re: Movies that are difficult to come by that shouldn't be

Search for the Nile

Miniseries

Produced by BBC, won awards, highly acclaimed.

No idea why its never been released beyond bootleg VHS home video transfers on YouTube. Its on PAL and that took 40 years. Still can't get it in US format.

To sum up what I mean, here's an IMDB review from a another bewildered fan:

The Search for the Nile and have been unable to find this series in spite of the fact that it won the Golden Globe Award best TV special 1973. I have checked all university video libraries, the Smithsonian library, public libraries, all video sources even the BBC. No one has this series. WHY Why has it been pulled from all sources?

The answer? Might come from this review.

quote:

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The Search for the Nile was a very ambitious project for the BBC in 1971. It features a good deal of location shooting and the results are certainly impressive. documentary-style historical drama about African exploration is in its own way an astonishing television achievement.

Even more astonishing is that it’s not an exercise in political correctness. It deals with colonialism in a complex and nuanced way. It also deals with slavery but the slavers encountered here are Arabs and Africans.

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Finding the source of the Nile is one of the greatest exploration achievements but since it happened during Colonial times, stories of history are banned.