By Christie Marchese
[At] Sundance, most of my conversations have centered on one question for independent film and the movie business overall: How do we fix distribution?
Filmmakers are having a harder time raising money for new projects. Investors haven’t seen a return as their films struggled to land distribution. Streamers are turning inward to create films instead of acquiring them. Movie theaters are still returning from the pandemic and streaming hit they took, and turnout for independent films is decreasing year after year. Lucas Shaw articulated the problem and the conversation well in his most recent newsletter here.
I’m not saying we have the solution to this industry-wide problem. But we are making a change on our platform to participate in actively providing solutions.
Specifically, we are expanding our platform to include a TVOD streaming platform for audiences, but developed and designed for film creators and their audiences.
We launched Kinema in Spring 2021. Well, first, it was Storyspaces, which went live in 2020, but it turns out that March of that year was not the best time to launch a company centered on non-theatrical exhibition – aka gathering people in-person at creative screening spaces.
But since then, we’ve grown into a tech-enabled film distribution platform intentionally designed to bring audiences together around movies. Part SaaS for filmmakers, video storytellers, and theatrical distributors to launch and run global screening tours. And part marketplace for these films to reach and be discovered by screening hosts (non-theatrical exhibitors, organizations, businesses & online influencers). These hosts create and run screenings for their audiences in person and online.
