Nicolas Winding Refn launches streaming site

The Drive director has launched a free streaming site that promises to “come with a mystery attached”

Article by Jamie Dunn | 31 Jul 2018

Nicolas Winding Refn, the unconventional director of Drive, Bronson and The Neon Demon, is always full of surprises. His latest left-field turn is to launch byNWR, a new streaming site celebrating obscure movies to which Refn has secured the rights and recently restored. Working with special guest editors, Refn will present these curios in “volumes” of three films every quarter.

Interestingly, byNWR will also feature a host of new criticism around the little-seen works streaming on the site. “The movie itself is just a touchstone,” says the byNWR release, “a talisman used to inspire a wealth of personally created new material, whether it be articles, biographies, essays, or original music, video and photography, all of it accompanied by a wealth of previously unseen cultural artifacts connected to the film itself.”

Author and journalist Jimmy McDonough has edited the first volume of byNWR, titled Regional Renegades, with UK film mag Little White Lies lined up to edit the next, titled Missing Links.

Included in this first batch of films are a trio of interesting-looking titles. There’s 1965’s The Nest of Cuckoo Birds, Bert Williams’ thought lost low-budget gothic melodrama set in the Florida Everglades. There’s also Dale Berry’s Hot Thrills and Warm Chills, from 1967, described as “unhinged camp”, and Jose (AKA Joseph) Pietro’s Shanty Tramp, also from 1967, which is described as a “notorious tale of interracial backwoods lust.”

Speaking in the Guardian a few months ago, Refn describes the site as “an unadulterated cultural expressway for the arts. It’s there to inspire the youth!” Get exploring yourself over at https://www.bynwr.com