A living lab where projects grow from sketch to screen. A subsidiary adventure of Rija Films, dedicated to the next 30 years of storytelling experiments.
The space is a hybrid: production studio, residency, and performance arena wrapped into one responsive environment. What happens here leaks into cinemas, festivals and streets.
Traditional drawing, hybrid pipelines, AI-assisted weirdness. Sessions for directors, animators and students who want to bend form instead of imitate it.
We treat each project as a research question: What can this story do that live-action can’t? The lab is built for testing answers quickly, on a big screen, with real audiences.
A flexible black-box cinema for live performance, film shoots, and hybrid events. Directors can treat the space as a character: re-light it, re-map it, or stream directly from it.
Host an 8-at-the-table reading, a durational performance, or a premiere that mutates into a party. The room listens, records and replies.
KINO MĀJA is a temporary home for directors, animators, performers, and writers who need a concentrated sprint on a project. No “open offices”, no polite networking. Just work.
Residents get access to the stage, cinema, recording setups and mentorship from the extended Rija Films family. Deliverable: a testable piece of work, not a “concept PDF”.
Rija Films started in 1995 with Kiriku et la Sorcière and grew into a studio whose films travelled festivals and living rooms across the planet. KINO MĀJA extends that line: a venture space where mistakes are allowed and risks expected.
KINO MĀJA connects with the wider ecosystem: kalnaellis.com, rijafilms.com, and the more unhinged cousin kartupelis.tv.