Putting movies online

In 2000, I screened my first film, BeauteouS: Stephanie, for the first time at the Chicago International Film Festival. There it won the award for Best Student Documentary, and then screened at a handful of other film festivals. It felt like the most auspicious of beginnings to a film career.

Though I keep churning out films, largely on my own dime, and enjoy screenings at film festivals and invited talks at colleges, I always have a nagging feeling that my films reach few people beyond the converted (i.e. queers, feminists, indie enthusiasts). How many people have seen my early short films? Perhaps 10,000 total? Why can't it be more?

Admittedly, I've had this imagined future for my films; people buy them regularly, they are re-released on DVD, picked up for collections on feminist filmmaking and the like. But the reality is, eleven years after BeauteouS: Stephanie was released, that hasn't happened. The older works might screen once a year and a kind friend might offer to buy a DVD now and then. But largely, the DVDs sit on my shelf and the films remain unwatched.

In this era of "put it online" there is an expectation that artists should post their work for free. I've struggled with this idea for years, actively pulling down copies of my films available from bit torrent sites when alerts pop up in the email inbox. I've whined, "I just wanted to break even on these films, not even make a profit!" The idea of putting it online signaled an end to that possibility.

But as the years tick by and the DVDs sit on the shelf, I realize no matter how much people want to see the film (thousands of such comments over the years) and how cheap they are ($30 for 4 movies) and how available I make them (pay pay button on a website) they remain unsold. Then I saw this brilliant film on Vimeo, up for the masses to enjoy (and 29,000 have) and I've reconsidered the whole thing. I'm the only one holding these films back and it's fine time to let that go. These films got me to a place where I could land teaching jobs, raise funds for Period and slowly, maybe in the course of 20 years through a great relationship with my distributor, break even on that film. BeauteouS has screened at over 100 film festivals around the world in 15 different countries. The fact that it didn't sell is just fine. It did something despite its imperfections. And for that, I'm proud.

And so, I let go of BeauteouS and BeauteouS: Stephanie today, posting them on Vimeo. I'm holding onto two others, because they are very personal (i.e. I'm naked and on fire in one) Maybe, once more security comes, I'll release those films. But for now, if you want to see it, for fucks sake - buy it!