There is a sport documentary that came out last year that's still going around film festivals. Nowhere to be found, I didn't get to see it in my city as I was ill. I'd happily pay to see it, but again, nowhere to be found.

Another independent documentary about marine science in my local sea. Again, no chance of getting it anywhere. I've gone as far as emailing director asking to buy a copy, but no reply.

There is a small scale LGBT show about relationships I want to watch. Once again, nowhere to be found.

People big up private trackers and so sometimes I feel like I'm missing out staying on public ones. But I wonder if this kind of stuff is really to be found on private trackers. Or is some stuff just truly too obscure to be dug up? Does everyone else also have those few things that just remain unavailable despite everything you do?

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[–] Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 4 months ago

Independent documentaries can be, from my experience, quite hard to find and even purchase. They often have limited screenings, do not get any physical releases or to streaming services, and sometimes end up with licensing issues after some years if they've licensed music and sound for example. Maybe PTP has them, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Although not exactly the same media I had the same feelings with public vs private trackers in the past when looking for audiobooks. I wasn't convinces that a private trackers would be any better.

Boy was I wrong, MAM was like a revelation to me and I have found everything I have wanted quickly and easily since.

I dont know how private trackers compare from movies / shows etc but if it is anything like my experience with MAM they are going to be significantly better than public.

[–] safesyrup@feddit.org 3 points 4 months ago

For me its the same. Everything i was looking for that i couldn‘t find on public trackers, I found on private trackers

[–] jbone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 months ago

Have you tried rutracker? While it's unlikely to have regional documentaries, they do have more niche b-movies and some documentaries.

[–] zabadoh@ani.social 4 points 4 months ago

I've had good luck with eD2K/eMule for older shtuff.

That doesn't work well automated torrent setups though.

Also, YouTube frequently is the answer for many documentaries and straight-to-video shtuff

[–] ye_olde_noob@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

Sometimes I've had success using yandex to search, but there are some films I haven't found even there.

[–] Dil@is.hardlywork.ing 2 points 4 months ago

Stremio grab every addon, configure em all for realdebrid, gets most obscure things, sometimes you gotta wait a day or two for rd to dload really obscure stuff (itll tell you torrent is dloading to rd) I found some random old movies I didn't expect to be there.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago

On obscure trackers /s

[–] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 months ago

Really obscure stuff can be a bit of needle in a haystack. Some places you can try are Archive.org, YouTube, Usenet, and bittorrent (I have good luck on Pirate Bay, but YMMV).

[–] Tregetour@lemdro.id 1 points 4 months ago

Tried asking on the comm's Signal chat?