Meet the Internet’s Scrappiest Home for Obscure Cinema

Tonight for Sure, a soft-core comedy Francis Ford Coppola directed ten years before The Godfather. Photo: Premier Pictures

A classic like The Godfather may be easy enough to find on streaming or Blu-ray, but if you want to watch Tonight for Sure, a soft-core comedy Francis Ford Coppola directed ten years earlier, about two men plotting to bomb a burlesque club, the place to find it is on a small, free-to-use website called Rarefilmm. Run by archivist Jon Whitehead, who set it up in 2014 with the aim of preserving hidden gems, the site now has roughly 3,000 titles and calls itself “the cave of forgotten films.�

To give you an idea of the site’s range, its many obscurities include a 1983 doc exploring sex and intimacy in the disabled community, a TV drama starring a 15-year-old Adrien Brody, and a 1972 Italian Tarzan knockoff called — what else? — Karzan, Jungle Lord. Rarefilmm is perfect for anyone who wants to know more about Peplum, the subgenre of Italian mythological and historical epics, or get into Eurospy, the ’60s films and parodies that cashed in on the popularity of James Bond, or any other highly specific subgenres of the visual past. Whitehead was inspired to launch it after stumbling onto rare and little-known films on invite-only online forums. “I started looking for a blog that was posting them, and I couldn’t find anything,� he explains. “I thought, Why not share all these beautiful and unknown movies with the world instead of gatekeeping them?�

Curious about its curios, we tried Rarefilmm out and have some ideas about how to make the most of the site, with navigation tips and more viewing recommendations.

A Paradiso for Cinema

Rarefilmm doesn’t have an app, but you can access it on both desktop and mobile browsers. Its home page is simple, with none of the flashy carousels or annoying auto-plays that define most popular streaming services these days. It labels the most recent additions to the site with genre, date of release, date of upload, and a synopsis. When you click the “Browse� tab, you’ll find the site’s library divided into 40 genres, including art house, giallo, and blaxploitation, as well as formats like documentaries, shorts, and made-for-TV movies. You can find films catalogued by decade, from the 1910s to the 2000s, or by the awards they’ve won, from the Oscars to the Chicago International Film Festival’s Gold Hugo. Another category divides the films by their country of origin: At last count, movies from 73 countries feature on Rarefilmm.

Whitehead also catalogues films by the month and year he has uploaded them, so you can stay up-to-date on his finds, which becomes part of the fun of immersing yourself in the site. If you’re looking for a specific film, the “Film Index� tab will provide you with a list of movies sorted alphabetically. Clicking on a film reveals not just data like category, credits, year, and country of origin (some of which is crowdsourced or refined by the site’s followers), but also the quality of its available print.

The films can either be streamed directly on the site itself or downloaded. If you’re unsure what to watch, the comment section under each film and Rarefilmm’s chat room can be handy resources, letting you know what other viewers thought. You can also see what each title is rated out of five and the number of site users who voted.

The Trouble With Hosting

Thanks to those users and Whitehead’s stewardship, Rarefilmm still feels scrappy and alive in a way that other sites with streaming content are not. It’s a real community, even if its functionalities and offerings are limited. There are no “watch lists,� but the chat hosts a running discussion about movies and digital preservation. Though some films’ language options are limited, and some categories or countries, like Albania, have relatively few offerings, Rarefilmm’s users still appreciate the massive effort of surfacing these works.

Presenting all this cinema independently poses legal and logistical challenges. Whitehead has written on the site that he sources his films from private collectors. An earlier “Requests� section detailed the criteria he followed for uploads, but it has since been removed; a new “DMCA� section states that Whitehead will take down any title upon request from the copyright owner within 72 hours. Last year, Rarefilmm lost most of its catalogue after the Czech platform that hosted the site’s movies banned file sharing in the wake of Europe’s Digital Services Act.

It wasn’t the first time Whitehead had his archive taken down, and re-uploading the trove can be demoralizing when he’d rather surface new titles, but he keeps at it. “It’s worth it, as I know how heartbreaking it can be to find a dead download link, and I don’t want people to feel that way when browsing Rarefilmm,� he says. Whitehead has since been reviving the old uploads, but these days, he responds to queries for movies over X DMs at his own pace and has requested that people ask for no more than two at a time.

Given these hurdles, it feels remarkable that Whitehead’s archive is still online after a decade, with the help of donations and volunteers. And he wants it to expand and eventually hire staff like translators and people who can supply subtitles. Film lovers would benefit: It’s not everywhere that you can expect to find a 1980 Oscar-winning animated short directed entirely from the point of view of a fly. “Rarefilmm isn’t going anywhere,� Whitehead says. “The best is yet to come.�

Four Hidden Gems to Queue Up

The Fly (1980)

Soundtracked by buzzing and illustrated through the eyes of an insect, this three-minute short swoops around a garden and through the interiors of a house as the insect attempts to evade being swatted. The film won Best Animated Short Film at the 54th Academy Awards.

The Lady Is My Wife (1967)

A wealthy horse rancher hires a couple to help run his farm but is gradually revealed to have more sinister intentions. This Sam Peckinpah–directed episode is part of the anthology Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre. Whitehead sourced it from a Facebook acquaintance. The video quality isn’t great, but, as he explains on the site, of the show’s 100-odd episodes, only a handful are still available.

Contact (1992)

Brad Pitt plays an American soldier who unwittingly wanders into enemy territory and is spotted by an Arab soldier (Elias Koteas). The two become reluctant allies in order to survive. The 27-minute film was nominated for an Oscar in 1993.

Meet Marlon Brando (1966)

As journalists interview Marlon Brando about his 1965 film, Morituri, he counters their questions with warmth and a teasing wit in this documentary short. What begins as a promotional exercise turns into a charming portrait of a megawatt celebrity.