What Is Interesting About The IFC/Netflix Partnership
Netflix has adopted its' inner hipster and partnered up with the Independent Film Channel to stream 53 select titles via Netflix Instant. This is sort of like their current partnership with Starz on Demand, but infinitely cooler due to the inclusion of John Sayles' Brother From Another Planet. But let's explain in detail why this is actually relevant rather than just go "OH MY GOD, JOE SWANBERG OMG STREAMING ETC."
Because I assume you can at least read and care about film, aside from wanting me to copy and paste a press release.
Originally, IFC had partnered with Blockbuster for exclusive rights to its' rentals' expansion in 2008. At the time, who knew streaming rental services such as Netflix would actually prosper? Well, to be fair, IFC did. They've been pioneering a Video on Demand service for their first-run films that get sentenced to an otherwise crippling New York only release since 2008. This marks their first time partnering with a second-party system to showcase their titles.
So what now? Well, Netlfix Instant (as of yesterday) has access to 53 titles owned by IFC. Those include the ones you read--er, other sites copied and pasted from the press release like Joe Swanberg's Nights and Weekends and Hirokazu Kore-eda's Nobody Knows.
But what else is there?
Unfortunately, nothing recent like Antichrist or Police, Adjective. For those films, you have to be in New York and able to attend the IFC Center screenings. Still, marvel at all the films you can see that are under the IFC catalog:
- -Brothers: Before it was remade by Jim Sheridan with Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire, this movie was considered "independent" and unheard of outside the Toronto Film Festival.
- -The Brother From Another Planet is fantastic for this scene.
- -Following is Christopher Nolan's debut film.
- -Kitchen Stories is because I'm a fan of Bent Hamer's Factotum.
- -Sex is Comedy because I loved Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard at NYFF this year. And a sister dies.
