Film Archives and More

There are endless sites by which to get your daily entertainment from all over the interweb and most of them host content that in one way or another, disregards some copyright laws. You probably have gotten over the initial conscience guided decisions to not sample at least some of these sites, but battling your inner voice has just become a bit easier. Archive.org is one for abiding by all federal and international copyright laws.

You can find music, film and a host of images. But now you’re probably asking what does this hafta do with gangsters, hit men, bank robberies and striking femme fatales? Well, the Archive hosts a section strictly dedicated to Noir.

Hosted herein isn’t the largest collection of film you’ve ever seen and in all actuality, you probably have a friend who owns as many movies as are hosted here. But, these films aren’t your run of the mill fare. Each has had its copyright lapse and has thusly become public domain. What that means to you is that you can view and download any film (or image or song) hosted by Archive – and it’s totally legal.

Some of the quality varies, but a number of these films won’t be so easily located in your local Blockbuster or even through Netflix. Archive isn’t the end all of film, but there are some great finds on there. And if you spend enough time sifting through the content, you’ll probably find something that you wanted to see, but didn’t necessarily know existed.