Icarus Films

[whaleallright]

Right! Many libraries initially joined Kanopy expecting that it would work like some other, earlier library-focused streaming sites -- where only a few dozen licenses may have been triggered in a given school year -- and made budget projections accordingly. But perhaps beause of the wealth of attractive content on Kanopy, or because of the way it was advertised to students, or its ease of use, those libraries often found the amount of money they were spending on licenses via Kanopy explode far past their expectations. So many have subsequently instituted policies that restrict the availability of Kanopy titles along the lines I explained above: e.g., requiring that licenses be requested by instructors, not students, and that each course be limited to a certain number of licenses. The question I have is whether this reduced level of "engagement" is sufficient for Kanopy's own business model, which may have been founded on the expectation that lbraries would have a more open access policy. We'lll see!

[Glowingwabbit]

I didn't want to go on a Kanopy tangent which is why I never responded. My initial point was just that while Ovid.tv sounds great almost all of their stuff is on Kanopy which you as a consumer don't have to pay for. With so many streaming services one has to budget. Whether Kanopy is sustainable isn't really relevant.

[colinr0380]

This is not something that affects me, but the Kanopy discussion is really interesting. The idea that licensing a title based on over 30 seconds of playback sounds a pretty awful situation, especially because as a (presumably unintended) consequence that could end up with institutions putting the 'blame' on the students for 'improper use' as they desperately attempt to cut ballooning costs, rather than putting the blame on the service structuring of such a decision in the first place, which is often something they would have no particular power to affect anyway. And that could end up causing ill will between the institution and the student body for attempts to restrict access or penalise them for overuse (i.e. using a service like a library! And if it only takes 31 seconds plus to trigger then just simply browsing around randomly (like in a library!) would presumably be much more costly than if a user has a focused goal in mind!), so it would be unsurprising if the service would not be used in that form at all, or just go title by title (which ends up restricting content in a different way).

[dda1996a]

But technically there really isn't any need or point for anyone to start playing anything for more than 30 seconds if they aren't going to watch the whole thing. I find Kanopy pretty useful and easy to use and there isn't really a need to "check" things out.
My only issue is that some companies (Criterion and some Kino Lorber titles) aren't really in a good shape and are not always in HD (Criterion especially seems to have uploaded all their old SD masters of their films up there; Kino is more of a Gamble and you can end up with an SD copy and colorful subtitles for example [The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is the culprit]

[whaleallright]

But technically there really isn't any need or point for anyone to start playing anything for more than 30 seconds if they aren't going to watch the whole thing.

Sure, there's no need, but it's inevitable that students are going to use almost any streaming service—especially one presented to them by the institution as "free"—in the way they are accustomed to using Netlflix or YouTube: browsing around, watching something for a few moments (or even starting it playing in a browser window and subsequently forgetting it's there!), switching to something else.... That's the type of use that, given Kanopy's policy of charging a full license for any film watched several times for at least 30 seconds, is going to bankrupt any school eventually (even the ones with huge endowments). So there's basically a mismatch between Kanopy's policies and the way that many of its targeted users are going to interact with the site, from the point of view of those who will be paying the bills.

You're right about the unpredictable quality of the streams. That said, there are some films there in HD (like 35 Shots of Rum) that to my knowledge aren't available that way offline.

(Sorry if some are irked by this "tangent," but I also find it interesting.)

[Edited to fix typo!]

[colinr0380]

Also how would that 30 seconds be counted? From the beginning of playback (would Criterion films on the service have thirty seconds of its logo before the film even begins, as with DVDs? Or if not how far through the opening credits does that thirty seconds get a viewer, even before the first scene begins)? Or if say someone starts playback then skips around the timeline to an hour or an hour and a half into the film (or say if they have been told that the arrow sequence in Throne of Blood is a must see and just jump straight to that), does that trigger the payment immediately?

I was going to say that it is not as if in normal libraries that there is a situation that books stop a reader from flicking through them like that with a potential threat (real or imagined) of jumping past the 'free' pages into the 'paid for' content. But then perhaps even books might go that way if literature gets digitised and then it is up to the 'service provider' to decide what restrictions are in place or not.

This is a tangent on a tangent(!) but the other thing that comes to my mind is one of how restrictions 'feel' to the end user. Which might not be particularly important but feels as if it is always worth bearing in mind. I was thinking back to my time at school and remembering how certain items were bought for the school library but were so expensive that they just could not be allowed for general use by pupils. Something like the Phillips CD-i player (the height of technology at the time, or at least it felt that way in the early to mid 90s. An entire encyclopedia on a CD! With videos too!) or my personal pet peeve, the enormous box of the BBC Shakespeare plays on VHS tapes. It was understandable to not want such expensive items to immediately get lost I suppose, but that created a weird feeling of the library containing something that was immediately restricted from pupils! It was there and not there at the same time, and thus more tantalising and frustrating in its 'forbidden' nature! It has only been recently that I had the chance to 'exorcise' that sense of being barred from access by finally getting the BBC Shakespeare set myself to go through personally, but it took twenty years to do so! Thinking back on it, I would have rather that Shakespeare set had been kept locked away in the teacher's lounge or something, only to be taken out as classroom teaching aides when needed, rather than left in the library visible to but inaccessible to the students, yet still looking as if it should be.

To tie that into the Kanopy tangent, it just seems that offering something but immediately having to police it and restrict it (for perfectly understandable logistical or financial reasons by the institution), can often feel worse for those who use the service than such content not being available at all. Because you know its there, just with strings attached.

[domino harvey]

Something called Distrib Films, which has Icarus' labeling on the cover, will be releasing Jacqueline Audry's Olivia on Blu next month

[What A Disgrace]

Just release Dead Souls on Blu already, for Pete's sake.

[lzx]

Distrib Films is fast becoming one of my favorite distributors of late; they specialize in tiny foreign arthouse movies like Rojo, Good Manners, and Return of the Hero that made next to no money (I guess #1 was mis-categorized?). Olivia was a co-release with Icarus, which was probably why it actually got a theatrical run in NY and LA, for which I was quite grateful. All of which is to say: check out this film, it's a gem of repressed forbidden desires!

[Aunt Peg]

I'm very excited about the release of Olivia. I've only ever seen the film on faded VHS so it will be great it to it in all its glory.

[yoloswegmaster]

A 2-disc set titled Early Short Films of the French New Wave will be released in September. Here is the list of short films included:

[tenia]

Chateaux, not chateux.

[swo17]

A lot of these are available as extras on other releases:

ALL THE WORLD’S MEMORY (Alain Resnais, 1956, 21 min) CC Last Year at Marienbad/BFI Céline and Julie Go Boating/Icarus Resnais shorts
FOOL’S MATE (Jacques Rivette, 1956, 27 min) CC/BFI Paris Belongs to Us
THE MARINES (François Reichenbach, 1957, 21 min)
ALL THE BOYS ARE CALLED PATRICK (Jean-Luc Godard, 1957, 20 min) CC A Woman Is a Woman/BFI Vivre sa vie
THE SONG OF STYRENE (Alain Resnais, 1957, 13 min) CC Last Year at Marienbad/Icarus Resnais shorts
Ô SAISONS, Ô CHÂTEAUX (Agnès Varda, 1958, 21 min) CC Varda set
THE OVERWORKED (Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, 1958, 25 min) Radiance Bride Wore Black
A STORY OF WATER (Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, 1958, 12 min) CC Last Metro/BFI Vivre sa vie
CHARLOTTE AND HER BOYFRIEND (Jean-Luc Godard, 1958, 13 min) CC Breathless/BFI Vivre sa vie
LOVE EXISTS (Maurice Pialat, 1960, 19 min) CC/MoC L'Enfance nue
JANINE (Maurice Pialat, 1961, 17 min) MoC La Gueule ouverte
500 FRANCS (Melvin Van Peebles, 1961, 12 min) CC Van Peebles set
PARIS, A WINTER’S DAY (Guy Gilles, 1962, 10 min)
IN MEMORY OF ROCK (François Reichenbach, 1963, 11 min)
THE LITTLE CAFE (François Reichenbach, 1963, 12 min)
THE GOUMBÉ OF THE YOUNG REVELERS Jean Rouch (1965, 28 min)
THE BOTANICAL AVATAR OF MADEMOISELLE FLORA (Jeanne Barbillon, 1965, 15 min)
THE FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD WIDOWS (Jean Rouch, 1966, 25 min)
DIRECTING ACTORS BY JEAN RENOIR (Gisèle Braunberger, 1968, 22 min)

Am I missing anything?

[domino harvey]

Some of these are out already on Blu— I think the Doniol-Valcroze was just included in Radiance’s Truffaut disc, for instance (and it’s better than any feature I’ve seen from him). The Rivette is godawful. The Veuves Rouch is taken from a portmanteau film that Teshigahara and Brault contributed to (the Brault is excerpted in the Canadian box set, as I recall)

EDIT Swo beat me

[Calvin]

A lot of these are available as extras on other releases:


THE OVERWORKED (Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, 1958, 25 min)


Am I missing anything?

This is on the Radiance release of The Bride Who Wore Black.

[swo17]

Thanks, updated

[domino harvey]

I assumed, this being Icarus, that this was going to be a DVD, but according to the listing it’s a Blu, so that’s great— I was about to pick up the Radiance Truffaut mainly for the short

[swo17]

Their Resnais shorts set is also a BD. Aside from the two films duplicated here, it's got:

PAUL GAUGUIN
VAN GOGH
GUERNICA

I don't believe any of these are otherwise available, other than GUERNICA on Milestone's DVD for Mystery of Picasso

[fiendishthingy]

A similar, though not identical collection was released on DVD only in France last year, with English subtitles:

01 - "24 heures de la vie d'un clown" de Jean-Pierre Melville (1946)
02 - "Le coup du berger" de Jacques Rivette (1956)
03 - "Toute la mémoire du monde" d'Alain Resnais (1956)
04 - "Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick" de Jean-Luc Godard (1957)
05 - "Ô saisons, ô chateaux" d'Agnès Varda (1958)
06 - "Charlotte et son jules" de Jean-Luc Godard (1958)
07 - "Le Chant du styrène" d'Alain Resnais (1958)
08 - "Histoire d'eau" de Jean-Luc Godard et François Truffaut (1958)
09 - "Les Surmenés" de Jacques Doniol-Valcroze (1958)
10 - "L'Amour existe" de Maurice Pialat (1960)
11 - "Janine" de Maurice Pialat (1960)
12 - "À la mémoire du rock" de François Reichenbach (1962)
13 - "Le Petit Café" de François Reichenbach (1963)
14 - "Chanson de gestes" de Guy Gilles (1964)
15 - "L'Avatar botanique de Mademoiselle Flora" de Jeanne Barbillon (1965)
16 - "La Goumbé des jeunes noceurs" de Jean Rouch (1965)
17 - "Les Veuves de quinze ans" de Jean Rouch (1966)
18 - "Sixième face du pentagone" de Chris Marker et François Reichenbach (1968)
19 - "La Direction d'acteurs par Jean Renoir" de Gisèle Braunberger (1968)

It also includes Resnais's Van Gogh and Guernica as bonus features.

[swo17]

And that Melville short is an extra on CC's Le Silence de la mer

[Calvin]

Is there something preventing a release of Godard's Une femme coquette?

[domino harvey]

A 2-disc set titled Early Short Films of the French New Wave will be released in September. Here is the list of short films included:

Received this and went through all the unseen to me shorts. The only real discovery here was the bonus film of Jean Renoir directing the producer’s wife— biiiig “Not my tempo” vibes abound, and I would never want to be an actor

The Barbillon film is ripe for Letterboxd overly enthusiastic responses, so I dread its soon to be inflated value, as it is ultimately a fine but unexceptional feminist sketch that says less than it thinks it does

The MVP short is one of the worst shorts I’ve ever sat through, good lord— why even attempt anything like this post Strangers on a Train, and those aspects are still the most successful parts of this mess

I’d already seen and enjoyed Reichenbach’s short on the marines but I didn’t like the other two documentary shorts included here at all, which have the stench of unsuccessful attempts at making random footage into a coherent whole solely through editing

The Gilles short is nothing, and the Goumbe short by Rouch is okay and a nice appendix to Icarus’ Rouch set

[hearthesilence]

Among the many films that Chantal Akerman (1955-2015) made over forty years, four documentaries stand out. This 5-disc box set includes docs FROM THE EAST, DOWN THERE, FROM THE OTHER SIDE, and SOUTH, plus an hour-long conversation with Akerman about her entire body of work, CHANTAL AKERMAN, FROM HERE.

Box set CHANTAL AKERMAN: FOUR FILMS, only $24.99 with promo code HOLIDAY at check out. Get 50% OFF all Home Video DVDs, Blu-rays, and box sets, now through December 31st, 2023 icarusfilms.com/if-aker5

[otis]

Can anyone comment on the subtitles on the Icarus Alain Resnais: Five Short Films collection? Are they burned in, as on some Icarus discs? Are they yellow (and illegible), as on the clip from Toute la mémoire du monde here?

[swo17]

They are burned in and yellow, though they're bolder than in that clip and perfectly legible