Virtual AFI: Nearly a year after getting...

Virtual AFI: Nearly a year after getting its feet wet in Hollywood by opening a computer lab at Creative Artists Agency, Intel has teamed up with another Tinseltown institution to give the creative community a push toward interactive entertainment.

Intel and the American Film Institute will expand the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival by adding sessions and exhibitions featuring interactive technologies and bestowing an Interactive Star Award for individual achievement. Intel will also offer an interactive production workshop at AFI and expand the institute’s Web site, AFI OnLine (https://www.afionline.org).

“This gives us the opportunity to use the next generation of technologies to extend and explore and accelerate the evolution of the moving image as an art form,” said Jean Picker Firstenberg, AFI director and chief executive.

For Intel, the partnership is all about selling microprocessors, said Ron Whittier, senior vice president and general manager of the company’s content group. Unless content developers learn to use the newest interactive tools and create products that can only run on ever more advanced chips, demand for Intel’s Pentium processors will dry up, he said.