Conceived as an extension of Checkers, Zagreb Film Festival’s Croatian short film competition program, the platform offers a free of charge, quality overview of the rich local short film production, available for viewing from anywhere and at any moment. The new project was presented by ZFF Director Boris T. Matić and Executive Director Hrvoje Laurenta.
“Recognizing the importance of the short film form, numerous film festivals dedicate a portion of their program to screening and promoting short films. Short films are effective, fast-paced and concise, often leaving a lasting mark on the viewers. At the same time, they play an important role in the industry because they are commonly a filmmaker’s first foray into directing and a preparation for venturing into feature filmmaking. Short film is a practice ground for directors, screenwriters, actors, editors and all the other film professionals,” said at the beginning of the launch Boris T. Matić, Director of Zagreb Film Festival.
The new internet platform, croatian.film, is conceived as an extension of Checkers, offering the viewers a quality overview of local short film production of different categories (fiction, animation, documentary, experimental and hybrid) and film genres, completely free of charge. A special feature of the platform is that it is optimized for quality viewing on all devices (phone, tablet, computer or TV).
“After 15 years of working in the field of culture and running Checkers, we realized that, after their festival run, short films have little or no chance of being seen by viewers who missed their festival screening. This is a big disadvantage, especially in the light of the fact that, since its inception, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre has co-financed 450 short films – a substantial number for such a small country as Croatia,” elaborated ZFF Executive Director Hrvoje Laurenta.
“Our goal was to create a platform intended for film professionals and viewers alike. We felt it was the right time to initiate this unique film portal, in order to save our “shorts” from oblivion and the interested audience from boredom,” said Laurenta, adding that the platform will finally make short films available to everyone – easily and free of charge – not only for viewing, but also for finding relevant information about the films and film professionals.
In addition to the film collection, the platform also offers related content, such as the film database, the database of film professionals and production companies, news, film columns, interviews with “filmmaker of the month,” a list of upcoming festivals, the possibility of registering and commenting on the content, and most importantly, the possibility for authors and distributors to send in applications with their short films.
The platform is bilingual, which means that all texts and information is also available in English and all films are available with English subtitles, allowing international audience easy access to all content on the portal and increasing Croatian film visibility on an international scale.
Hrvoje Laurenta also expressed plans future development of the platform consists of 5 key points: promotion in Croatia and abroad, technological development and introduction of additional technical features, ensuring platform sustainability and development of the platform as a relevant go-to database and a channel for easy access to the entire Croatian film production.
Finally, all Croatian filmmakers are invited to apply and send in their short films via the online application so that they can be included into the database if they satisfy established criteria, which will be beneficial for both the authors and viewers.
We are very happy finally to be able to offer all the viewers a chance to enjoy excellent Croatian shorts, completely free of charge, at any moment, anywhere. We look forward to your feedback!
