I ran across this article that discusses independent film and has a number of interesting takes on distribution methods. It's a little old (2001) and most of the links are broken, but the interest is in the article, not the links. After reading this, I was reminded of Rich Cristiano's comments on reviving the church rental market during an SACIFF session. An alternative, yes, but not one that's open to secular indies.
"Many articles have been written about one sort of indie-film success story: the "young," "scrappy" "maverick" whose Internet short or ultra-low-budget tape gets viewed by the right Hollywood exec, allowing the fresh-faced filmmaker to vault over those barriers and land a job assembling dream-widgets. This is not such a piece. This is about the moviemakers who don't want Hollywood jobs, or at least don't want them on Hollywood terms -- about people trying to find ways around the distribution bottleneck, and the audiences that are tentatively coalescing around them."
Reason Magazine - Beyond Miramax by Jesse Walker
