I’m quite a foreign film fan. I especially like the German films, however Swedish and Austrian films are not too far behind. It’s pretty hard to track down some of the films however. Thanks to YouTube it is quite easy to get a hold of trailers, but getting the entire movie, well, sometimes its impossible to track down the DVD or VHS if I’m desperate. Unfortunately it might result in tracking down a torrent file or an irc channel to source down the film. But is this my fault? Have I done a no no? I mean its the distributor’s fault, I believe, that the material is so scarce in my region. This doesn’t justify my actions, but it should highlight international demand and the inefficiencies of physical media.

But this is where things really start to annoy me. When I am able to source the film or music c.d. That I’m after, it may be extremely difficult to view the content in my region, and by difficult I’m talking about hacking the firmware of my dvd player difficult. This is all thanks to Hollywood, and their ingenious plan to stagger their releases regionally. Hollywood hits the consumer end via their DVD region code system. So lets say I really love a German movie that has come out. If I want to do things by the book, or how Hollywood envisions it, I would have to wait till they release it, regionalised, here in my country. But don’t think this will happen in a matter of weeks. The only chance of a foreign independent film getting an international release status is if it hits massive success in its own region. So I may never get the chance to see the film I want, unless I buy a flight to the country!

Now I know I’m dramatising it here. As if I’m going to fly to a foreign country to see a film. But what this region code system does is simply deny access to international films. Of course Hollywood has developed this system so that they can target individual markets as effectively as possible, secure the highest profit margins and attract the largest audiences as possible. However my question here is to the foreign film distributors. If you believe that your film will never go international status, why would you restrict your DVD products to a specific region. Wouldn’t you prefer to have it region free, so say German ex-pats could buy your product and stick it in their DVD players with no problem at all.

This all arose when I started collecting foreign films, and the idea of reselling these region restricted films came up. Unfortunately, but with no surprise at all, it is in fact illegal to on sell these imported items, and they should only be bought for personal use. If I were to resell these region restricted DVD’s I would in fact be breaching the copyright of the distributor. So in effect, the only thing that is happening here is a dumbing down effect. The film maker’s message is restricted to these nit-picking region codes, when they could be enjoyed by anyone around the world. I can see the application for Hollywood budget movies, they’re built for profit. However independent cinema, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot, get a wider audience, it can’t hurt to be region free.