Online Movie Service Distrify Gets Alfred Hitchcock, Peter Greenaway Films

LONDON –  Movies from filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock, Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Terence Davies and Bill Douglas made between 1950 and 2000 co-funded by the British Film Institute are to be pushed out via Distrify, the online cinema service.

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Distrify gives movie content creators and distributors the opportunity to offer films to global audiences through building unique viral film sales platforms.

The service has partnered with the BFI to set up an online platform for the BFI Production Board Collection allowing movie-seekers to play 300 titles from the BFI collection.

The Distrify biz model turns every trailer for a film into an instant VOD player allowing the consumer on discovering the film to click "rent" or "buy" rather than having to go and find where they can buy or watch it.

It rewards film fans for sharing the trailers with their contacts and enables film critics, online publishers and film fans to curate their favourite film collections and earn money for their efforts.

It also aims to ensure that the majority of the revenue earned back by films is passed back to the filmmaker and gives filmmakers a viable way to get international distribution for their films.

The Distrify model and technology has been pioneered by co-founders Peter Gerard and Andy Green.

"You can choose to follow the recommendations of your favourite film critic, or follow your friends’ favourites from the collection," said Gerard.

"Anyone can set up their own collection and share it with the world, earning kudos and cash for recommending films that you love. Imagine you discovered an amazing British film from the 1960s – you are going to tell your friends about it, and via Distrify, you earn cash for sharing it legally."

Titles will include Hitchcock's Bon Voyage, Death and Transfiguration from Davies and Jarman's Wittgenstein.

"The BFI is delighted to able to use Distrify’s innovative platform and online sales tools to offer our back catalogue of features and shorts worldwide to today’s audiences," said Peter Fydler, BFI B2B chief.

Distrify is the only video player that embeds directly in social media along with the point-of-sale to date. Filmmakers or distributors can decide how much they want to sell their titles for, combine titles in different packages and set different prices for different currencies matched to the market in a given a territory.

"Distrify is growing rapidly," said Gerard.  "In the last six months we have secured more than 600 films and 2012 is already proving to be profitable for all our partners.  We plan to re-invest into the business to ensure we stay at the cutting edge and can return the most revenue possible to our filmmakers and distributors."