SpeedCine has launched its beta version today, offering a searchable database to find legal films online internationally. That includes free and paid streams or downloads.

The project is somewhat similiar to the UK FIlm Council-backed FindAnyFilm, but SpeedCine is concentrating only on online offerings.

Speedcine can filter results by country, by set-top box, handheld devices, PC or Mac capability and so on.

The site currently indexes more than 13,000 films from Neflix, Amazon VOD, Hulu, and other sites, and will add iTunes offerings by the end of August.

SpeedCine was founded by veteran film publicist Reid Rosefelt, who is based in New York and serves as the company’s CEO; with San Francisco-based chief technology officer Bob Harris. Rosefelt continues to work as a publicist also, working on recent hits like Lee Daniels’ Sundance winner Precious.

Just a few examples of the films legally available online, and searchable at SpeedCine, are Todd Solondz’s Welcome To The Dollhouse, Spike Jonze’s Adaptation, Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life, Hal Hartley’s Henry Fool, Bruce Robinson’s Withnail & I, Carol Reed’s The Third Man, and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion.

In a blog post on the site, Rosefelt wrote: “It is often said that new business models are needed to get people to pay for movies online. There are a lot of things that can be done from that perspective, that is — not focusing on stopping people from watching for free, but convincing them that it is in their interest to pay. And that can be free-with-ads, a rental, a purchase, or a Netflix-style subscription. There’s a lot of companies doing good work trying to make this happen. We are offering a free service for movie fans that we hope will help websites that provide movies online, distributors, and filmmakers themselves (particularly DIY ones).”

Funcionality to be introduced later will let users see rights specific to their own country.

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