The old cliche “you get what you pay for” is sometimes false. Snagfilms.com has proven it.
No cable television company has ever run lines down the road I live on, and I doubt I would subscribe if they ever did. Most of the films coming out in theaters do not appeal to me. I have also begun to tire of google video and youtube. In the past few months I had started to despair of finding any more decent movies to watch. Then one day I stumbled upon SnagFilms.
Snagfilms was launched in 2007 and now has over 500 films viewers can watch for free. If you like fictional films, Snagfilms is not for you. The company only shows documentaries. Since I prefer documentaries and believe that the best filmmaking in the world today is being done by documentary filmmakers, this is not a problem for me.
SnagFilms has a number of channels you can watch on your computer, including PBS, Peter Jennings Reporting, National Geographic and Arts Alliance America.1 You will undoubtedly already have heard of some of the films at SnagFilms. For example, you can watch Supersize Me, Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary about fast food corporations and obesity.
Let me tell you briefly about just two of the documentaries I watched at SnagFilms. Paper Clips, directed by Elliot Berlin and Joe Fab, is a 2004 film about a group of children from Whitwell Middle School in Tennessee. Trying to understand the concept of six million, they decide to collect six million paper clips, one for every Jewish person the Nazis killed during the Holocaust. They succeed in their goal, but more importantly they succeed in understanding better what the Holocaust was all about.
Born Again is the story of Director Markie Hancock’s fundamentalist Christian childhood and her 20-year struggle to leave the church. She finally decides to tell her family that she is a lesbian. The movie focuses primarily on her relationship with her parents and two brothers before and after she tells them that she is a lesbian.
Both of these films were excellent, although I liked Paper Clips better. Both are representative of the high quality documentaries available at SnagFilms.
I plan to watch several more documentaries at SnagFilms. I am intrigued by such exotic titles as Lawns: America’s Passion for Grass and 55: A Meditation on the Speed Limit. I am particularly looking forward to watching On Common Ground, a film that brings together American and German veterans of the battle of the Huertgen Forest, a World War 2 battle that ended with 60,000 casualties.
Your tastes might differ from mine, but I have no doubt that you can find something to watch at SnagFilms. The company has documentaries on sports, war, poverty, poetry, music, religion, crime, nature, other countries, etc. If you can’t find something to watch at SnagFilms, the problem is yours not theirs.
There are a two things that viewers might not like about SnagFilms. Sometimes the movies seem to hesitate or break up. I assume this may have something to do with either Snagfilm’s website or the speed of my internet connection. (I use Verizon DSL). A lesser problem is that you have to watch a few commercials with each film, and you cannot fast forward through them. Watching a few commercials, however, is a small price to pay for the quality films you get to watch–for FREE.
SnagFilms has added three hundred new titles to its website since its inception. The company continues to add new films on a regular basis. And you have their permission to snag any film from the site and post it elsewhere on the internet, hence the name Snagfilms.
And did I mention that it’s FREE.
What more could a film lover want?
1. Here is a complete list of SnagFilms Production Companies and Partners as of March 5, 2009. Alive Mind Media (a division of Lorber HT Digital), Arts Alliance America, APL, Anderson Productions Ltd, Alexandra Juhasz, Blowback Productions, Bradley Beesley, Brave New Films, Braverman Productions, Inc., Cactus Three, Campus MovieFest, EUE Screen Gems, EyeSteel Film, Filmoption, Georgetown University Athletics, ITVS, IndiePix, James Lester Films, Jigsaw Productions, Kartemquin Films, Keep A Child Alive, Koch Lorber Films, Louverture Films, Matson Films, Media That Matters Film Festival/Arts Engine, Inc., National Geographic, Open Door Co., Open Eye Pictures, Inc., Palm Pictures, PBS, Peter Jennings Productions, Peter Rosen Productions, Inc., Post Factory, Red Envelope Entertainment, Reel Works, Season of Light, Seventh Art Releasing, Sundance Preserve, Inc., United Nations, Westlake Entertainment , Inc., XPLR Productions
