This short ani­mat­ed film, When the Day Breaks, comes to us via The Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da, which appears on our list of places to watch free movies online. (Scroll to the bot­tom of the page.) In this film direct­ed by Wendy Til­by and Aman­da For­bis, “Ruby the pig seeks affir­ma­tion in the city around her after wit­ness­ing the acci­den­tal death of a stranger… and finds it in sur­pris­ing places. With deft humour and fine­ly ren­dered detail, When the Day Breaks illu­mi­nates the links that con­nect our urban lives, while evok­ing the promise and fragili­ty of a new day.” Thanks Vic­to­ria for this nine min­utes of good­ness!

Nina Paley cre­at­ed some buzz ear­li­er this year when she decid­ed to give her award-win­ning ani­mat­ed film, Sita Sings the Blues, to the pub­lic, releas­ing it under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. This was anoth­er test of the con­cept that artists can make mon­ey by giv­ing their work away. Today, The Wall Street Jour­nal gives an account­ing of how this the­o­ry played out in prac­tice. Here’s how things break down:

• Total dona­tions from peo­ple who appre­ci­ate her giv­ing out free con­tent: $23,000
• Prof­its from her online store which sells mer­chan­dise and DVDs: $19,000
• The­atri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion rev­enues: $3,000 (out of total box office tal­ly of $22,350)
• Addi­tion­al DVD dis­tri­b­u­tion: $3,000
• Broad­cast tele­vi­sion dis­tri­b­u­tion: $3,000
• Rev­enue from Cen­tral Cin­e­ma in Seat­tle which showed the film: $4,000
• The grand total: $55,000

As the WSJ notes, these num­bers don’t reflect the mon­ey she spent mak­ing the film . (Paley puts the num­ber at $150,000 in hard costs.) They also don’t account for the indi­rect rev­enue that she will gen­er­ate down the line. But putting Sita Sings the Blues in front of so many peo­ple, the world now knows a lot more about Nina Paley and her tal­ents. I have to believe that she can trade on that (if she wants to) when­ev­er she agrees to direct a film, or accepts a speak­ing engage­ment. The WSJ equa­tion does­n’t take this piece into account (it’s admit­ted­ly hard to mea­sure), but it’s prob­a­bly the most impor­tant part of the over­all analy­sis.

You can down­load Sita Sings the Blues here, watch it on YouTube here, or find it in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How I Sold My Book by Giv­ing It Away: You should all see this sep­a­rate post by Seth Har­wood. It focus­es on sim­i­lar issues, but trans­lat­ed to the book world.

A quick note for US read­ers: Right now, you can find three films by Luis Buñuel, the great Span­ish (lat­er turned Mex­i­can) direc­tor. The films, pre­sent­ed by theauteurs.com, include Death in the Gar­den (1956) and two cin­e­mat­ic works from his ear­li­er sur­re­al peri­od: Un chien andalou (1929) and L’âge d’or (1930). These films are (some­what iron­i­cal­ly) avail­able only to a US audi­ence. But if you live out­side the US, you can find many more free films in our Free Movie Col­lec­tion. As a quick side note, this col­lec­tion was the jump­ing-off point for a short inter­view that I did with Jon Gor­don, the host of the pub­lic radio show, Future Tense. You can lis­ten to it below, or catch it here. Have a good Thanks­giv­ing.

Two weeks ago, we pre­sent­ed a list of 35 sites where you can watch free movies online. Now, we’ve tak­en the next step and added 100 high-qual­i­ty films to our list. Some films are con­tem­po­rary, but many are clas­sics cre­at­ed by leg­endary direc­tors, actors & actress­es. And they’re fre­quent­ly made avail­able by the great Inter­net Archive. (Note: you can usu­al­ly stream or down­load their films. It’s your choice.) Below I have list­ed 15 films, but you can find the com­plete list here. Final­ly, if you want to for­ward a short link to friends, here’s one that you can use: http://bit.ly/freeonlinemovies

• Beat the Dev­il (1953) Direct­ed by John Hus­ton, with Humphrey Bog­a­rt and Peter Lorre.
• Demen­tia 13 (1963) A hor­ror film that was one of Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s ear­ly main­stream efforts.
• His Girl Fri­day (1940) Direct­ed by Howard Hawks. A clas­sic com­e­dy with Cary Grant.
• Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton (1939) Direct­ed by Frank Capra, with Jim­my Stew­art.
• My Best Friend’s Birth­day (1987) Direct­ed by Quentin Taran­ti­no.
• Pan­ic in the Streets (1950) A noir clas­sic direct­ed by Elia Kazan, with Jack Palance.
• Rashomon (1950) By the great Japan­ese direc­tor Aki­ra Kuro­sawa.
• Scar­let Street (1945) Direct­ed by Fritz Lang with Edward G. Robin­son. A film noir great.
• Sita Sings the Blues (2008) New prize-win­ning ani­mat­ed film by Nina Paley.
• Super­Size Me (2004) Mor­gan Spur­lock­’s doc­u­men­tary on fast food in Amer­i­ca. Also watch here.
• Taxi Dri­ver (1976) Direct­ed by Mar­tin Scors­ese, with Robert DeNiro. (US view­ers only)
• The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) Direct­ed by Alfred Hitch­cock, with James Stew­art and Doris Day.
• The Ter­ror (1963) With Jack Nichol­son and part­ly shot by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la.
• Tri­umph of the Will (1935) The major Nazi pro­pa­gan­da work by Leni Riefen­stahl. With sub­ti­tles.
• The 39 Steps (1935) One of Alfred Hitch­cock­’s first hits.
• Un Chien Andalou (1929) Sal­vador Dali and Louis Bunuel’s short, silent sur­re­al­ist film.

Get the full list of 100 free online movies here. And remem­ber to fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book.

It’s nice to see cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Michael Wesch get­ting fea­tured right now on YouTube’s home­page. (A pro­fes­sor get­ting fea­tured on YouTube? That has to be a first.) Any­way, Wesch is direct­ing view­ers to a film called RIP: A Remix Man­i­festo, a prize win­ning film that offers a “prob­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into how cul­ture builds upon cul­ture [think mashup] in the infor­ma­tion age.” I have post­ed the trail­er above. You can also watch the com­plete movie in mul­ti­ple parts on YouTube (Part 1 is here), or direct­ly down­load the entire film and name your price. If you haven’t seen Wesch’s own videos, you can watch his cre­ative pieces here, here, and here.

Two weeks ago, I post­ed a col­lec­tion of 20 sites where you can watch free movies online. Thanks to your help, the page now fea­tures 30 Places to Watch Free Movies Online, and I hope to keep it grow­ing. Below, I have fea­tured five of the new addi­tions, which includes many impor­tant clas­sics. Please feel free to share the full col­lec­tion with friends, and keep send­ing your sug­ges­tions my way:

Inter­net Archive — Fea­ture Films: When you’re look­ing for free movies online, the Inter­net Archive should be your first stop. It fea­tures large col­lec­tions of come­dies, film noir and sci-fi/hor­ror flix. You will also find some for­eign films here, along with impor­tant clas­sic films, includ­ing Elia Kazan’s Pan­ic in the Streets, John Hus­ton’s Beat the Dev­il, Fritz Lang’s Scar­let Street, Howard Hawks’ His Girl Fri­day, Sergei Eisen­stein’s Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and The Kid with Char­lie Chap­lin. You can access the Archive’s full movie library here.

Babel­gum Films: Babelgum’s goal is to act as an inter­na­tion­al ‘glue’, bring­ing a huge range of pro­fes­sion­al and semi-pro­fes­sion­al films to a glob­al audi­ence – like a mod­ern-day Tow­er of Babel. They’re also mak­ing an effort to get their con­tent to smart­phones. They have an iPhone app now and apps for oth­er phones on the hori­zon. Get more detail on the mobile apps here.

FMO: FreeMoviesOn­line fea­tures a large selec­tion of pub­lic domain films. Here, you’ll find films fea­tur­ing John Wayne (Par­adise Canyon, Humphrey Bog­a­rt (Beat the Dev­il), Cary Grant (The Amaz­ing Quest of Ernest Bliss), Fred Astaire (Roy­al Wed­ding), Hitch­cock­’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, and many oth­ers.

Fan­cast: This site fea­tures a long list of free movies. Some notable films include Lau­rence Olivi­er and Kirk Dou­glas in Spar­ta­cus, John­ny Depp in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Cary Grant and Audrey Hep­burn in Cha­rade, Gary Coop­er in The Pride of the Yan­kees, Robert DeNiro in Ronin, and Bil­ly Wilder’s The Pri­vate Life of Sher­lock Holmes. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I think this site restricts films to an Amer­i­can audi­ence. But please let me know if I am wrong about that.

Google Video: For some time now, major clas­sics have appeared on Google Video. Take for exam­ple: the 1922 Ger­man silent film Nos­fer­atu, The Phan­tom of the Opera (1925), Sergei Eisen­stein’s 1918 film Alexan­der Nevsky, Howard Hugh­es’ The Out­law (1943), Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Rashomon (1950), Night of the Liv­ing Dead (1968), 1984 (based on the Orwell nov­el) and three films by the great Frank Capra — It Hap­pened One Night (with Clark Gable), It’s a Won­der­ful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton (both with Jim­my Stew­art).

Indie Movies Online: Just as it sounds. A good place to watch full-fledged indie films on the web.  Right now, you can find Peter Greenaway’s film, Rem­brandt’s J’ac­cuse and The Future We Will Cre­ate — Inside the World of TED. The site seems to be avail­able in the US, UK, Cana­da and Aus­tralia, but per­haps also beyond.

For many more free films, please vis­it 30 Places to Watch Free Movies Online

Nina Paley, a self-taught ani­ma­tor, released in 2008 an 82-minute ani­mat­ed film, Sita Sings the Blues, that min­gles the clas­sic Indi­an myth, The Ramayana, with con­tem­po­rary auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal events, and it’s all set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Han­shaw. The film, which launched the San Fran­cis­co Inter­na­tion­al Ani­ma­tion Fes­ti­val, has won awards and gath­ered a lot of fans. In late Feb­ru­ary, Paley hand­ed the film over to the pub­lic, releas­ing it under a Cre­ative Com­mons license (down­load it here). And she has now made it avail­able on YouTube. Hence the visu­al­ly stun­ning film above. Nat­u­ral­ly, we’ve added Sita Sings the Blues to our col­lec­tion of YouTube favorites.

In the mean­time, check out our new col­lec­tion, 30 Places to Watch Free Movies Online