Terracotta Distribution has officially initiated its in-house Video On Demand offshoot this week. Billed as the UK’s first VoD platform dedicated to East Asian cinema, the new streaming service aims to “showcase a range of new and classic genre, arthouse and indie films from across East and South East Asia”.
Terracotta initially took off in 2009 with the inaugural Terracotta Far East Film Festival, as well as a distribution label. The company held five festival events since then and firstly released Hansel and Gretel in cinemas, TV and DVD, whilst steering to bridge itself to meet the demand for Asian cinema for the region’s audience.
“We are so happy to have a streaming site purely for Asian film and really pleased with the mix of classics, emerging directors and new releases we’ve put together.” says Terracotta Managing Director, Joey Leung. “We’re really excited to have the Festival Retrospective too, and we hope festival goers will love re-visiting some of their favourite films from past editions. There are so many amazing films coming out of Asia that really need to be seen but never make it over here due to inefficiencies in the system, and now we can help to match film to audience in a more direct way.”
The launch also is being marked with a time-limited retrospective of highlights from the celebrated festival. Films are now available on the platform to rent, with plans to explore subscription and hybrid models in the near future, according to the announcement.
A selection of titles will be available to rent for just £1 during the Black Friday weekend, with content highlights such as Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell, as well as a collection of golden-age Jackie Chan films from the 80s and 90s and classics from the Korean New Wave never before released in the UK, including April Snow, Il Mare and Christmas in August. Also in tow is an exclusive collection of films by Lee Sang-woo, starting with his debut, Tropical Manila.
The launch, here, also compliments Terracotta’s existing online store for Asian cinema on physical DVD and Blu-ray, which you can also find here.