LaCinetek

This dream began on a Parisian pavement in 2013.

As they left a meeting of the Société des Réalisateurs de Films where Alain Rocca, the president of UniversCiné (the first VoD platform of auteur films) was invited to speak about cinema and Video on Demand, three filmmakers, Pascale Ferran, Cédric Klapisch and Laurent Cantet, started talking to him about the lack of a legal platform available on the internet for “heritage” films.

Evoking their difficulty of seeing or rediscovering the most important films in the history of cinema and the lack of transmission and exposure of these films on television channels, they started to dream about a site that would be dedicated to these films alone.

Alain Rocca then spoke of the project that UniversCiné had had for several years of launching a label devoted to the major classics. While they perfectly mastered the technical aspect, they still hadn’t managed to constitute the editorial leadership for this department: who would choose the films?

A few minutes later, the foundations of the project were laid: why not create a VoD site together that would be dedicated to 20th century cinema, where the films would be chosen and presented by filmmakers from across the globe?

In the following weeks, the project was honed.

Then the dream gradually became a reality. It has continued since the launch of the website in November 2015..

From the outset, there was a desire to open up the association as widely as possible to other organisations and other filmmakers. That is how Olivier Assayas, Bertrand Bonello, Michel Hazanavicius and Rebecca Zlotowski joined the three founder filmmakers in the association, as well as many institutions or film archives motivated by a shared mission, the transmission of film heritage: Arte France, INA, Cinémathèque Française, Cinémathèque de Toulouse, Deutsche Kinematek, Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, Centre Pompidou, Gaumont, StudioCanal, LMC/UniversCiné, Lobster Films, Agence du Court-Métrage, as well as the SRF (société des réalisatrices et réalisateurs de films) and the ARP (société civile des Auteurs Réalisateurs Producteurs).

Currently governed by Pascale Ferran, the legal vocation of the association is “the dissemination of film heritage through the creation and maintenance of a Video on Demand reference website dedicated to the major films of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, selected and presented by filmmakers worldwide: LaCinetek.”

At its inception, it received considerable financial support from the CNC and the Région Ile de France which enabled the platform to be launched. Since October 2017, it was also supported by the Media programme of the European Commission.

These directors are :

Maren Ade, Fatih Akin, Dario Argento, Thomas Arslan, Olivier Assayas, Alexandre Astier, Jacques Audiard, Nabil Ayouch, Xavier Beauvois, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Emmanuelle Bercot, Bertrand Blier, Bertrand Bonello, Bong Joon-Ho, Guillaume Brac, Serge Bromberg, Jutta Brückner, John Cameron Mitchell, Robin Campillo, Laurent Cantet, Leos Carax, Alain Chabat, Damien Chazelle, Clément Cogitore, Catherine Corsini, Pedro Costa, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Raymond Depardon, Arnaud Desplechin, Lukas Dhont, Alice Diop, Pete Docter, Jacques Doillon, Xavier Dolan, Albert Dupontel, Atom Egoyan, Amat Escalante, Pascale Ferran, Abel Ferrara, William Friedkin, Christophe Gans, Nicole Garcia, Philippe Garrel, Costa Gavras, Miguel Gomes, Yann Gonzalez, James Gray, Robert Guédiguian, Alain Guiraudie, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, Peter Handke, Michael Haneke, Arthur Harari, Jessica Hausner, Todd Haynes, Michel Hazanavicius, Christoph Hochhäusler, Joanna Hogg, Agnieszka Holland, Christophe Honoré, Agnès Jaoui, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Radu Jude, Payal Kapadia, Aki Kaurismäki, Naomi Kawase, Lodge Kerrigan, Cédric Klapisch, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Gérard Krawczyk, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Diane Kurys, Bruce LaBruce, Joachim Lafosse, Nadav Lapid, Arnaud et Jean-Marie Larrieu, Patrice Leconte, Claude Lelouch, Sophie Letourneur, Caroline Link, Mariano Llinás, Ken Loach, José Luis Guerín, Noémie Lvovsky, Patricia Mazuy, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Dominik Moll, Nanni Moretti, Luc Moullet, Cristian Mungiu, Olivier et Éric Nakache & Toledano, Guillaume Nicloux, Michel Ocelot, François Ozon, Park Chan-wook, João Pedro Rodrigues, Christian Petzold, Nicolas Philibert, Bruno Podalydès, Corneliu Porumboiu, Lynne Ramsay, Alice Rohrwacher, Christian Rouaud, Saeed Roustaee, Ira Sachs, Mahamat Saleh Haroun, Pierre Salvadori, Marjane Satrapi, Riad Sattouf, Jerry Schatzberg, Paul Schrader, Céline Sciamma, Martin Scorsese, Albert Serra, Claire Simon, Elia Suleiman, Bertrand Tavernier, Joachim Trier, Justine Triet, Jonás Trueba, Jaco Van Dormael, Felix Van Groeningen, Agnès Varda, Francis Veber, Paul Vecchiali, Paul Verhoeven, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Wim Wenders, John Woo, Yolande Zauberman, Rebecca Zlotowski, Dominique and Fiona Abel & Gordon

Every month a new filmmaker joins LaCinetek and their list expands our catalogue.

The recruitment of filmmakers, enhanced by possibilities fuelled by their cinephilia, is the key to the discovery or rediscovery of the films. It is our response to the commercial propositions, based on the algorithm of recommendations, which is at work today.

Short films, called “bonuses”, created by the affiliated directors, will provide exclusive content for certain films in the catalogue. They will present a cinephile’s perspective, to initiate or extend the discovery of cinematographic works.

1. The film catalogue available on the website is exclusively constituted by films chosen by filmmakers worldwide.
2. Each filmmaker who accepts to join LaCinetek (known as the “affiliated director”) must compose a list of around fifty films, on the basis of his or her “ideal film collection” (the films “kept by the bedside”, the works that have helped shape them or that have had a particularly major impact on their own work).
3. These films must originate from global film production from the early days of cinema up to and including the year 2010 (short or feature films, fiction, animation, documentary, experimental films, and so on). However, the filmmakers cannot choose one of their own films, although these can of course be chosen by others.
4. It is the sum total of these lists that constitutes the catalogue of films presented by the website, and some of the films may have been chosen by several people.
5. Each filmmaker’s personal list appears on the website, in the order freely chosen by the latter. It may be in order of preference, chronological order, alphabetical order (by title or by director), or not have any order (that is, a personal listing only understood by its author).
6. Filmmakers may, if they so desire, accompany this list with a short text explaining all or part of the reasons governing their choices.
7. In the event that the rights of a film selected cannot be acquired, the film will nonetheless appear in the list, with a mention stipulating its status (such as “acquisition pending”, “rights currently inaccessible”, “film unobtainable”, “film pending restoration”, or “available soon”).
8. A new list appears on the website once a month and is showcased on LaCinetek’s homepage.
9. Short films, called “bonuses”, created by the affiliated filmmakers, provide exclusive content for certain films in the catalogue. They present a cinephile’s perspective, to initiate or extend the discovery of cinematographic works.
10. We appeal to the website’s users to assist us, either by providing information regarding the rights of certain “unobtainable” films, or by notifying us of the existence of “archive” bonuses that they may know of or would like to see featured on the website.