Cinephile

Last night, I watched The Mother and the Whore (1973) for the first time. It’s a film made by a cineaste about a cinephile, and since it’s been difficult to find in the US, it’s mainly cinephiles that seek it out. Certain movies are difficult to find for one reason or another and there isn’t too much information on how to easily track them down.

When FilmStruck shut down, it showed that the availability of titles could easily narrow instead of expand. There hadn’t been such disappointing news for the cinephile community since New Yorker Films shuttered in 2009. (The Mother and the Whore is one of those films that became harder to find after New Yorker Films shut down, though it’s currently available on YouTube to stream for free.) Thankfully there are many wonderful services –such as Criterion Channel and Mubi– that have replaced FilmStruck in the past year. The problem with having so many streaming services available is picking which ones have the right movies for you and easily searching within them.

The first place I check when I want to watch something is Letterboxd. While I initially used it as a film diary, it has become even more useful since they integrated JustWatch into their platform. (If you don’t want to upgrade your Letterboxd account to Pro, JustWatch itself is a great resource to find which services have a specific movie to stream.) Whether or not the title is available, of course, depends on the services listed on JustWatch. There are some mistakes on the availability of certain titles (ex. Rohmer’s Rendezvous in Paris (1995) is on Amazon Prime, but oddly missing from a search on JustWatch), though overall it is a great place to start.

The rarer the film, the more research it will take to find a watchable version. If you’re looking for something that was only screened in a gallery setting, you often have to find go to that specific gallery to see it. While you can often find hard to find works on YouTube or UbuWeb, many are still unavailable digitally. Peter Kubelka hasn’t allowed his work to be telecined, insisting it be projected as he originally intended. This is the same with many other underground filmmakers. Ken Jacobs’ 3D experiments wouldn’t work as well on a small screen as at a cinema, though I did watch Jonas Mekas in Kodachrome Days recently on Criterion Channel.

Streaming services aren’t the only resource to find a film. While not every city still has a video rental store, they are often a great resource for the movies that still aren’t available digitally. The few that are left are more like to carry harder to find titles than Redbox, but overall physical media is also often cheaper to rent than a digital platform. (Cinefile Video is the most well known in Los Angeles, and Vidiots reopens this year, though I usually frequent Vidéothèque in South Pasadena due to a well curated library and proximity.) Investing in a region-free Blu-ray player also opens a world of possibilities for the titles available to see. Being able to order a Blu-Ray from a distributor in the UK or South Korea allows you to track down certain titles, though they’re often expensive. One of the best cheap resources for physical media is used media stores, such as Amoeba Music in LA or chains such as Half Price Books or The Exchange. While it’s more about patience to seek out these titles, scouring store shelves allowed me to see hard to find titles like Daimajin (1966) or The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005).

There’s always a niche market for film fans, from Indies to International to Experimental and from Horror to Westerns to Fantasy. Once you know what you like, there’s an endless list of titles left to see.

Cinephile

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