Kanopy: Free Lunch Streaming

Kanopy Month

Throughout the past several months of lockdowns, a popular social media topic has been streaming services. Which service has more content at the best price? Some say Netflix, some say Hulu, some say Amazon Prime, some say Disney +, some say Apple TV… (Just kidding, no one says Apple TV).

Many people cut the cord from cable to save money but found that the cost of signing up for various streaming services piled up quickly. Movie Churches is here to help! 

There are some free options out there. For instance, good old reliable YouTube has free films (public domain material). Crackle was one of the first services to provide old TV shows and movies. Vudu has some free TV and films if you’re willing to sit through commercials. This month, we’ll be looking at films from a free service with even classier fare than old episodes of The Greatest American Hero and 21 Jump Street.

Kanopy works in conjunction with public libraries. If you have a library card, you can probably access the material on Kanopy. And that's how I'll be watching this month's feature films, but I’d like to kick things off with something different you can find through the Kanopy service. 

Sermons and Sacred Pictures is basically a collection of the home movies recorded by a Black Baptist pastor, the Rev. L. O. Taylor, who recorded the happenings in his church in Memphis in the 1930s and 1940s, keeping alive the joys and struggles of that time in place. The film opens with a river baptism and includes a National Baptist Conference with civil rights on the agenda. It’s just a half-hour long, but it captures a great variety of church life in that time.

Search for “church” at Kanopy, and you’ll many interesting works of history, art, music, and sociology. But for the rest of this month of Movie Churches, we’ll ignore all that and watch some feature films with (usually) fictional pastors and congregants. You won’t have to spend a dime to read about these films...or watch them.