New perspectives in distribution of Czech Documentary Films - digital distribution DCI and VOD platforms

This thesis examines new possibilities in film distribution from the point of view of documentary films. It occupies with the fact what could the coming system of digital distribution in the DCI standard and also the possibility of distributing the films by the means of video on demand (VoD) portals bring. The work is divided into two main circles. The first part starts with a brief description of the progress of the theaters digitalisation till present days. Then it comes to the topic of actual functioning of digital DCI distribution and to the definite cases of documents, that were distributed this way in the first half of the 2010. It also speaks about the leading role of the Ministery of Culture of the Czech Republic and its Media and Audiovision Department. Further it describes the changes, which the new system brings, from the three main points of view ? from the perspective of theatres, distributors and producers. At the end this first part deals with new trends in marketing of documentary films, which is in a tight connection with coming digitalisation and the need of target marketing. The second part of the thesis beginns with the description of the functioning of the VoD portals. It speaks about legislative system, the topic of territories, engaging the VoD servers to the distribution chain and the form of the support by the means of the EU programme MEDIA. In a detailed way, it examines than the work of eight definite foreign VoD portals, which specialize in showing the documents only, or together with other kinds of film. The Czech docalliancefilms.com is the last one from the described portals. At the conclusion, the thesis deals with the summary of the contemporary situation in the VoD portals field and hypothesis for the future. It tries to define the possible future trends in the progress of this way of distribution