Kinoautomat (1967)

Original title

Kinoautomat: Člověk a jeho dům

Directed by

Ján Roháč, Radúz Činčera, Vladimír Svitáček

Genre

comedy film, experimental film, flashback film

Country

Czechoslovakia

Runtime

1h 03m

Rating

7.3 of 10 from 3 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This experimental comedy is the first interactive movie where the audience votes on key scenes. The plot follows a man named Petr Novak whose apartment ends up on fire no matter what choices are made.

playfulsatiricalinteractivedarkly comicthought-provokingcheekyengagingunpredictable

What happens

Kinoautomat was the world's first interactive movie, conceived by Radúz Činčera for the Czechoslovak Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. At nine points during the film the action stops, and a moderator appears on stage to ask the audience to choose between two scenes; following an audience vote, the chosen scene is played. The film is a black comedy, opening with a flash-forward to a scene in which Petr Novák (Miroslav Horníček)'s apartment is in flames. No matter what choices are made, the result is the burning building, making the film—as Činčera intended—a satire of democracy. Other interpretations are that the film is a satire of determinism, the idea that human beings control their fate, or that the film is an endorsement of acceptance of the diversity and complexity of life. The latter would be in keeping with other statements of late '60s culture which questioned social structure and authority. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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