Awesome news, actually.
Martin Scorsese, as ardent an advocate as there is for serving up film the old-fashioned way, has decided to embrace digital distribution for movies restored by his World Cinema Foundation.
The films that the organization restores every year — often obscure titles like “Dry Summer,” a Turkish picture from 1936 — will now be available online through theauteurs.com, a Web site that calls itself a “virtual cinematheque.”
Many will be free. And a partnership with B-Side Entertainment will soon bring the foundation’s films to Netflix and iTunes.
[Click to continue reading Scorsese Uses Internet to Distribute Restored Films – NYTimes.com]
If I’m not mistaken, The Auteurs is a joint venture with The Criterion Collection.
Four things that were on our minds when we first dreamt the Auteurs: Number one: why can’t you just watch In the Mood for Love in an airport lounge? Number two: why is it so hard to get hold of Antonioni’s complete filmography? Number three: Wouldn’t it be great to instantly send Tati’s Playtime to a friend if you think they need it (there’s nothing like film therapy)? Number Four: why do films on the Internet look just awful? And that was that. We simply couldn’t resist the idea of everyone having their own online film library… your little cinema, anytime, anywhere… after all not everyone can make it to the Cannes Film festival… less if you are a school teacher or you live in Winnipeg (or both)… but that doesn’t mean you can’t recite all of Kubrick’s films in reverse chronological order or that you are not desperate to watch the latest Kitano film that is definitely not going to be released in your local multiplex.
And that’s our point; popular doesn’t always mean good.
Our film library is brimming with visionary films that wouldn’t fill a single cinema in Australia for a week – not even a day… but say you searched the world (all of it), you might just find an audience of a thousand for this rare cinematic treat. And we don’t think a thousand people should be ignored just because they happen to live in different time zones or far away from Australia cinemas… if someone needed to make such a precise film, it means that, someone, somewhere needs to watch it. More importantly… that someone might be you. Or Scorsese (he happens to be a member too…)
[Click to continue reading About The Auteurs]