Public domain
A Trip to the Moon
Cinema's first great science-fiction tale: Georges Méliès's capsule lodging in the eye of the Moon.
Open Cinema
Public-domain and freely licensed films you can watch right here, hosted on the Internet Archive. Free cinema, no walls.
Public domain
The Great Train Robbery
Edwin S. Porter's founding Western, a pioneer of narrative editing and the famous shot straight at the camera.
Public domain
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
A Jules Verne adaptation featuring some of the earliest large-scale underwater photography in cinema.
Public domain
Intolerance
D. W. Griffith's monumental fresco: four interwoven eras on human intolerance.
Public domain
Broken Blossoms
An intimate Griffith melodrama of visual delicacy that anticipates chamber cinema.
Public domain
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The manifesto of German Expressionism: warped sets and painted shadows for a nightmare with no center.
Public domain
The Mark of Zorro
Douglas Fairbanks founds the swashbuckler with his acrobatic, mocking Zorro.
Public domain
Häxan
Benjamin Christensen's documentary-essay on witchcraft, poised between treatise and hallucination.
Public domain
Nosferatu
Murnau's symphony of horror: Count Orlok and his shadow remain cinema's defining image of the vampire.
Public domain
Sherlock Jr.
Buster Keaton literally steps into the screen: a peak of slapstick and self-reflexive cinema.
Public domain
Battleship Potemkin
Eisenstein's montage of attractions and the Odessa Steps sequence: a living lesson in cinema.
Public domain
The Lost World
Willis O'Brien's animated dinosaurs, the direct ancestor of King Kong.
Public domain
The Phantom of the Opera
Lon Chaney and his unmasking: Hollywood gothic horror at its purest.
Public domain
White Zombie
The first feature-length zombie film, with Bela Lugosi as master of a sugar mill of the undead.
Public domain
His Girl Friday
Screwball comedy at top speed: Hawks and a relentless duel of overlapping dialogue.
Public domain
Detour
B-movie film noir turned myth: fatalism, the open road, and a destiny that snaps shut like a trap.
Public domain
Scarlet Street
Fritz Lang and Edward G. Robinson in a bitter noir of desire, painting and damnation.
Public domain
The Stranger
Orson Welles directs and stars in the hunt for a Nazi criminal hiding in a Connecticut town.
Public domain
He Walked by Night
A semi-documentary noir with dazzling John Alton photography that inspired the series Dragnet.
Public domain
D.O.A.
A poisoned man investigates his own murder before he dies: noir as a countdown.
Public domain
The Hitch-Hiker
Ida Lupino, the only woman to direct a classic studio noir: dry tension out in the desert.
Public domain
The Little Shop of Horrors
The horror comedy Corman shot in two days: a carnivorous plant with appetite and a sense of humor.
Public domain
Carnival of Souls
An independent nightmare of hypnotic atmosphere that influenced all later horror cinema.
Public domain
Dementia 13
Coppola’s first film, shot in Ireland for Roger Corman in nine days: a castle, an inheritance and an axe murderer. With Spanish subtitles.
Public domain
The Terror
Corman gothic with Boris Karloff and a very young Jack Nicholson in a fog-bound castle.
Public domain
El último hombre sobre la Tierra
Vincent Price alone in a city of vampires: the first adaptation of “I Am Legend”, and the one Romero admitted to copying.
Public domain
Manos: The Hands of Fate
Shot by an El Paso fertiliser salesman on a bet. A perennial candidate for worst film ever made and, for that very reason, a cult object.
Public domain
La noche de los muertos vivientes
The film that invented the modern zombie is in the public domain thanks to a mistake in the copyright notice. With Spanish subtitles.
Creative Commons · BY-SA
Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning
A Finnish parody of Star Trek and Babylon 5, made in a flat over seven years and released under Creative Commons: millions of downloads.
Creative Commons
Elephants Dream
Blender’s first open movie: two characters explore an infinite machine. Released together with all its production files.
Creative Commons
Big Buck Bunny
An animated fable from the Blender Foundation: a good-natured rabbit takes revenge on three bullying rodents. Open cinema made with free software.
Creative Commons · BY-NC-SA
RiP!: Manifiesto remix
A documentary on remix culture and copyright, with Girl Talk and Lawrence Lessig. Spanish-language version, remixable by licence.
Public domain
Sita Sings the Blues
Nina Paley interweaves the Ramayana with 1920s jazz songs in a freewheeling animation she released into the public domain.
Creative Commons
Sintel
A fantasy short from the Blender Foundation: a young woman searches for the dragon she raised, a brief epic of open animation.
Creative Commons · BY-NC
¡Copiad, malditos!
The first TVE documentary released under Creative Commons: a year following the intellectual property debate in Spain.
Creative Commons · BY-NC
Decay
Zombies at CERN: shot in the tunnels of the Large Hadron Collider by physics PhD students, without official permission and under a free licence.
Creative Commons
Tears of Steel
Science fiction with visual effects from the Blender Foundation: a robot-ravaged Amsterdam, shot to test open-source VFX.
Creative Commons · BY-NC-ND
TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard
The three founders of The Pirate Bay, from the website to the dock. It premiered at the Berlinale and on BitTorrent on the same day.
Creative Commons · BY-NC-SA
The Internet’s Own Boy
The life of Aaron Swartz, programmer and open-access activist, prosecuted for downloading academic papers. Released under Creative Commons by its makers.
Creative Commons
Cosmos Laundromat
The Blender Foundation's opening chapter: a suicidal sheep and a cosmic salesman offer alternate lives. Free, surreal animation.
Creative Commons
Caminandes 3: Llamigos
Koro, Blender’s Patagonian llama, fights a penguin over the last berry of winter. A three-minute silent comedy.
Creative Commons
Spring
A shepherdess and her dog wake up spring in the mountains. Blender Studio, inspired by the director’s childhood in Germany.
Creative Commons
Sprite Fright
An eighties-style forest slasher, with sprites: a group of British teenagers should not have stepped on those mushrooms. Blender Studio.
Creative Commons
Charge
An energy-starved dystopia: an old man breaks into a battery factory. Four minutes from Blender Studio, with all files open.