Maybe not enough people around the city know about Scarecrow, and what an amazing archive it is. Scarecrow is where you can go when the movie you're looking for isn't streaming, isn't available anywhere else. Access to the history of the movies is what they offer, with maybe more movies in their collection than not.
It's not frickin' Blockbuster, it's important. Anyone who loves movies and has some money should pitch in. SIFF should pitch in; they'd be a good match.
They're trying to raise 1.8 mil to keep a single blockbuster open. Physical media isn't profitable anymore. Though I guess they're trying to preserve that rather than the movies themselves.
Have you been to scarecrow? Every time I go, I get a vivid sense of the scope of cinema as an art form. It's humbling and tantalising, like I'm crawling through a dragons hoard looking for just the right treasure.
You wouldn't call it "a blockbuster" if you'd been there.
I appreciate that it's not literally like a blockbuster, but they're running a giant physical media rental archive. The only ones that can really participate are locals, and it's up to the locals to prop them up. Now if they solicited donations to digitize and make available their collection for archival purposes? That'd turn heads.
I'm not against digitisation and preservation, but their collection is by no means solely in the realm of public domain works. They keep current, and cast a wide net. Getting digital streaming rights to everything they've got would be a legal-logistical nightmare even for a startup with billions in venture capital.