The service strives to provide mobile users with access to award-winning short-form video movies, TV series and documentaries that are designed for smaller cellular screens.

Launched in June by Exceptional Rights, CineMagic aims to offer director-driven, well-acted and high-value curated video content from five to 30 minutes in duration.

"There is an unmet consumer demand for short movies that display beautifully on mobile," says Joanne Raphael Katz of Exceptional Rights. "The support from the mobile networks recognises the confidence they have in CineMagic’s snackable little movies and the fact that SA mobile users want video designed for their cellular devices and not for traditional TV broadcast."

The team at Exceptional Rights says that the launch timing is especially apt as the annual Ericsson Mobility Report predicted that about 76% of global wireless bandwidth will be used for video delivery by 2025. According to the report, "Video traffic in mobile networks will grow by around 30% annually during the next five years driven "by the increase of embedded video in many online applications and the growth of VOD streaming services."

"This is true curated content because there are very few movie studios globally dedicated to the production of short movies and series. This means we proactively procure content from individual companies, filmmakers, producers and artists. Pre-COVID, we also actively visited African and European film festivals to source short movies," adds Raphael-Katz.

Categories include Africa’s Best, Drama, Comedy, Action, Romance, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Horror, Animation and Thriller. Both movies and series titles are available to be streamed through the CineMagic website to users' devices via mobile or Wi-Fi. New genres of content are being added regularly.

CineMagic has so far found support from established and emerging South African and African filmmakers and encourages local creative talent to submit their films to [email protected] for consideration.

The company will extend its South African footprint to other sub-Saharan countries after a settling period and has a broad range of French short-form content secured for the Francophone African territories.

The backing of the country’s biggest mobile networks means any prepaid or contract cellular user can visit the CineMagic website and use their devices to sign up for the video streaming service for R5 a day, with the first three days being free. Subscriptions can be stopped at any time with no contractual obligations.

For more information, visit www.cinemagic.co.za