kanopy: thoughtful entertainment. what are you watching now?

forgot these were ones i watched on there:

HOT SUMMER NIGHTS: hot summer trash! feels like something chalamet filmed two years earlier and which was shelved because it wasn't very good, and was now getting pushed out cause he had the buzz. definitely not the fun coming-of-age drug-dealers-in-over-their-head movie it suggests, and all the lust-for-the-crush-object stuff feels just like a straight shitty 80s take rather than some kind of retro commentary on those 80s tropes. soundtrack is also very chronologically confused.

THE LITTLE HOURS: can't tell if this was bad or if we just weren't in the mood for what it was doing. raunchy medieval nun comedy where the gag is, medieval nuns are raunchy. there are a couple of big, funny bits but then there are more serious emotional things that wander their way through and leave no impact. feels like a funny sketch that didn't need to be a full movie but i could imagine it being funny if you were in the mood for it.

lol nuns

Watching a bit of
Pabst, G. (Director). (1929). Diary Of A Lost Girl [Video file]. Kino Lorber Edu. Retrieved December 31, 2018, from Kanopy.
before my credits reset.

Hm. There is a character named Meta in this. The only other such film character I am familiar with is in Out of the Past.

Of which I missed the 9PM showing at Lincoln Center this evening, I guess.

signing up for this

P great Tropicalia doc, compiled almost entirely from contemporaneous sources, it looks like

Been meaning to watch that one.

Looks like I will finally get to see Ace in the Hole

Cool.

anyone know a way around the library sign-in? i'm not a member of one that has a subscription :|

oh hold up my old university login worked. YAYYYYYY

yes! libraries are literally in the business of giving you access, I love that about them

Really going to rep for Astra Taylor’s “What Is Democracy?”, for the bits with Silvia Federici, Cornell West, and Angela Davis on top of everything else

Not two minutes ago I learned Kanopy pulled Girlhood as my students were writing papers about it (comparing it to The Rules of the Game no less).

Ugh.

I have never really understood the business reasons for why films come and go on streaming services

the streamer wants to pay less and the film rights owner wants to get more?

I have 183 films in my Kanopy queue, which at a 5-per-month limit even for two-minute-long shorts, would take three years to watch. If rights periods lapse, that just makes picking something easier.

I was pretty sure the third of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy was available a year ago. when I went to watch it it was gone. The streamers vs film rights owners thing makes sense, but I didn't really think about it applying to a 60-year old film. I guess there's no reason why it shouldn't

I live just a few blocks from where they are located, I should stop in to chat, it would be interesting to know more about them

http://kanopy.com/goethe

^ german movies regardless of your library courtesy of the goethe institute

cool!

Maren Ade's The Forest for the Trees looks like one to watch.

I really liked Forest for the Trees

Oooh, thanks for the tip, I adored Toni Erdmann and would love to check out her earlier films. They're short, too!

I watched it last night and really enjoyed it. She has a way of making me laugh at the most painful moments.

The hidden costs of Kanopy:

Recently, an increasing number of scholars have become aware of a simple fact about the service: university and college libraries do not pay a flat fee like individuals might for Netflix, Hulu, or the (now defunct) FilmStruck. Instead, Kanopy’s platform drives “patron-driven acquisition” in which three viewings (defined as 30 seconds or more of a title) trigger a library license fee per title. (The figures I’ve seen are $150 for a year, $350 for a 3-year license, though the price might vary or change over time.)

Those fees can add up quickly, and some libraries have felt a strain on their budgets. For instance, Stanford University called Kanopy’s cost “no longer sustainable” as they announced their switch from an open-platform version to a limited-access, request-only version (the only way libraries can turn off the license fee trigger of patron-driven acquisition). However, these issues do not affect public libraries, which pay Kanopy per view (current fee of $2), similar to a transaction video on demand (TVOD) service like iTunes. Still, patrons do their local public library’s budget no favors by streaming the “free” Kanopy titles, even if those libraries presumably factor in the streaming costs as part of their mission....

Ultimately, the decision around Kanopy or other streaming websites lies with the libraries. But it might be wise for film scholars housed at higher-education institutions to be aware of the pricing constraints that streaming services place on their university libraries’ overall acquisitions. I do not intend to paint Kanopy as the bad guy in the story of streaming access – the company has brought an innovation to an underserved marketplace, added convenience, and expanded the audience for many films – but as an educator, film scholar, and general cinephile, I am particularly sensitive to the imperative to support physical media and independent distributors, and remain committed to searching out streaming alternatives featuring independent content, even for my personal use....

https://filmquarterly.org/2019/05/03/kanopy-not-just-like-netflix-and-not-free/

unsurprising but informative, thanks!

yeah we've got providers like Criterion shut down on Kanopy and requests have to be evaluated for educational value

I really do hate streaming shit on my computer and vastly prefer physical media, but what's an educator to do? I'm teaching my film course face-to-face in June for the first time and might rewrite the syllabus so as to use films in my or the library's physical collection.

my school / system makes available a media-serving service, looks like youtube or other video sites, i used it to host ahem borrowed copies of films on my syllabus so that i could have students watch them via the usual lms. outside-classtime viewings were essential, and i doubt i could have gotten much compliance any other way.

coincidentally half my films are CC films hosted on kanopy, but that doesn't help with the others.

Kanopy will be discontinued at NYPL effective July 1 pic.twitter.com/ykGjer0tQj

— Screen Slate (@ScreenSlate) June 24, 2019

uh oh

what a shame; hopefully kanopy will be able to survive. the massive cost of subscription deals is obvs a problem for all libraries but astonished that the nypl don't feel the cost is sustainable. currently have access through a uk institution, which was already limited compared to the US offering and has now switched from general access to a system where you have to ask the library to get access to individual material.

ideal result would be that this prompts kanopy to work out a business model far more affordable/sustainable for public libraries, but we'll see

once i read that my library might have to pay $2 per view i was definitely less enthusiastic about this

yeah i'm very bummed abt the NYPL/BPL cuts. guess i'll try n do some very focused viewing this week. ordering DVDs in to your local branch remains like 90% reliable if you can deal with the wait times, tho obv they don't have everything.

welp, I never watched anything.

I invite you all to join me in borrowing DVDs as Edison intended.

Lol

Is it time to go back to the ghost of Fandor?

does anything still exist there? my free membership expired shortly after they fired everybody that worked there, and they hadn't added anything new in months at that point...

Looks the same now as at the end of last year.

i thought that was a pretty shitty thing for kanopy to do - a for-profit company contacting library patrons directly (having acquired their personal information) to complain to them that their library isn't able to afford their expensive subscription

and "open access to knowledge," for those of us who work to advance such a thing, means something different than subscription paywalls

^

Does anyone here have access to Hoopla (https://www.hoopladigital.com/)? They seem to be competing in Kanopy's sector. (DC Public Libraries have gone with Kanopy, so I can't assess Hoopla's holdings.)

hmm. i just did some superficial skimming at justwatch.com (very useful site if you've got more than one streaming service going) and Hoopla's offerings strike me as things you would not be surprised to see pop up on Netflix, minus the attention-grabbing blockbusters up top, and with, i think, a slightly larger proportion of pre-1990 titles and foreign/arthouse options. it's nothing like kanopy's criterion/arthouse/foreign/documentary focus, or fandor's cult material, but you could do a lot worse.

kanopy's overlap with hulu/netflix/criterion was considerable but there were numerous things it got that no one else did

Just got the relevant email from the NYPL.

hoopla has by far the best selection of graphic novels for a non-pay service, so i at least use it for that. but they have audiobooks, ebooks, movies, streaming music etc

Queens Public Library btw still has a fractional streaming offering through the OverDrive platform. From what I can tell the offerings here are more customized to each library system. I just scrolled through it all myself; QPL's offerings include something like 900 total movie titles, but that should be understood to include hundreds of videos explaining how to use PowerPoint 2013, semi-animated renderings of children's picture books, etc. In theory one could filter down to *movies* as such, but the data entry side of things is pathetically bad - if you filter for 'feature films,' hundreds of things that should show up don't. Also, films are sometimes "by" the director, sometimes the distributor, sometimes the lead actor. Who knew Orlando Bloom had such a rich directorial career? Still.... there's at least a handful of things and if you have a Queens library card it might be worth skimming through. Asian cinema is well-represented.

I will spend the remaining days watching as much of the otherwise absent NYPL holdings as I can, ie Chaplin's Keystone films, Melies, the Lumieres, maybe some Griffith.

Because most libraries dropped it long ago, at least of the ones that I have access to.

Still have it through Montgomery County, MD libraries.

Lucky you.

Complain to your local town board! It's a wonderful resource.

... whose business model turns out to be way too expensive for all the libraries who've terminated the relationship, sadly

Los Angeles County Library system still works with Kanopy. I think I'm watching more there than any other streaming service.

SF Library still has it too, and I've been working my way through Wiseman's films (so far 24/44). Most recently watched Rainer Sarnet's November

Atlanta/Fulton Co library system still offers it too. God, I'd pitch a fit if they ever dropped it.

I've been working my way through Wiseman's films (so far 24/44)

Probably seen 15 scattershot, but I wish I were disciplined enough to follow through on something like that.

Our Wiseman count is 39 rn.

Big recommendation for The Experimental City - newish doc from the director of Pruitt-Igoe Myth and the Jandek doc

watched Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds today, it's really interesting

the film was made in 1958 but takes place in 1945. Zbigniew Cybulski’s role as Maciek Chełmicki seems more modern than a character from 1945, in a good way.

Cybulski has been compared to James Dean. I think the film is another example of historical movie-making reflecting the era in which it was made

that's one of a trilogy with canal and a generation. i need to watch them again.

Polanski is in one of them, another has a tiny tank...

No streaming service has LOVERS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE...except Kanopy :(

Wonder what Projectr is about? Looks like docs, mostly.

Oh, fiction films too. Just got in with my library card.

Some good stuff. JustWatch doesn't even know about it.

Been around for three years, looks like: https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/grasshopper-film-streaming-virtual-cinema-platform-projectr-1202238474/

Turns out one of my library cards still gets me into Kanopy, seems to have a limited but still okay selection.