Making Your Way, for Free

A still from the Malian film Yeelen, available for viewing on dailymotion.com

My apologies to readers who have come, as I hope you might have, to expect something from this blog’s weekend viewing recommendations that you wouldn’t find on just any old entertainment blog available to you. Last weekend, instead of a selection of films for you to seek out, I posted about a few sites and platforms where you can discover your own viewing paths and make your own selections of films to see and report back on. (I’ve received a few stories and recommendations from some readers on specific series they’ve found and enjoyed, but not heard anything about their feature film — or short film, for that matter — delights.)

The sites I gave were pretty obvious and very broadly mainstream, and no doubt already known in their entirety to most readers: Showmax, BoxOffice, iTunes, Google Play, and Netflix. They are also either subscription or rental/purchase services. The delightful array of South African independent productions on Showmax and foreign independent productions on Netflix aside, what about the works for those viewers who are looking for alternatives to the common feature viewing fare? And what about those viewers whose budget constraints preclude extensive viewing on sites that require you to pay for your pleasures?

I must admit that I myself am nearly as engulfed by the darkness of ignorance as any reader asking those questions. I know of pitifully few places where you can go to watch things for free — but, of course, at least one reason for that is that not many distributors are committed to releasing their films for free — and I know even less about alternative viewing that would interest some of you. All I can do here is point out to you the tiny handful of things I do know, and plead for more of you to let me know about the options that they know of so that I can inform more readers of what’s available to them. (I’ll only let you know about the legally permissible options here; viewers who disregard laws and copyrights do so at their own inconvenience.)

When I posted about my very favourite films three months ago (an already outdated list, with some of the new, inordinately great works I’ve seen — and streamed — since then), one of the titles I wrote about was F.W. Murnau’s silent horror classic Nosferatu, which I had the good fortune to find streaming online for free, on an excellent site called Snagfilms. It boasts over 2,000 films, television shows, and other works for you stream, all for free, online, with free apps for Android, iPhone, and iPad. I haven’t delved all that deeply into their selections, but I can see sections on their home page, recommending items on education, athletic triumph, history, climate and the environment, the military, politics, gay pride, justice and human rights issues, and refugee and immigrant stories. Most of the contemporary films are very small independent features and shorts, or else films made for television, and the Hollywood works are very old classics (possibly whose copyright has expired, allowing them to be shown for free here), including a few Charlie Chaplin shorts, his first feature (The Kid), at least two D.W. Griffith films (Broken Blossoms and Abraham Lincoln), Buster Keaton shorts, and a number of popular Hollywood titles from those early decades. Many of you may have already decided that you couldn’t sit through a movie made 90 years ago, but I encourage you ardently to try it, with something still fresh and full-blooded (the Chaplin, Griffith, and Keaton should suffice), and reevaluate your position. Hollywood classics serve not only history and posterity, but the deep and eternally searching inner parts of your consciousness and appreciation of beauty.

One site I know of and have heard about but not yet tried is Daily Motion, which works rather like YouTube or vimeo, where users upload videos for others to watch. Some of the uploaded content includes old movies, independent movies, foreign movies, short movies, and documentaries, and I know there’s a myriad of interesting videos of tutorials, portraits, exhibitions, examinations, etc., that the more curious of you may draw great pleasure from. Let us know of what you find there.

Come to think of it, vimeo and YouTube can be just as excellent for someone looking for things other than Hollywood features to watch. While I’m often rather doubtful of the legal status of many of the full-length films available to see on YouTube (and those doubts are confirmed when the videos are taken down), there are some that have remained streaming for long whiles, which I watch while I can, which have often provided wonderful viewing experiences. Two very recent examples are the short film The Black Balloon, which I saw on vimeo and gave a link to on this blog when I wrote about it a few weeks ago, and Ingmar Bergman’s opera film The Magic Flute, which I watched in its entirety on YouTube.

A film student friend of mine recently directed me to Le CiNéMa Club, “a curated online cinema that presents one film every Friday, for one week and for free”. The films presented are short films, and range from a Buster Keaton short from 1921 (The ‘High Sign’) to selections from this year. So far, I’ve only watched one of the films shown (The Black Balloon, which I mentioned above), but, judging from the array of directors whose work is presented (Mike Leigh, Eliza Hittman, Albert and David Maysles, David Lowery, Josh and Benny Safdie, Agnès Varda, Barry Jenkins, Gus Van Sant, and Alain Guiraudie, as well as many others I’m not so familiar with), some of the choices must surely be some of the greatest short films available anywhere.

I wish you many happy trails, and informative or enlightening ones where happiness doesn’t reach you, and, as always, ask that you send back here any new discoveries you make, or new ideas or thoughts you arrive at on old selections.

Edit: The Mail & Guardian has published in its arts section what I was too wary to publish here: a discussion of where to go to obtain movies and television shows for free, outside of legal parameters. The article has been published on the paper’s website (scroll down).