How Did You See That Movie?

As a media junkie with certain tastes for snooty foreign films and festival favorites that aren't very accessible, I spend a lot of time hunting for media.  New releases are fairly easy these days. You just keep an eye on iTunes or Amazon for release dates. In some cases, the releases may be very slow in coming, but most notable titles, like the 2016 Portuguese art film "The Ornithologist," will get here eventually.  You just need some patience to wait them out.

But what about older films?  How do you find movies long out of print, or that were never properly released at all?  While I'm not against piracy in some cases, I prefer to exhaust all other avenues first.  I thought I'd share a couple of tips on how to locate and watch some of the more elusive media out there.

The first step should always be your local library.  Larger cities will have more diverse media holdings, especially for non-English speaking populations, but you never know what will turn up. I was lucky enough to live very close to the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library for a couple of years, and took home Criterions by the armload every week.  Many libraries also take part in interlibrary loan programs, where you can borrow media held by other libraries throughout the country, usually for a fee. Library holdings can be searched through WorldCat.org.

Universities and colleges often also have media collections and film archives, which can be accessed by the public.  Nearly all have fee-based memberships, and some, like Stanford, offer limited free research access. UC Berkeley's Pacific Film archive is where I first saw most of the Studio Ghibli films, before Disney picked up the distribution rights in the early aughts.  If you want to see more art and experimental films, museums become very important. There are certain art films that are pretty much only screened at museums, like Andy Warhol's "Chelsea Girls" and "Empire." National film institutions like the BFI and the National Film Board of Canada are also good sources of information.

Then there's the free-for-all of the internet.  There's a lot of gray area here legally, but it's pretty much the only way that some especially rare media is viewable at all.  Let's take the case of "Mickey Mouse in Vietnam," an anti-war underground animated short that was made by an amateur animator with absolutely no permission from Disney.  Since nobody could monetize it, the short is destined to never have a proper release. The only existing 16mm copies were in the hands of private collectors for decades, and it was very, very difficult to find.  Then, about five years ago, someone uploaded it to Youtube, and it was no longer a rarity.

All sorts of interesting things pop up on private trackers, or on the various streaming sites like Youtube, Vimeo, and Daily Motion.  As an animation fan, I've found old student films like "Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown," test footage, workprints, propaganda shorts, industrial videos, and ancient ads.  Recently the contents of PIXAR's infamous "Made in Point Richmond," a DVD intended to be distributed only to employees, surfaced online. Created in 2001, it contains a huge cache of the studio's obscurities made from 1985-2000, including rare animation tests, yearly Christmas party videos, and the uncensored version of "Knick Knack."

Tracking lost and rare media can be an entertaining rabbit hole to climb down.  At one point, the Lost Media Wiki forum members were actually tracking who had physical copies of "Made in Point Richmond."  While I'm not too active in these circles, I do recommend keeping an eye on them and using them as a resource. More older content is being found and uploaded every day, and something that was impossible to find a year ago might be on Amazon Prime tomorrow.  Sometimes it's as simple as the rights finally clearing for online distribution, or a company deciding that they can't monetize something, and making it available for free. That's happened with titles like Neil Jordan's "In Dreams" and Peter Greenaway's "The Baby of Macon."

At the moment I'm keeping an eye out for a couple of They Shoot Pictures Don't They titles.  I finally got my hands on a pair of obscure German Fritz Lang movies a few months ago, which were worth the wait.  Still looking for some of Vittorio DeSica's older work. It's strange how little of his output is currently available Stateside.  I know the movies are out there though, and I'll keep looking.

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