Shortly after the global pandemic started impacting the United States, a list started circulating on the internet of feature and short films with streaming links made by Puerto Rican filmmakers—both in the island and in the diaspora. Assembled by art historian and independent curator Marina Reyes Franco and filmmaker Gisela Rosario Ramos, the original idea behind the list was to create a collaborative document of films to watch during the quarantine and make it accessible to a larger audience.
Web designer Javier W. Vélez decided to go a step further and in five days quickly produced a dynamic and attractive online platform with the information gathered. Thus arose the website Cine.PR, a new and extensive tool for Puerto Rican cinema that was launched last Tuesday, March 24, with an initial 200 titles in its pages.
"As soon as I came across this collaborative document, I found it interesting, but I realized that the search was a bit complicated, so I said to myself, ‘There has to be a better way to organize and categorize all this material,’” Vélez told El Nueva Día newspaper about how the platform came about.
The list includes synopses and links to the films, many of them available to stream for free. Vélez reorganized all the material and created a visual design for the online platform. He collected posters for all of the titles, and designed ones for those films without one. He also verified all of the screening links, added categories and filters to enhance the search process.
Cine.PR is available at www.cine.pr.
