In the swing of creative media production democratization and with the development of online sources, film, particularly of the independent ilk, is progressively identifiable. Yet, as for its accessibility, outside a few tenuously working models, the best known of which is the one launched by iTunes, online distribution companies catering in unique film product are still few and far between.

With its catalogue of nearly 3,000 titles, including Alex Karpovsky's The Hole Story, Michael Tully's Cocaine Angel and Ry Russo-Young's Marion, IndiePix.net is one of few companies working without pause and with enthusiasm in this area. “We wanted to give a voice to independent filmmakers who hadn’t had the opportunity for distribution for their films, particularly the filmmakers who were working with low-budget films that have extraordinary artistic quality and also have the ability to reach a wide demographic,” David Persky, IndiePix’s marketing manager, explains. “We thought that through our technological capacity that we could reach large audiences dying to see this type of work previously undistributed.”

To speak of the company’s ambition is an act in and of itself tiring. Within the year of its official August 2007 Web site launch, it’s set a goal to house a library of 10,000 titles; has very publicly jumped to the support of independent film production by providing finishing funds for Jennifer Vendetti’s directorial debut Billy the Kid; and, initiated in tandem with Indian Cinematic Arts, Indie-India, a program to introduce a global audience to independent Indian film often neglected in favor for the popularized Bollywood fare. For a large company this would already seem daunting; for a company of thirteen art and film enthusiasts, it must seem almost a world.

Fortunately, IndiePix.net founders Barnet Liberman and Bob Alexander, company chairman and president respectively, are experienced in the entertainment game, and so this world renders as manageable. Even after twenty years of work in consumer market research and analysis of home entertainment as it transitioned from VHS to the Internet, and despite any disenchantment that could naturally have come with all those years of work, Alexander writes about the IndiePix venture via e-mail with exuberant digital strokes.

“I became convinced that as part of this rapid expansion of the market consumers in the US were also becoming far more sophisticated in their choice of product, opening up opportunities for previously un-offered titles, like award-winning independent film titles,” he says. “In addition, it was increasingly apparent to me—and to those that I worked with in the studio marketing and advertising departments—that traditional theatrical exhibition was increasing uneconomic, financially unrewarding and at the end of its useful life. The combination of changing consumer markets, new opportunities driven by technology and crumbling business models in the traditional community was too much to bear!”

The exclamation here is only a glimpse of that not rare, overly excitable spirit that seems to live in each of the IndiePix staffers, which is also clearly evident in their blog entries and video interviews with filmmakers. And, is at this particular moment also apparent with Indie-India’s collection curator, Gauri Sathe, who speaks rapidly and with intelligence about the independent scene throughout India.

When I tell her that although I’m a huge fan of independent Indian cinema and yet rarely get the chance to see it, she calms me a bit, saying, “It’s actually not your fault. The ones that you really want to see are probably not available to be watched anywhere.

“Most of the films that are made in India don’t make it to markets outside of India, and sometimes don’t get enough distribution inside of India either. As an example, 1,026 films got made last year. Seventy percent of those films were independent films, but only the other 30 percent, which were not independent films, made it to markets outside of India.

“That’s what we are trying to do. As we know independent films here, there are as many made in India, and we want to be able to pick up those independent films and make a global audience available to those films. It’s not just Indian people that want to watch films that are made in India, but there’s nothing to be watched because there’s nothing available.”

In talking about Indian cinema, it’s requisite to ask about Bollywood and how that mainstream film art form, consumed so willingly by people of Indian descent in the foreign market, effects the indie scene. “Watching those movies in India has a completely different culture. It’s almost ritualistic. It’s three hours of escaping into a fantasy world where you see people singing for no rhyme or reason. That’s the whole culture, and you have to learn to appreciate that,” she says.

“Most Indians only know film in that way. It’s like if there’s a film without song and dance, it is really an “art film,” as it’s called in India, and “art film” doesn’t have the same kind of audience or profile of audience that a Bollywood film does. So, it becomes commercially viable for a person or studio making a Bollywood film to get distribution outside of India and go into these pockets where there’s a large Indian community to show their product there. It doesn’t become commercially viable at all for independent film to do that.”

By releasing films like Vishal Bharadwaj’s The Blue Umbrella, which was also in a somewhat surprise move premiered without a theatrical run on download-to-own technology by India’s United Television, UTV, Sathe hopes IndiePix will not only be able to share these type of mainstream films with independent financial models but also discover more grassroots work from areas often under-represented in the scene.

“Every time people say, “Indian cinema,” we don’t want them to think about Bollywood song and dance. We want them to think quality cinema made on a range of topics where they’re entertaining or for a social cause or for anything. We want to be able to make that mark within the audience that watches independent film. We want people to say, “Oh, yeah, independent cinema from India,” she enthuses.

Outside identifying the creative, however, the distribution of the work all heavily depends on the quality of its technology. With its Download-to-Own system, IndiePix delivers professional grade image and sound, avoiding the perils of the now YouTube.com ubiquitous grainy streaming altogether, Alexander explaining, “Filmmakers in the independent film community don't have big budgets for spending on special effects, complicated action shots—maybe except for the kung fu genre!—or extravagant computer graphics. As a result, they concentrate on what they can do, which is to take beautiful pictures. And certainly one of the characteristics of indie film is simply that the images are in fact more lovely to look at. Having said that, they would really prefer that you see their work the way they delivered it, in as much visual and sound detail as possible.

“You can't get that in a streaming version that is super compressed and stuffed into your PC monitor, compromised by various "digital rights management" techniques and chained to the computer that received it. Apparently Hollywood movies don't suffer from this problem. People seem reasonably satisfied with the streaming presentations they get from the various download services that are available.

“We believe that it is uniquely appropriate for independent films to be delivered at the highest possible quality level, if they are going to be delivered electronically, and that is what our Download Manager does. These files are completely home theater quality, high resolution, top quality audio -- the way the filmmaker recorded and edited them,” he continues. “The architecture of the system is very clever in its expandability, security and ease of operation. We're very proud of that. But the thing that counts the most is that the pictures look great and the presentation sounds great. That's what the filmmakers would want.”

As for the filmmakers, the 60-40 split, one of the most generous profit shares in the distribution field, Persky informs me, doesn’t hurt either. Nor does the filmmaker’s retention of the film’s ownership. “We’re just acting as a conduit to distribute (the film) and bring it out to the general public,” Persky says. “We feel that building good relationships with the filmmakers is the most important thing that we possibly can do and is ultimately integral to our long-term success.”

“We spend time to develop those relationships and to make sure (the filmmakers) have what they need so that we can communicate their message and their ideas to the general public,” he adds.

Although the online distribution arena is currently plagued in these early stages by its slow development, it’s also a sure development, a matter of time development, an investment of energy and confidence development.

“The independent film market is extremely fragmented and largely as a result of that characteristic, it is not viewed as a significant commercial opportunity,” Alexander admits. “We don't agree with that view. We believe that we can reorganize the market, which means taking on many different aspects of independent film distribution from working with filmmakers, to Web sites, to breakthrough discovery concepts for finding titles. We even work with existing traditional retail distribution and established Internet players. And new technological options are important in the reorganization of the market—that's fundamental.”

“It’s truly a market without boundaries anymore,” Sathe says echoing Alexander. “That said, it’s a market with very well-etched boundaries. Say there’s a film on yoga that we have. That film, it will be watched by yoga lovers everywhere, and you don’t have to be of a certain age; you don’t have to be of a certain ethnicity; you don’t have to be of any particular demographic. You couldn’t be put into any kind of demographic. When you do segmentation, you’re not 24-35 years of age, living in New York and wearing Prada shoes. You don’t fit into any of that. You could be that, but you also could be anybody else.

“At the same time, your profile does need to have love for yoga and interest in yoga. So, irrespective of your geographic location, your ethnicity or age group, your ability to spend, you still are a niche audience for that particular film. What better way to reach out to you than the Internet? You have access to your product at any time that you like, and you can watch it at your own pace. Now, think about it. You couldn’t do this if you were doing distribution in a film theater. You couldn’t do it if you didn’t live in a place where Netflix doesn’t operate. But, as long as you have Internet access, which a large, large population now does, you will be still able to get access to this kind of product and watch it.

“That’s what I hope IndiePix will be able to do for different kinds of audiences, different interests groups and different people with whatever their requirement for entertainment is,” she says.

The ease of the technology though is only the means to a much more important end result, which Alexander sums up by concluding, “Our perspective is the market, however, is the connection between filmmakers and their audiences, not on technological "parlour tricks" or a particular retail channel. If we can reorganize that market, if we can make it possible for filmmakers and fans to connect commercially and profitably, then independent filmmakers can have a career doing what they do, and audiences will discover more and have greater choices—and we can make a living doing it. What's wrong with that scenario?”

At the end of the sentence, Alexander adds what I come to think of as one of his trademark digital excitement strokes. It’s simply, :-)

For more information, visit www2.indiepix.net.

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