Underplayed Gems

Kinoautomat (1967)

Kinoautomat poster
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
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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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)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.