Like many film lovers, I have found my life much enhanced by the many video streaming opportunities that have emerged in the last two decades. There’s a lot to relish in the convenience of being a touch screen away from almost anything I’d want to watch. But here’s one thing I do miss: context. While Netflix categorizes movies according to a variety of genres that have led me to plenty of interesting films based on my tastes, what I don’t get from this browsing experience is a sense of how the films I watch are situated in relation to other films. Searching for movies in independent video stores and the audiovisual section of university libraries always took me into unexpected places (like Town Bloody Hall, just to name one gem I found in the stacks), and I often felt like I was being educated as well as entertained. And this is why I was so happy to find Fandor. This a film subscription site created by and for cinephiles who are interested in promoting discovery and curiosity. One of the ways they do this is to integrate the Bechdel test as a search category. Users of Fandor are encouraged to take the Bechdel test every time they watch a film and flag it as having passed the test; it then gets added to that category.
I highly recommend Jerome Fandor’s refreshing explanation of the connection between independent film and the Bechdel test, and I am truly excited to watch how Fandor will continue to expand its offerings and expand what it means to discover films.