Restored Ikarie XB 1 to Enhance This Year’s Week of Science and Technology

Prague, 26 October 2016. Cinema-goers will be able to watch the completely restored film Ikarie XB 1 at the Světozor cinema in Prague on Wednesday, 9 November at 10 am. The screening of the legendary film is part of this year’s popular Week of Science and Technology. The projection will be followed by a lecture on Modern Methods and Tools for Film Restoration in an Optical Network Environment, as well as a discussion with experts from the National Film Archive and the CESNET Association, who collaborated on restoring of the famous sci-fi movie. Admission to the event is free.

The Week of Science and Technology is the biggest science “festival” in the Czech Republic. This year, the 16th instalment of the festival will take place at many locations between 1 and 13 November. The schedule offers a number of lectures, exhibitions, workshops, documentary film projections, and more. The morning activities are primarily targeted at secondary school students; the afternoon, evening and accompanying events are intended for the general public.

CESNET will contribute to this year’s festival again by providing on-line transmission of selected lectures. If you are interested in watching them, do so on the project website (www.tydenvedy.cz).

The film Ikarie XB 1, shot by director Jindřich Polák in 1963, has been restored as part of the project Digital Restoration of Czech Film Heritage, supported by three countries of the European Economic Area (EEA) – Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The project was co-funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and its partners were the National Library of Norway and CESNET. A total of fourteen films have been restored. The CESNET Association’s part consisted in providing systems and know-how for cinematic-quality video transmissions and access to high-speed, high-capacity storage for transmissions between the contractor and the National Film Archive. After the restoration, Ikarie XB 1 was first shown at this year’s Film Festival in Cannes.

The CESNET Association was founded by Czech universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in 1996. It is engaged in research and development in information and communication technologies and builds and develops the CESNET national e-infrastructure for research and education. Thanks to its research activities and accomplishments, it represents the Czech Republic in important international projects, particularly in building the pan-European GÉANT network project or grid projects (EGI.eu), and actively participates in their implementation. The Association also works on the use of high-speed networks for sharing multimedia data both through synchronous video conferencing and shared applications, and asynchronous streaming.

Last change: 14.11.2017