In the automotive industry, in food, in book publishers: everywhere it took decades for a functioning market with many suppliers to become oligopolies, where a few, sometimes only two, can determine the supply and price. With streaming, this has barely taken ten years. The German market is a triopoly, almost completely dominated by American companies, Netflix and Amazon Prime (30 percent each) and Disney (20 percent), as well as Sky (seven) and Apple (four).
This has a massive impact on what we get to see: Despite the seemingly huge selection, 95 percent of world film production is not represented there at all. So when we stream, we move in a small bubble that, against our better knowledge, we mistake for the whole world, like Twitteria their Twitter. After all, almost ten percent “other” are still left. Let’s take a look at what the independents have to offer.
When a streamer defines itself as “the opposite of Netflix”, as Cinetek CEO Jean-Baptiste Viaud does, that instills a certain basic trust a priori. Its unique concept is to have well-known directors write a list of their favorite films, each 50 films long. For example, you will learn that Aki Kaurismäki likes Orson Welles’ “The Sign of Evil” and that this film is also on the favorite lists of Truffaut, Scorsese, Jeunet, Leconte, Arslan and Ferrara (among others). This creates an ever denser network of supercurators (let’s call them that) that covers the entire history of film.
In an ideal world, you would only have to click on the titles and you could then see your way through film history, but the world is not ideal, it is ruled by the right. Of the approximately 3,000 titles on the lists, only about a third can actually be streamed because the Cinetek does not (yet) own the performance rights for the others. You can watch individual films (for three euros) or take out a monthly subscription (also three euros) for which ten films on a specific topic (“Voyeurism”, “Borderline”, “Weimar Republic”) are offered. And the best thing about the project is that a quarter of the subscribers are under 25 years old. By the way, another fantastic source for French films is tv5mondeplus.
Once upon a time there was a community-based platform for anime that was founded in 2009 in the French city of Tourcoing and was named Wakanim. It quickly put more and more series and films online, expanded to England, Scandinavia, Germany and Eastern Europe and became the most important port of call for anime fans in Europe.
But for the last year or so, the small anime platforms have been eaten up by the larger ones, like the smaller Godzilla monsters once were: Crunchyroll took over Animax and Wakanim, Funimation took over Crunchyroll, and Funimation in turn is owned by Sony anyway. You can still register with Wakanim, but sooner or later everything will go through Crunchyroll, which now has over 1000 series in its program that can be accessed ad-free for ten euros a month.
If there’s something that unites Germany’s viewing community, it’s crime fiction. It all began in the late 1950s with the “steel net” and has since expanded into a veritable glut. It was therefore only logical that last year a pure crime channel was created: Krimirausch, with more than 2000 episodes from 50 series, back to “Kommissar”, “Derrick” and “Der Alte”, but also with criminalists who are still on duty like “Marie Brand” or those of “Letzte Spur Berlin”.
The selection is currently still similar to a ZDF retro media library, but there hasn’t been much to see of the promised expansion to include ARD and Scandinavian crime thrillers. You shouldn’t expect 4K either, the channel shows the series in the version that was once broadcast by the broadcaster. But it only costs five euros a month.
Netflix has also started picking up films from Africa, in line with its strategy of occupying every territory in the world. It is, so to speak, the filtered variant of the great wealth of films that is now being produced on the dark continent – which, however, continues to be represented internationally by starving children, corrupt dictators and lions in the savannah.
There have long been streaming channels that convey a much broader picture of African life. One of the largest is Irokotv, which was founded in 2011 and has over 5000 titles in its program, mainly Nollywood films and series. Iroko – although born in a terraced house in London – is a child of the start-up scene in Lagos, Nigeria, the “Silicon Valley of Africa”. And not exactly cheap: the subscription costs 15 euros per month. The interesting thing about the subscribers is that four-fifths come from outside of Africa.
When he had spent a quarter of a century in the service of his television child, the inventor of “Lindenstraße”, Hans W. Geißendörfer, was looking for another challenge. And she found her, just turned 70, with the online portal alleskino: at some point the entire German-speaking film heritage should be found there, including Austria and Switzerland, an estimated 15,000 titles.
Nine years after the start, this is still a long way off. At the moment there are a good 1000, but there is actually no better place on the web for a cross-section of German cinema from the 1930s to the present, for Weimar German and West German and East German and all-German films. The collection is quite eclectic, from “Tiger von Eschnapur” to “Stalingrad” to “Fack ju Göthe”
Individual films cost between six and eight euros (to buy) and between three and four euros (to rent). The “Filmclub” package with a monthly changing selection of selected films is available for five euros per month.
Andreas Wildfang was the streaming pioneer in Germany. His Realeyz platform offered the first subscription model in 2011, independent films, cooperation with universities, everything that didn’t make it to the cinemas. His audience: metropolitan, female, young. But what was 14,000 subscribers versus 200 million for Netflix?
This is how the idea of a European streaming service came about that could compete with the giants – a program that is entertaining, but conveys different messages. The extreme individualism is the quintessence of many Netflix series, including those that American clients have filmed in Europe: Individuals act without social context. Not every series has to put on a Ken Loach filter, but many Netflix or Amazon productions also have an inherent message, and that is: the individual is not responsible for the whole.
Wildfang has teamed up with several European platforms and with Metropolitan, the major French film distributor, resulting in a library of thousands of titles: films from the major international festivals, links to festivals such as DokLeipzig and the Max Ophüls Prize, series that causing a sensation in Europe, young filmmakers, new actors – that’s the Sooner program for eight euros a month or 60 euros for an annual subscription.
The BBC is the oldest public broadcaster in the world. It began broadcasting 100 years ago (October 1922) and its television program 86 years ago (November 1936). There’s quite a bit coming together, and much of it can be streamed with iPlayer, with a focus on the present, but some stretching back to the 1980s. “Blackadder” is there, “The Office” and “Peaky Blinders” – and the beauty of it is: everything is free.
The small stumbling block is that the free offer is actually limited to Brits, because they pay the fees from which the BBC produces all the nice programs. So you need an IP address in the UK – or a VPN tunnel that will trick iPlayer into thinking you’re in the UK. This is not a criminal offense as VPN services are legal in the UK; however, the BBC account that has been set up may be blocked at some point. One of the best tunnels that works well with iPlayer is NordVPN.
One could, with cheeky arrogance, be of the opinion that Austria is actually not an independent film country. The streaming portal Flimmit, which only shows Austrian productions – also cinema films (“Der Joker”, “Lourdes”), but above all TV series, from the legendary “Kottan” to “Kaisermühlen-Blues” to “Altes Geld “.
As part of the public service offer of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), the platform mainly offers ORF content such as series and shows. Films cost around four euros to rent and nine euros to buy when viewed individually; the flat rate is €7.50 per month. Shouldn’t be too expensive for our neighbors: That’s easy!
