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Agnes Varnum is a freelance writer, film programmer and communications manager for the Austin Film Society. She is the primary contributor to doc it out and Tribeca Film Institute's Resources.

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Tribeca Film Institute Launches Reframe

June 9th, 2008 • Related Posts • Tags

Insiders have been waiting for this one… (now merged with the former Renew Media) announced today the of Reframe, a portal to locate and buy tough-to-find titles. The aim of is to aggregate and make available content that now isn’t due to high cost of digitization. Distributors won’t bother investing in converting older titles if they are unsure of being able to recoup their costs in sales, besides hosts of collections living in libraries, private vaults, basements and other archives without the cash to digitize. might wind up being a huge boon for , and also will hopefully eliminate the problem of hard to find titles. From the press release:

Many filmmakers, distributors and archives can’t afford the high conversion cost to the digital format, and have been reluctant to invest in digitizing “niche” content. converts all content to high-quality digital files; Works in video formats will be digitized for free, and film formats will be digitized “at-cost.” In a unique arrangement, returns a digital copy to the rights-holder for free, and allows them to make their content available to others in a nonexclusive arrangement. then makes these works available for sale to the public, sold at prices based on the suggested retail price set by the rights-holder. All content is made available for sale on on Demand at Amazon.com as well as digital download to own or rent through Amazon’s Unbox service. More About Reframe>>

Part of the community building portion of the site is curated lists. Here is a link to my previously mentioned Hybrid Documentary list. We were limited to films that are currently available on Amazon, so this is by no means meant to be all-inclusive. I did send a long a few titles that aren’t available on Amazon, which I’ve been told will help staff when reaching out to content holders to get them on the site. I’d love to hear your additions to my list, or if you make your own, please let me know!

There Are 4 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by Chuck on 9 June 2008:

    You’ve probably seen it, but here’s my list.

    I think we were thinking along the same lines (hybrid docs vs. interrogating docs), although the films we listed were quite different. I played pretty fast and loose with categories, though. My list could have been called “25 Films I Like.”

  2. Comment by Agnes Varnum on 9 June 2008:

    Thanks Chuck, I hadn’t seen the list so thanks for posting. I was trying out the navigation and checking out sections today but had to get back to the day job.

    I have to admit that I find it hard to maintain the lines of thought you lay out in the opening paragraph to your entire list, but it is an impressive list. I’ll trying watching the few on there I haven’t seen and perhaps the lines of your net will become clearer.

  3. Pingback by The Chutry Experiment » Two New Film Resources on 10 June 2008:

    [...] Reframe, a portal that helps users locate and purchase obscure or hard-to-find movie titles.  As Agnes points out, the goal of Reframe is to “aggregate and make available content that now isn’t [...]

  4. Comment by Chuck on 10 June 2008:

    I probably should have done two lists because I’ll admit that the list doesn’t really cohere completely. There are also a number of logical leaps that probably speak to my desire to make connections between objects that are often seen as pretty distant.