As part of 12th edition of Mediterranean Film Festival Split, a meeting was held on Friday, June 14, with Vera Matković from the Ministry of Culture and Chris Marcich, Director of Croatian Audiovisual centre, along with Alen Munitić, the president of Cinema network.
The purpose of the meeting was to create a balance between the plans and strategies of the Ministry of Culture, the Cinema Network and HAVC, as well as to establish a working group that would help solve some of the problems and speed up their resolution.
"In recent years, much has been done for the the cinema but of course there is always room for improvement. We are jointly targeting the development of our audience - especially the one regarding independent and Croatian film. Of course, it is also important to work on the development of the audience of children and young people as prospective viewers at the level of the entire country. This meeting was important because we tackled the issues of further investment in equipment, decoration and general investment in various cinemas. Likewise, there were words about the alignment of number of viewers and some other program obligations. ' said president of the Cinema Network Alen Munitić, after the meeting.
He added that he would work on individual education of members of the Cinema Network until the end of his mandate. Soon, the 'Cinema Doctor' is also being launched - an interesting project that aims to help a specific cinema that comes up with a certain problem. Of course, the ultimate goal is that all cinemas become members of the Cinema Network and we would approach the recently digitized cinemas in the coming period, the ones that may not know about the existence of the Cinema Network.
Chris Marcich, director of HAVC, says that, in cooperation with Alen Munitić, the needs of network have to be defined and then systematically resolved. 'It is about creating a working group that would bring together all the ideas, plans and requirements, propose them to Cinema Network and then implement them. Problems exist and they are reduced to collecting information about the audience. With that I mean about the distributors who do not deliver them regularly. The plan is to merge this part exactly in HAVC to make these information available to all interested parties. An important theme was also the Croatian film - primarily its availability in small and so called big cinemas, ' Marcich concluded.
The Croatian Network of Independent Cinematographers was founded on November 7, 2014, to strengthen the position of independent cinemas within the film industry and to launch and develop the film culture in all its forms throughout Croatia. The Cinema Network today has 44 members and 64 cinemas in 46 cities and islands throughout Croatia. Independent broadcasters perform a public function based on their status as public institutions, art organizations. The public function includes promotion of the film as artistic work, mediation of film culture in educational programs, critical and reflexive approach and servicing display needs of local film production. Many years of work and engagement of all members of the Cinema Network have so far resulted in numerous successful projects in the field of networking of independent cinema producers, film literacy development and film audiences.
