>Also does anyone know of a general rental-by-mail company which >specializes in African or at least foreign and independent movies?

There are several good rent-by-mail companies.  Netflix is DVD only and has a pretty decent selection even if it's become increasingly more mainstream (but not that much since in the past couple of months I've rented Fassbinder's Whitey and Chahine's An Egyptian Story).  I've also used Home Film Festival in the past and been happy with them.  I know people who like Video Vault but the catch there is finding out what they have: the printed catalog is just lists of titles and sometimes years so it's hard to find out what a specific film might be; their website is not searchable.  Facets apparently has the best selection but their prices are too much for me ($10 a tape and you pay shipping back).

As for African films there are some US companies specializing in Nigerian videos which apparently are sometimes in English (though I'm told that Americans generally have difficulty understanding the accent).

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