An Introduction to Beamafilm - our free streaming platform

How to access Beamafilm via WCL:

WCL Website> Collections> eLibrary Page> Watch> Beamafilm

Using Beamafilm and the Beamafilm website:

Enter your library card number to confirm you're a member of Wellington City Libraries. Create your Beamafilm account with your email address and password, and start watching! (Once you've completed this process, you use this email/password combination to log in on your next visit).

Once you sign in to Bemafilm you will see the homepage above. In the top right corner is your profile. The orange box tells you how many viewing tokens you have. Our Beamafilm subscription gives you 10 viewing tokens per month. Each time you play any film or TV episode, a viewing token will be used and your selection can be viewed for 3 days (72 hours) without using another token. Trailer views do not use viewing token credits. Note: A TV series will be 1 token per episode.

Clicking your username will open up a drop-down menu and take you to the Beamafilm Help section. The 'Help' section contains information on supported devices and how to download the different Beamafilm apps, as well as managing your account, enabling parental controls, subtitles and closed captions options, as well as general troubleshooting.

There is a also a User Tips section available for navigating the various menus and features within Beamafilm. This is accessed from within each title (it's a question mark inside a circle). This link gives you tips on how to save favourites, enable recommendation settings to personalise the Beamafilm home page carousel, filter searches and cast Bemafilm from your device to your smart TV.

Beamafilm content:

There are a wealth of films and TV shows for you to explore on Beamafilm.

Beamafilm Exclusives are always displayed at the top of the homepage. Headings divide Beamafilm content into Documentaries, Movies, Series & Subjects, which are then sorted alphabetically by genre. All specific genre searches can then be sorted by 'Recently Added' to reflect the latest additions, and filtered in various ways to display HD content only, film classifications, kids films, country of origin etc.

Beamafilm has a strong catalogue of Foreign Language films, all of which can be sorted by individual language. New Zealand content can be found in the Subjects menu, in the Asia Pacific & Australasia section, which then has a specific New Zealand section. You can keep up with the latest additions and features on Beamafilm by subscribing to their e-mail newsletter on signing up to the platform, or via their blog.

Being a bit of a sci-fi fan, I checked out some of the titles on Beamafilm and found some real gems.

Coherence:

'Coherence’ proves once again that it’s indie movies with the most interesting sci-fi ideas, and not Hollywood blockbusters (even those by Christopher Nolan). Eight friends – all couples- get together to catch up over dinner, at the same time that a comet is passing close to Earth. Strange things begin to happen. To say any more would give away the story, such as it is. Written and directed by James Ward Byrkit with a bunch of mostly unknown actors (Buffy alumnus Nicholas Brendon is the only recognisable face), with an improvised script that is filmed mostly in his living room, the movie is an examination of the nature of reality, quantum physics and Schrödinger’s cat theory. Recommended if you’re a fan of Memento or Primer. If it’s all too confusing after a couple of watches, the director explains it all in a spoiler-heavy interview here.

Time Lapse:

Never released on DVD in Australasia, ‘Time Lapse’ is an award winning indie-sci-fi film. Finn is a painter with a creative block, who lives together with his girlfriend, Callie, and his best friend, Jasper, in an apartment complex where Finn works as a manager. When they go to check on a reclusive elderly tenant they discover a strange machine in his apartment that takes Polaroid photos of their living room’s picture window—apparently 24 hours in the future, always at 8pm. Discovering the mysterious charred corpse of the tenant in his storage facility, they decide to use the machine for their own financial and artistic gain. However this means they have to make sure the events depicted in the photos come to pass or the timeline won’t be real… no matter what they show. Intriguing low-key sci-fi that digs into the ideas of causal loops, makes clever use of a static location and relies on a ideas rather than effects. Recommended if you like films such as 'Coherence' & Primer.

Predestination:

Strange but compelling adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s famous time-travel short story " '—All You Zombies—' " s by Australian brother writer/directors. A bartender (Ethan Hawke) encounters a customer (Sarah Snook) one night who proceeds to tell him the strange story of his life, beginning when he was born a girl. However the bartender has a lot more to add to the story than the customer knows…To say anymore would give away the twists and turns in what might be the ultimate exploration of paradox theory. Slow moving and very talky, it nonetheless rewards purists who like ideas more than the action-fests that most others time-travel movies adhere to.