#public-domain

#public-domain

One of the most unusual of the creative treasures to enter the public domain this month is King of Jazz. The plotless, experimental 1930 musical film shot in early Technicolor centers on influential bandleader Paul Whiteman, nicknamed "The King of Jazz." In one memorable scene, the portly, mustachioed Whiteman opens a small bag and winks at the camera as miniature musicians file out one after another like a colony of ants and take their places on an ornate, table-top bandstand.

A project of Wikipedia's volunteer community, WikiFlix hosts over four thousand movies from Wikimedia Commons, the Internet Archive, or YouTube that have fallen into the public domain - that means they are free to share and distribute, usually because the copyright lapsed, or there was never any copyright at all. So, yes, most of the movies on the WikiFlix homepage are your grandma's age, but isn't it kind of fun to imagine what Netflix would've been like back in the day?