A platform will offer films from the Spanish Film Archive for free streaming

The Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA) is preparing a «Netflix for the Spanish Film Archive,» or rather a «RTVE Play»: a future free streaming platform where all state-owned films from the institution’s collection will be available. According to information from El Confidencial Digital, this new service, of public nature and without commercial focus, will be available in early 2024.

The news was made public through the Official State Gazette on August 19: the General Directorate of the ICAA announced the tender for a new «service for the creation, development, content management, and marketing services of a digital platform and video on demand,» valued at 2.4 million euros.This project, planned within the Spanish Government’s Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan and the Draft Law of the Film, is now being launched.

The ICAA platform: heritage, promotion, and education

The new Spanish cinema free platform will have various purposes and contents, as reported by El Confidencial Digital: on one hand, it will serve as an audiovisual heritage catalog, accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The platform will offer copies of films from the Ministry of Culture’s holdings and the Spanish Film Archive, including all sorts of Spanish cinema classics, historical films, and digitized archives that can even be reused. This role was previously being fulfilled by the Flores en la Sombra channel, inaugurated with good results during the spring 2020 lockdown.

In addition to offering citizens access to these and other films that the institution has the right to exhibit, the new ICAA platform will be used to promote the internationalization of Spanish cinema within and beyond our borders. Another more industry-oriented aspect will provide restricted access to part of the catalog for professionals in the film industry to learn about and view new films.

Lastly, another part of the catalog of this new platform will be focused on «cinema education»: teachers, students, and institutions will have access to film programs and workshops. A new container that will unify and make audiovisual education more accessible as an integral part of educational processes. The contract to launch the platform will extend through almost the entire next year (from February 1, 2023, to November 15, 2023).