Agreed, Dan. My observation might seem like criticism, but it's really meant more as an analysis of when it becomes necessary to start that repetition. All of the reasons you cite apply to Noir Alley just as much as any "physical" film festival specializing in older films.

Alan Rode prides himself on having never repeated a film in his Palm Springs series; he's up to ~300 titles screened. The Noir City series in San Francisco began repeating films with some regularity starting in the 200s; now, of course, they have so many satellite festivals that they are repeating films for the sake of an expanded audience across the nation. The more Eddie dives into international film, however, the less he is repeating himself, though he is often repeating films we've screened previously in our international noir series...

In the French noir series I've been programming since 2014, we began a set of repeats in 2021 to honor one of our significant discoveries--Robert Hossein, who had passed away the year before. We also discovered that the turnover over time in our more limited clientele was significant enough that we've continued the practice to ensure that our present audience will get to see films that they didn't see when we first screened them--film that literally aren't being shown anywhere else and are still far more difficult to track down for home viewing.

I think it's more interesting to see what films have been repeated for Noir Alley and try to determine why those films have been chosen. It appears that about half of them are personal favorites, with the others likely being chosen more randomly due to (as you noted) the unavailability of non-repeat items Eddie hopes to screen.