Montreal: The Banff Television Festival continues to develop excellent relations with various Asia Pacific industry players, clearly manifested this year with the addition of the new NHK President's Prize of $25,000 to be awarded annually to the best program in the Banff Rockie Awards competition produced or completed in high-definition television.

NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) will also continue as a cosponsor with Discovery Digital Networks of the annual HDTV competition, which awards US$15,000 in program development funding. Another important contribution, the Sony International Critics Prize, is also awarded annually to a Rockie Award winner by the Banff's critics panel. An interesting side note this year, many of the events at the festival will be taped in HDTV.

Jacques Bensimon, Banff Television Foundation executive VP, says the three primary Asian centers - China, Singapore and Japan - have their own agendas and areas of interest, a kind of "mouvement en trois temps."

Bensimon says the Chinese have elected to send a major delegation, "as varied as possible and as much Shanghai as Beijing. But the key surprise in terms of numbers is the delegations from Singapore. The combination of Japan, Singapore and China makes it the biggest delegation from Asia ever in our ranks."

In talks with the festival's Asian guests, Bensimon says it's clear NHK and many of the Japanese attending hope to be able to gauge the future of HDTV.

In broad terms, he says China is expanding its production infrastructure and looking to aggressively pursue coproduction after gaining initial experience in animation coproduction.

On the Singapore side, Bensimon says international coproduction is still in its early phase, and the delegation will be exploring opportunities for coproduction. Banff CEO Pat Ferns' attendance at the recent Asian Television Forum in Singapore is seen as a key ingredient in this year's success.

The Chinese delegation includes the Chinese TV Artists Association, headed by vice secretary-general Wang Ju Ping; European & North American Affairs Foreign Affairs Department State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), headed by director Cao Yin; and CCTV, represented by Wang Danjie, VP China International TV Corp., and Zhang Ziyang, director of international programming.

Some of the 2001 festival guests from Japan include Katsuji Ebisawa, president, NHK, Hiroshi Komura, head of acquisitions, MICO (Media International Corporation) and Nobuhiro Miyashita, director-general, Satellite & Hi-Vision Broadcasting, NHK.

Singapore delegates include Vikram Channa, senior manager, program evaluation and development, Discovery Networks Asia, Christina Goh, producer/director, Ochre Pictures Pte., Li Ling Keh, assistant director, Industry Development Singapore Broadcasting Authority, and Tania Lim, senior manager (IP) Singapore Broadcasting Authority.

Kiyoshi Yamakawa, corporate advisor for the Sony Corporation of Japan, is a member of the board of the Banff Television Foundation. *