The National Archives and Film Institute this week launched a new website arkaader.ee to showcase old and new Estonian films.
Arkaader, a film heritage platform created as a collaborative project between the National Archives and the Estonian Film Institute (EFI), has brought together a large part of Estonia's film stock, showing beloved feature films, cinema classics, documentaries and animated films, as well as a number of chronicles. Despite the fact that the online platform is promoted as the new home of Estonian film heritage, not all audiovisual content is available yet.
At the time of opening, more than 400 Tallinnfilm films are available in Arkaader, over 1,200 chronicles can be found on the map, and 33 selections await film enthusiasts, with new content constantly being added.
According to the creators of the platform, Arkaadr's main focus is primarily on education. In order to make the (re)discovery of Estonian film heritage easy and interesting in the era of the triumph of streaming, in addition to curated programs and a large number of film classics, the website also includes, for example, a map of Estonian films, which allows you to get to know the history of your hometown.
Apart from the educational goals, the creators of Arkaadr consider it important that the content is available to all interested parties, wherever they are in the world or in whatever language they want to watch movies.
The platform offers long and short documentaries, animated children's movies, adverts and concerts as well as older and newer feature films ranging in price from free to €5.90. A monthly ticket costs €8.80.
Eva Näripea, director of the National Archive's film archive, said inspiration was taken from the UK, Denmark and Sweden which have all put their film archives online in recent years.
Currently the website is available only in Estonian language. In the future English translation will be added.
You can find it here: https://arkaader.ee/