Streaming platform Filmatique will launch its East Asian Voices series on August 6, showcasing award-winning works and festival favorites from Jia Zhangke and Lav Diaz, among others. With the platform’s strategy of introducing just one new film a week and focusing on international art-house films for American and Canadian markets, Filmatique managed to carve out its own niche and pace in the crowded streaming arena.
The East Asian Voices series will kick off with Thai film Manta Ray, the debut feature from Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, highlighting the plight of Rohingya refugees. Dancing between the haunted beauty of a coastal forest, and the dark tragedies it hides, the film won Best Film in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section at the Venice Film Festival in 2018.
Filmatique will also present Jia Zhangke’s generation-spanning epic, Mountains May Depart, along with Lav Diaz’s hefty The Woman Who Left, which won the Golden Lion in Venice, four years ago. A Hard Day, the second feature from South Korean writer-director Kim Seong-hun, is also part of August’s collection. Kim’s directorial work is most recently associated with the popular Kingdom series, which tells the story of a mysterious plague gripping a fictional Joseon-period Korea, amid royal political turmoil.
Before this, Filmatique had hosted two other programs on Asian cinema, one in May 2017, and another in December 2018. Films from Mongolia, Sri Lanka and Japan were offered, among others. Creating synergy in each series between works from emerging and “heavyweight” directors is important to the platform’s programming, shared Ursula Grisham, head curator and one of Filmatique’s three founders. “Something we like to do a lot is spotlight emerging directors, and also demonstrate the ways they’re working through certain thematic issues or aesthetic techniques, vis-a-vis more established directors. I think that it just creates really interesting references and resonances between their works.”
While audiences of other streaming platforms might find themselves inundated with new content every day, Filmatique’s slower release pace is meant to promote deeper engagement with each film. Every week’s release is also accompanied by critical essays and filmmaker interviews, published in the platform’s online journal.
“Having that be the only film entering the platform per week, I mean it doesn’t force people to watch it, but we’re kind of like, this is what we think you should be watching this week. And just giving people the time and the space to do that,” Grisham said. “Because a lot of the other streaming platforms, it’s such a fast consumption model — ‘content, content, content, click next, click next’ — and we were actively trying to move against that.”
Over the last few months, Filmatique has seen its subscribers watching more films and engaging at a higher rate with the site’s editorial content. This is a trend observed by many other streamers too, as the Covid-19 pandemic led to cinema closures and large swaths of the population turning to these platforms to watch shows at home.
Reflecting on the place of physical cinemas, in a future that seems to favor streaming platforms more and more, Grisham said, “I don’t think that cinemas will ever go away — people will always crave the theatrical experience. I run a streaming platform and I love going to the cinema.”
Filmatique offers a free 30-day trial, and is available for $4.95 per month in the U.S. and Canada thereafter. Subscribers can view the films on Roku, AppleTV and iOS.
I’m a Singapore-based writer and film programmer. I started as a young cinephile writing features and reviews from the Berlin, Busan, Karlovy Vary and Far East film
I’m a Singapore-based writer and film programmer. I started as a young cinephile writing features and reviews from the Berlin, Busan, Karlovy Vary and Far East film festivals — and also grew from the mentorship and guidance at The Hollywood Reporter as an editorial intern. Some topics I’ve enjoyed covering: forests and nature in Southeast Asian cinema, transnational approaches to Bong Joon-ho’s films, as well as creative collaborations within and outside the Asian region. My work has appeared in CineVue, Michelin Guide Asia, Haps Korea, NANG Magazine’s Ten Years After project, and Sindie, among others. I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and also had short but wonderful stints studying in Seoul, South Korea and Cambridge, UK.