Are you tired of streaming? Free blockbuster libraries offer an alternative.

When it comes to art, “there’s nothing like holding it in your hand,” Ms. DuVernay said.

“That tactile intimacy of touch sounds kind of fleeting and insignificant, but touch is a feeling,” she said. “It is part of the experience of consuming and experiencing art.”

Ms. DuVernay lamented the loss of the director’s cuts and commentary that often accompanied DVDs, but now largely absent of films on streaming services. “That’s actually how I learned to create content,” she says. “I picked up a camera when I was 32, I listened to directors talk about their films in pictures.”

While free Blockbusters have opened across the country, the last Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon, continues to rent movies on DVD and Blu-ray. But Sandi Harding, who has run the store for the past two decades, doesn’t see them as a competitor: The more people who engage with the Blockbuster brand and physical media, the better, she said.

The store, which became the last in the world after franchises Alaska And Australia closed their doors and now attracts mostly summer tourists, in addition to some regular customers, Ms. Harding said, noting that about 80 percent of the store’s revenue now comes from merchandise, with the rest from movie rentals. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to get new releases on DVD and Blu-ray online or in local department stores, she said.

“I don’t think it will ever go back to the way it was. But I think it’s a bit like vinyl records,” which are making a comeback, she said.

Alfonso Castillo, who co-founded Free Blockbuster on Long Island with his son, said the lending library has a steady turnover, with people both picking up and dropping off movies, including the elderly. “My feeling is that for them it’s less a cool new kind of tongue-in-cheek thing and more that there’s finally a place where you can get DVDs again,” he said.