through which companies can control and adjust their required bandwidth in real time. Capacity can be dialled up and reduced as needed, which, according to Colt is “perfect for an event that experiences huge spikes of data requirements in short bursts of time”.
“The Berlinale is constantly evolving and so are its technological requirements, so we are very happy to rely on Colt’s expertise for over 15 years,” explains Ove Sander, Technical Director Digital Cinema of the Berlinale.
“For us, this is an excellent example of the ‘extraordinary connections’ that we create with our network,” says Roxana Dobrota, Country Manager of Colt Germany. “This new major step for the Berlinale is proof of how the common goal of a high-quality customer experience and mutual trust in the partner’s know-how and experience can be translated into an unforgettable experience. We are proud of having been able to work with Berlinale time and time again for so many years.”
Colt’s Network-as-a-Service for the Berlinale includes:
• a fibre optic network of around 200km for the festival
• 2×10 Gbps lines connect the Colt network node with the Berlinale Film Office at Potsdamer Platz
• Connecting the festival’s main venues via a star-shaped network of 10 Gbps and 1 Gbps lines to the network node
• Transmitting a petabyte of data over the course of the event
• Converting all films, regardless of format, into a standardised digital format to be stored on the Berlinale servers
• Allowing film studios to upload their work directly to the Berlinale servers via a 10Gb internet connection. This saves time as it only takes 20 minutes for a package of film data to travel from Hollywood to Berlin.