One of Cape Town’s treasured cinemas, The Labia Theatre, is launching a video-on-demand streaming service of curated films. The service will be available nationwide, and will officially launch on Wednesday, July 1. Each film will cost R60 to stream and will be available for six hours.
The Labia temporarily closed its doors on Monday, March 23 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and has not opened its doors since.
Speaking to Channel24, Ludi Kraus, a spokesperson for the cinema, said: “Labia Home Screen has been born out of the lockdown. We’ve been at home since March without any income and thought about what we could do to earn an income. We had several patrons asking us, so we thought that a streaming service would make sense. We investigated it and finally got it together, and we’re hoping to launch on Wednesday.”
The service will only stream highly curated award-winning, arthouse and foreign-language films.
“We’ll have our four screens there, and then we’ll have a so-called fifth screen at home,” said Kraus. “Film festivals and film-related events will also be featured on the platform. Maybe it’s part of our new normal in addition to and complementary to what we hope to continue to do at the Labia once we can reopen.”
Opening films include Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Clouds of Sils Maria, Tracks, Elle and Cold War.
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