Before the Music Dies Tagged Articles at Cinematical

While the options for indie-film distribution and exhibition are improving, it's still difficult for feature-length films to find larger audiences outside the festival circuit. IFC and B-Side have both been making distribution deals with lesser-known, lower-budget indie films in the past couple of years, and now they're uniting to give even better chances of success to those films. Variety has the details on the partnership the companies have made together.

If you're a regular film-fest attendee, you might have used B-Side's festival web application to schedule your movie selections, and maybe rate and review the films you saw at the fest. IFC and B-Side will examine those ratings and statistics to figure out which films audiences liked most at festivals -- and if the films don't have distribution elsewhere, may buy the distribution rights themselves. The films would then get airtime on IFC as well as online distribution through B-Side, which started offering DRM-free movie downloads on their site earlier this summer.

The first film to receive this new distribution option will be the 2006 documentary Before the Music Dies. B-Side bought the distribution rights last year, and the doc about the music industry is already available on the B-Side website to purchase as a download or DVD. Now the Forest Whitaker-narrated film will be aired on IFC early next year. The Variety article notes that this partnership is with the television division of IFC, which means that these deals will not necessarily include theatrical distribution. Still, getting time on IFC is a great deal for festival favorites that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle.

[via IndieWIRE]

Here are some nibbles for your Easter Movie Basket:

• Did you know that the original mascot of Walt Disney was a rabbit? Before the days of Mickey Mouse, there was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (who, incidentally, looks lots like Mickey). The character was stolen from the visionary and now Walt Disney Studios has gotten the rights to Oswald back -- 80 years later. Now the silent shorts featuring Oswald are going to come to DVD as part of "Walt Disney Treasures" collectible sets. However, if you're itching to see the Mickey-like character, you'll have to wait until December. This volume is coming out just in time for the holidays. It might have been more fitting to have it come out now, during Bunny season, but I guess people don't buy into bunnies as much as they do into Santa.
  
• Indie filmmakers now have a new way to distribute their features -- Indie911, via Hoooka. A site that primarily sells music, it is now getting into film with the release of Before the Music Dies, a documentary on the music business that will be released on the site tomorrow. It features the likes of musicians such as Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton and Bonnie Raitt. In a twist, the movie will be available without DRM or "Digital Rights Management" that pesky block that doesn't allow downloaders to burn purchased content to DVD. Chris Hyams says: "DRM is most onerous for the consumers who actually download content legally, and those are the people we are asking to become involved in the process and help spread the word." Music will be available for $9.99 hi-res, and $3.99 for portable low-res version -- both of which you can burn to your heart's content.
• 20-year-old Spanish actress María Valverde has been cast as the lead in the upcoming Spanish Civil War romance, The Anarchist's Wife (or, is it "Wives"? Variety has called it both...). She joins a number of other notable European actors like Jean-Marc Barr and Nina Hoss in the story about Justo (Juan Diego Botto), a lawyer who turns into a radio journalist fighting for the Republican cause. He disappears, and his wife, Manuela (Valverde) must raise their children on her own, as she continues to hope that he will be found. The film is based on the story of Marino Noelle's (who co-wrote and will co-direct the feature) grandparents. After fighting against Francisco Franco in Madrid, his grandfather was deported to a concentration camp and then fought for the French Resistance. Whether he did reunite with his family or not, the filmmakers haven't shared. The film goes into production this May.