The AP has a great new article about the advances of digital filmmaking, and shows proof at the big show:

Four of the movies in the Cannes Film Festival (news - web sites)'s main competition were shot digitally. From China, Russia, Britain and Iran, they all went digital for different reasons.

One director found that he could shoot in tight, enclosed spaces because digital cameras are smaller and don't require as big a crew; another wanted to film 90 minutes in a single take.

And then, of course, there's the latest "Star Wars" movie, which screened out of competition. George Lucas was on the Croisette to show off his latest futuristic fantasy Thursday, the same day it opened in the United States.

The movie was shot on digital cameras, and was shown in Cannes on a digital projector, which uses tiny mirrors, prisms and digitally stored images instead of celluloid reels.

Lucas says digital moviemaking has opened up new possibilities and plot lines that were impossible when he shot his first "Star Wars" movies decades ago. When Yoda first appeared, for instance, in "The Empire Strikes Back," he was a puppet and couldn't move around much; in the new movie, "Attack of the Clones," digital Yoda has a light-saber fight.

Asked by a reporter whether Yoda had lost any "poetry" in the transformation, Lucas replied: "Whatever we may lack in poetry we make up for by the fact that I can do things that I couldn't do (before)."