Seagate Sponsors Skip City International D-Cinema Festival

Seagate (NYSE: STX), the world’s leading storage solutions provider, today announced its sponsorship of the 2008 SKIP City International D-Cinema Festival (http://www.skipcity-dcf.jp/en/), produced by local government bodies working together with private enterprises and citizen groups.

The SKIP City International D-Cinema Festival is held annually for the purpose of finding and nurturing outstanding talent in the production of digital cinema as well as promoting and developing the audio-visual industry, which are heavily reliant on Seagate storage products. The festival will take place at SKIP (Saitama Kawaguchi Intelligent Park) City, a newly developed hub for the digital filmmaking industry promoted by Saitama Prefecture, Kawaguchi City and related private sectors. This year’s event, which is the fifth, will be from July 19 to 27, 2008.

The festival includes the screening of nominated films from both the international feature-length film and the national short-length film categories, along with the gala screening and other related events. The gala screening is a new form of theatrical digital entertainment and it provides new ways for participants to enjoy traditional Japanese art forms like the Kabuki and other stage performances filmed and projected in high-definition.

“Recent significant developments in digital camera technology and editing tools enable creators to simplify high-quality film production, thereby unleashing their creative potential and raising the quality of production and creativity to new levels,” said Shigeo Yatsui, producer of SKIP City International D-Cinema Festival Committee. “The festival plays a critical role in helping us achieve our goals of popularizing digital cinematography as the next-generation industry for our community.”

“Seagate is excited that SKIP City is actively promoting the development of the digital film industry in Japan,” said Tsuyoshi Kobayashi, president of Nippon Seagate. “Our solutions serve as the essential connection between people and digital content, so we are honored to be one of the sponsors of the digital cinema festival and we look forward to working with SKIP City to help promote the digital film industry and recognize young creative talents.”