Australian cult classic films given a free platform with Brollie
A streaming service dedicated to unearthing hard-to-find Australian films and television shows will make its debut nationwide this month.
A streaming service dedicated to unearthing cult classics and hard-to-find Australian films and television shows will make its debut nationwide this month.
Brollie, a free platform from the independent Australian and New Zealand distributor Umbrella Entertainment, is slated to launch on November 23.
The idea for the streaming service emerged during Covid lockdowns, said Ari Harrison, general manager and head of sales and acquisitions at Umbrella Entertainment, and was spurred by a lack of archival Australian releases on major streaming platforms.
“We have such an extensive catalogue of classic Australian films and TV shows that we wanted to make readily available to a wider audience,” Harrison said. “The issue … was that people didn’t know where to look for many classics, nor did they know which films they might be interested in.”
Crucially, Brollie offers free accessibility. “We don’t want to compete with Netflix, Stan, Paramount, Amazon and all these streaming platforms out there,” he said. “The more streaming platforms that come in, the more expensive it becomes.
“We want this to be accessible to everyone in Australia. We want audiences to understand and enjoy Australia’s screen culture, and to make these films that have been lost in time cool again.”
Beyond accessibility, Brollie aims to tackle what Harrison calls “scroll fatigue” and will operate more like a repertory cinema than any of its counterparts. “The issue with so many streaming services is that you just scroll and scroll through the library, not knowing what to watch,” he says.
To separate the wheat from the chaff, Brollie will keep its content to a minimum. When it launches, there will be 350 film and TV shows available to stream. From there, there will be a monthly rotation of content – introducing 10 to 30 new titles, while retiring an equivalent number – to ensure a purposeful collection.
“It will be concentrated and there will be a sense of curation behind it,” Harrison said.
The diverse library will include hits from Australian independent cinema such as Jennifer Kent’s Babadook, and Gregor Jordan’s Two Hands alongside rare treasures such as 1999’s Erskineville Kings with Hugh Jackman, the 2000 slasher Cut starring Kylie Minogue, and the TV series Sweat starring a young Heath Ledger.
There will also be a Brollie Film Club, in which its in-house curatorial team will hand-pick the best of the catalogue twice a month. These thematic collections promise a deeper dive, complete with introductions explaining the selection rationale, along with behind-the-scenes footage and directors’ commentary – features rarely found on mainstream streaming platforms.
For more than a decade, Umbrella Entertainment has worked closely with the National Film and Sound Archive in restoring Australian films and Brollie will be the first streaming service to host many of these titles.
“There is an appetite for people to be reinvigorated by these classics,” Harrison said.
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