Under a new agreement, the National Film Board and Japan’s public broadcaster NHK will cooperate on coproductions and share expertise in high-definition technology. NHK is considered a world leader in the HD realm.

The Oct. 29 deal is the first-ever cooperative pact between the NFB and an Asian company.

NFB chairperson Jacques Bensimon says the agreement will make NHK’s creative expertise available to the Canadian production industry and both organizations will benefit by sharing high production costs.

The first NFB/NHK copro under the new deal will be the HD documentary War Hospital, directed by Alberta filmmaker David Christianson. NFB and NHK began collaborating on the film, which chronicles life at the world’s largest field hospital in northern Kenya, at this year’s Banff Television Festival.

The two organizations will also work together to find new ways to apply HD to animation, an area in which the NFB excels. They will also share technological advances in Internet applications, HDTV theater projection and satellite distribution, and digital content storage and distribution. The organizations are also in talks about distributing each other’s programs.

-www.nfb.ca