If you’ve exhausted all your options on Netflix, or you’re not digging the content they have, there’s a lesser-known streaming service that’s available and all for FREE: Kanopy. Based on your friendly local (yet unfortunately temporarily closed) library, all you need to sign up for this streaming site is your library card and you’ve then got thousands of movies to fill in the quarantine time. Although free viewing is limited to four titles per month, it doesn’t apply to everything on the site.
The site features many films that were highly reviewed here at Xpress, including Good Time, The Square, You Were Never Really Here, Burning, The Salesman, A Ghost Story, Paterson and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. If it’s arthouse classics and festival favourites you’re after, then Kanopy will be your new friend.
Kanopy has a diverse range of films, from old classics to Australian Cinema. It features a few favourites of the past such as Heathers, Donnie Darko, Leon: The Professional, An Angel at My Table, and even some real oldies like Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, 1937’s A Star is Born and The Seventh Seal. It has a treasure trove of Aussie films, featuring a handful of some of the well-known hits like Lion, The Dressmaker, Harvie Krumpet and The Babadook (not to mention the hits from New Zealand’s Taika Waititi like Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Boy).
Documentaries and educational videos are also available. Acclaimed documentaries like The Act of Killing, Citizenfour, I Am Not Your Negro, Man on Wire and That Sugar Film can be viewed. The educational videos, which includes all of The Great Courses series, makes Kanopy something of an online school. There’s never been a better time to learn guitar or get better at cooking or practise meditation or educate yourself on the Renaissance period. Most of these educational videos do not count towards your viewing credits, so you can binge on them to your heart’s content.
All these great films on Kanopy are waiting to be watched for free, with a limit of four titles per month. So dig out your library card and sign up at Kanopy.com.
