Mediteran Cinema Bol

Mediteran Cinema is a travelling cinema whose main goal is to revitalise cinema listings in smaller towns across Dalmatia, where the cinemas have been long closed. The project runs throughout the entire year in Lastovo, Hvar, Komiža and Bol, and other towns are hosting it in summer months only – from weekly screenings to three-day visits. The long term goal of the project is to join as many towns as possible to the year-round cinema network.

It is important to note that apart from the town of Korčula, when the project was launched no other hosting town had been included in the digitisation project. For that reason, this project is of utmost importance for Dalmatia. Thanks to good results and excellent collaboration with local partners, in March 2015, through Ministry of Culture’s open call for investments, we successfully digitised Bol, Hvar, Imotski and Komiža.

Mediteran Cinema offers the local population an insight into European and global cinema and, most importantly, opens the cinemas at least for a few days. Including children’s films in our programmes makes it possible for the young ones to visit a cinema for the first time and attend a screening. Mediteran Cinema has its own film distribution, along with cooperation with all the Croatian distributers and many film festivals, trying to provide new and attractive cinema listings.

As no summer festival in hosting town was offering the audience a film programme, we wanted to make a contribution to the development of cultural tourism in Dalmatia. Bilingual subtitling is here to make it possible for tourists to enjoy the screenings as well, which resulted in their 30 per cent share in summer audience.

The first Mediteran Cinema in 2012 featured a total of 33 screenings in 11 towns, frequented by 4000 happy viewers. No sooner than a year later, at the second edition in 2013, the number of hosting towns rose to 14 and 41 screenings were attended by around 7000 people.

Mediteran Cinema is a joint project of the Mediterranean Film Festival Split and hosting towns, which have been providing financial support to successful screenings. The hosting towns are: Lastovo, Hvar, Komiža, Bol, Supetar, Sutivan, Pučišća, Jelsa, Stari Grad, Korčula, Goveđari (Mljet), Makarska, Imotski, Omiš and Stobreč. Our programmes were also hosted by Art Cinema Croatia in Rijeka, Dubrovnik Summer Festival, Kotar FEST! in Delnice, Kastav Summer Festival and Zagreb Film Festival.

Mediteran Cinema Bol is the first digital cinema in the Mediteran network. The programme is scheduled every other weekend at the winter theatre, and the summer open-air cinema operates daily.

Around 40 per cent of the programme intended for adults are European cinema titles. In the summer season, films are screened with bilingual subtitles because of foreign tourists, and 30-40 per cent of the entire programme is intended for children.