The Kinodvor becomes Slovenia's first arthouse cinema to acquire digital technology.

The Kinodvor cinema in Ljubljana inaugurated its first digital projector, a BARCO DP2K, on Wednesday, 9 November 2011, with an in-house press conference. The Kinodvor, whose dynamism was rewarded in 2010 with Europa Cinemas' Young Audiences Award, is the first Network cinema in Slovenia to go digital. Until now only the country's multiplexes had taken the digital step.

This transition is the result of a proactive initiative taken in 2009 by the cinema's team led by Nina Pece, with the support of Europa Cinemas. In November of that year the cinema brought together numerous players in Slovenian economic and cultural life, including representatives from 14 independent cinemas, to lay the foundations for a network which saw the light at the start of 2010.

The fund for digital equipment that had been envisaged at that time, however, failed to materialise. According to its instigators, it would have been financed through the savings generated by the Slovenian Film Fund, which could have amounted to 400,000 euros per year. But no decision came of the negotiations. In the end Kinodvor financed its 2K projector entirely with its own resources, without the help of the state or the municipality. The cinema has now applied for specific support from the MEDIA programme, and is the sole Slovenian cinema to have done so.

The programmer of Kinodvor, Mr. Koen Van Daele, says that there won't be any changes to their programming policy. The focus will remain exclusively on screening European and art house films.
However the possibility to play DCPs will certainly have some effect over the programme diversity: Mr. Van Daele expects to have more films with shorter runs and more special one-off screenings. The equipment also constitutes an important step towards accommodating the international festivals hosted by the Kinodvor, such as the Animateka Festival in December, or the Ljubljana International Film Festival in November.

Alexandre Tchernookov, Jb Selliez
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Press release

http://www.kinodvor.org