One of the things that has always bugged me about art film distribution is that films play the festival circuit, then take anywhere from a few months to years to reach theaters, let alone home video. Recently the Tribeca Film Festival partnered with an American cable company (I forget which) to stream films that had recently played at the festival. Now, with Efe Cakarel and MUBI producing the new Joe short and streaming it for free on MUBI (which, if you’ve not seen, is amazing) around the same time it premieres at Cannes, the time has come to ask the question…
Can we cinephiles get some sort of festival-to-streaming pass for films playing at major festivals like Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and New York?
It would function two ways, ideally – an online festival pass that would cost roughly the same amount as a pass to all the screenings at the main event, and a pay-per-view program. The films would go online before, after, or at the same time as their big screen debut, depending on the preferences of the filmmaker, and directors could opt out of the online option altogether if they were worried about piracy or wanted to do a slow roll-out. MUBI has done this before with smaller festivals, so I don’t see why they couldn’t expand it as the years go by and people become more comfortable with digital distribution to major festivals that screen films by the likes of Mungiu, Haneke and Reygadas.
What are your thoughts, Mubians?
odilonvert
about 1 year ago
^ I like that idea, JJ. :)
And I did see Ashes. And loved that it was available here.
Judicial Joe
One of the things that has always bugged me about art film distribution is that films play the festival circuit, then take anywhere from a few months to years to reach theaters, let alone home video. Recently the Tribeca Film Festival partnered with an American cable company (I forget which) to stream films that had recently played at the festival. Now, with Efe Cakarel and MUBI producing the new Joe short and streaming it for free on MUBI (which, if you’ve not seen, is amazing) around the same time it premieres at Cannes, the time has come to ask the question…
Can we cinephiles get some sort of festival-to-streaming pass for films playing at major festivals like Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and New York?
It would function two ways, ideally – an online festival pass that would cost roughly the same amount as a pass to all the screenings at the main event, and a pay-per-view program. The films would go online before, after, or at the same time as their big screen debut, depending on the preferences of the filmmaker, and directors could opt out of the online option altogether if they were worried about piracy or wanted to do a slow roll-out. MUBI has done this before with smaller festivals, so I don’t see why they couldn’t expand it as the years go by and people become more comfortable with digital distribution to major festivals that screen films by the likes of Mungiu, Haneke and Reygadas.
What are your thoughts, Mubians?