Kino Lorber Puts Online 50 Free Films: Watch Classics by Jean-Luc Godard, Derek Jarman, Taika Waititi & Other Major Filmmakers

Even cinephiles who know lit­tle of the busi­ness of film dis­tri­b­u­tion will have devel­oped asso­ci­a­tions, how­ev­er uncon­scious, between cer­tain pre-fea­ture cor­po­rate logos and the exhil­a­rat­ing cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ences that tend to fol­low. What sort of pic­ture comes to mind, for exam­ple, when you read the name Kino Lor­ber? Per­haps doc­u­men­taries on such com­pelling sub­jects as New York Times street-fash­ion pho­tog­ra­ph­er Bill Cun­ning­ham or gone-viral Win­neba­go pitch­man Jack Reb­ney; per­haps inter­na­tion­al genre spec­ta­cles of recent years like Ana Lily Amir­pour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night or Hélène Cat­tet and Bruno Forzani’s Let the Corpses Tan.

Then again, your own taste in Kino Lor­ber-dis­trib­uted movies may run to the likes of Good­bye to Lan­guage, Jean-Luc Godard­’s 2014 med­i­ta­tion orig­i­nal­ly screened in 3D — or Derek Jar­man’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal last tes­ta­ment Blue, which plays out entire­ly on a sol­id field of the epony­mous col­or.

These are just a few of the more than 50 films now avail­able free to watch on Kino Lor­ber’s Youtube chan­nel. (Note that the actu­al num­ber of view­able films may vary depend­ing on your loca­tion.) Span­ning var­i­ous eras, gen­res, ori­gins, and forms, togeth­er they offer a sense of the niche Kino Lor­ber has carved out for itself dur­ing its 45 years in busi­ness so far.

You may spot an old favorite on Kino Lor­ber’s Youtube chan­nel, but the greater joy of explor­ing it lies in dis­cov­er­ing films you missed the first time around. Gabe Klinger’s Por­to, for instance, went prac­ti­cal­ly unseen despite its evoca­tive vision of the title city and posthu­mous show­case of acclaimed actor Anton Yelchin. Boast­ing a cast of Phoebe Cates, Brid­get Fon­da, Tim Roth, and Eric Stoltz, Michael Stein­berg’s Bod­ies, Rest & Motion screened at Cannes as an Un Cer­tain Regard selec­tion back in 1993; sure­ly the time has come for its reap­praisal as a dis­til­la­tion of Generation‑X ennui. Even Tai­ka Wait­i­ti once made less­er-known movies in and about his native New Zealand. Thanks to Kino Lor­ber, his fans can can watch Boy, which launched him on the jour­ney that has made him one of the most glob­al­ly pop­u­lar direc­tors alive. See the com­plete playlist of films here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

365 Free Movies Stream­ing on YouTube

Watch 70+ Sovi­et Films Free Online, Cour­tesy of Mos­film, the Hol­ly­wood of the Sovi­et Union

Watch Free Cult Films by Stan­ley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi & More on the New Kino Cult Stream­ing Ser­vice

Watch Hun­dreds of Pol­ish Films Free Online: Fea­ture Films, Doc­u­men­taries, Ani­ma­tions & More

The Atom­ic Café: The Cult Clas­sic Doc­u­men­tary Made Entire­ly Out of Nuclear Weapons Pro­pa­gan­da from the Cold War (1982)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.