<
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/mar/16/film-distribution-usb-drives-video-store-age>
"The streaming-skeptical cinephile faces a dilemma in 2026, especially when it
comes to watching movies at home. Increasingly, movies are available via
rentals that funnel money to mega-corporations including Amazon or Apple;
digital “purchases” from those same companies that can actually be revoked at
any moment; or, most enticingly but still somewhat inconveniently, well-curated
physical media special editions that treat films with the respect they deserve
(sometimes even respect they don’t, depending on the title) while taking up a
lot of shelf space and hitting your wallet hard. Plus, as vinyl aficionados
know, bespoke physical media can also be severely limited in terms of where you
can actually play it. Basically, almost everyone in the home-video space is
trying to either be Amazon or the Criterion Collection.
Ash Cook, the former Sundance programmer who founded the new distributor Video
StoreAge (pronounced like “storage”), is trying to figure out a third way. He
described Video StoreAge’s products – indie movies sold on USB drives – as
“like a DVD in the present tense. It’s a way to have a physical copy of a
movie, but in this case you can play it on your computer. It has digital
utility.” Like almost anything else these days, Video StoreAge is available as
a subscription, with quarterly collections of five features and five shorts.
The first drop includes Vera Drew’s buzzed-about
The People’s Joker, a
homemade superhero comedy that reappropriates many elements of the Batman
mythos into a trans coming-out story. (Honestly, it’s more fun than those
Joaquin Phoenix movies and might understand the Joker character better, too.)
But they also sell single films, including Drew’s, or any combinations of
available films as a sort of digital indie-movie mix tape on those
format-flexible USB drives. (The quarter’s shorts package is included with
every movie regardless, an automatic special feature.)
Whatever the combination, customers get to own that hard-yet-digital copy in
perpetuity, rather than being subject to the whims of a digital library that
companies reserve the right to alter as needed – unless you actually copy the
right format of file onto your hard drive, which is often easier said than
done. On the artists’ side, Video StoreAge obtains print rights only for the
titles in question, leaving film-makers with other options for distribution
should the opportunity arise, and it splits the profits 50/50 with the artists.
Cook considers buying a copy from Video StoreAge a way to “pay someone pretty
directly and get Amazon out of our business”."
Via Susan ****
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
