Cinema-i Online Indie Film Store Opens for Business

by News Editor
Published on Apr 29, 2003 12:00 AM



That's why Michael Jacobs says he founded cinema-i, an independent DVD store that aims to rectify this problem and to tap the ''untapped pool of independent features'' that are left swinging in the wind. Cinema-i.com is an online retail site that showcases obscure independent, foreign and documentary DVDs, alongside traditional art house hits. It is a virtual store—a virtual Blockbuster Video store for the non-blockbuster film.

''Your film can get great reviews at Sundance and still get no distribution,'' says Michael Jacobs who believes cinema-i can do for the film business what online self-publishing has done for the print world: diversify it and create some wiggle room for the independent artists whose fare is creative, artistic, and otherwise out of the mainstream. "Filmmaking today is at a stage where music making was five years ago and print publishing was in the late Eighties," Jacobs observes.

It has become legitimate for independent musicians, writers and other artist to break into the industry through alternative forms of distribution. Jacobs has been involved in the Los Angeles-area movie business for about 12 years and has three feature films to his credit as screenwriter. The idea for cinema-i has been running around his brain for the past few years.

What people find on the website of the cinema-i store is films in four major categories: American, Foreign, Animation, and Documentary. Most of the films are feature length. Jacobs says he's chosen not to stock short films, because he feels that category is already well served by many other Web sites such as Atom Films and IFILMS.

Cinema-i is a DVD store; it does not sell films on VHS, VideoCD, or anything other than DVD. ''My original idea when I started cinema-i was that technology could be used not just to shoot and edit films but also to distribute them more effectively. I wanted to use DVD to open up a new distribution window,'' says Jacobs. Besides, he felt that there was no realistic alternative: ''I didn't see a great future for VHS, and noticed that most feature film sales are going to DVD, and figured that the penetration of DVD players, though still not equal to VCRs, was close enough,'' says Jacobs.

Another benefit to filmmakers who choose to sell their films through cinema-i is that they do not have to surrender any rights. ''We are a store,'' says Jacobs. ''We just want to be that store where you can get films you read about in festival reports. The more we can help to bring filmmakers together with their potential fans inside and outside the industry, the more we will succeed.'' Filmmakers wishing to sell their films at cinema-i can visit the site for submission information at www.cinema-i.com.