Hippodrome Cinema hopes for digital kickstart

Thursday

Aug 1, 2013 at 12:01 AM

The digital conversion also is affecting the Ocala Drive-In.

By Beatrice DupuyCorrespondent

Thad Walsh has spent six years preparing films on a vintage film projector for moviegoers as the Hippodrome Cinema projectionist in downtown Gainesville. With the movie industry going digital, however, Walsh’s job is about to join a film revolution.Starting in 2014 — the transition date movie studios have announced to switch from 35 mm film to a completely digital system — the Hippodrome Cinema will have to retire its projector and switch to an all-digital format costing $40,000.While the change has left thousands of movie theaters scrambling to find funds — including the Ocala Drive-In — the Hippodrome Cinema has turned to the crowd-funding website, Kickstarter, to raiseNews of another big land deal between a rich nation and a poor developing country is becoming a common occurrence. In August a group of Saudi investors said that they would be investing $1 billion in land in Africa for rice cultivation. They are calling it their ‘7x7x7 project’, since they are aiming to plant 700,000 hectares of land to produce seven million tonnes of rice in seven years. The land will be distributed over several countries: Mali, Senegal and maybe Sudan and Uganda.

A few weeks earlier South Korea acquired 700,000 hectares of land in Sudan, also for rice cultivation. India is funding a large group of private companies to buy 350,000 hectares in as-yet unspecified countries in Africa. A group of South African businessmen is negotiating an