24/06/2014 - A new Slovak VoD service will be providing domestic offerings to international audiences

A new VoD platform, Kinocola, is set to start up soon in Slovakia, intended to show Slovak and Czech films. So far, the country has set up a similar service, helmed by magazine .tyzden and newspaper SME, offering domestic releases to be watched as videos on demand. “Having a rather specific audience, .tyzden works with a limited target group, while Kinocola stretches across genres to offer anything from documentaries to children’s selections. One of our aims is to make room for films that would never make it to traditional distribution. And most of all, unlike other platforms, Kinocola is run by filmmakers,” says the co-founder of the new platform, Jana Kluková.

Kinocola also aims to bring domestic cinema to international audiences. “Making local cinema available abroad is one of our goals. For this purpose, Kinocola will offer subtitling services to producers, depending on their choice of territories. The English-language option is a worldwide standard that we strive to meet from the start,” Kluková explains, highlighting one of the main aims of the service. Kinocola will showcase not only Slovak cinema, but Czech films as well, as VoD is missing from the Czech market these days, with the exception of DAFilms, which specialises purely in documentaries.

The new VoD facility will also feature information on filmmakers, photos from sets, and films on films; in addition, the founders will be facilitating contact between filmmakers and audiences via blogs, commentaries and audience scores. The subscription fee can be paid by SMS or bank transfer. Clearly, the founders hope that Kinocola will be able to provide a broad audience with access to Slovak and Czech cinema, as well as supporting domestic filmmakers, but they also foresee it reducing piracy: “The Kinocola project is founded by filmmakers. You actively contribute to funding new films and to the fight against internet piracy every time you watch a film on Kinocola.”

Kinocola will be accessible at www.kinocola.sk, www.kinocola.cz and www.kinocola.com from 22 July.