Lorber Films has picked up "Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould," set for a theatrical release opening in September at Gotham's Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. DVD and digital will follow in early 2011.
Deal was negotiated by Lorber's Richard Lorber and Elizabeth Sheldon with Film Transit Intl.'s Diana Holtzberg and White Pine Pictures' Kelly Jenkins.
It also fits his vision for the festival. Mr. Prince has tried to model Lighthouse—now in its second year—on festivals like those in Nantucket and the Hamptons "that bring in films from the top festivals around the world." Of this year's 70 movies, several are hot off the reels from Sundance and Berlin. Opening night will feature "The Red Chapel," a movie best described as "Borat" in North Korea. Named best world documentary at Sundance, it features two Danish comedians and one journalist traveling in the Communist state under the pretense of a cultural exchange.
Go Charlie!
Niko von Glasow and Bianca Vogel in "NoBody’s Perfect."
How rare is it to discover a documentary about disability that scorns “differently abled” euphemisms and rhapsodies of inner beauty? Rare enough to make “NoBody’s Perfect” an exemplar of fresh-air filmmaking that addresses the devastating legacy of the drug thalidomide with acidic wit and grumpy honesty.
Read full movie review at New York Times
It is quite a treat to see the Dalai Lama exercising on a treadmill just like millions of other people around the world. Although his Buddhist philosophy is focused on the mind, he sees the importance of taking good care of the body. The director, who provides a running commentary on his activities, notes at one point that it's a paradox that a man of nonviolence is surrounded by armed body guards. But given the continuing tension between China and Tibet, these are necessary precautions. More than 200 study at the monastery and listen to teachings given by the Dalai Lama, which can run from one to five hours. We see him giving a lecture with references to the Big Bang, the self, and compassion as "the basic nature of the mind."
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While the idea of punk rock Muslims might sound ridiculous to some people and to others it might even be blasphemous, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, Taqwacore: The Birth Of Punk Islam is inspiring and hopeful. Not only do those involved dispel any stereotypes you might have about Muslims, they also show how it is possible to be a religious person without letting your religion dictate who and what you are as an individual. The underlying message of tolerance and respect, mixed with a healthy dose of the benevolent chaos of punk, is one the world could stand hearing over and over again.
The human rights movement makes its way to Video On Demand (VOD) with Kimjongilia, offering all Americans the opportunity to take part through viewing this momentous documentary through instant online viewing or downloading. Testament to the power of the information age to bring to light the atrocities of the world's most isolated nation, this VOD release will reveal the tragedies of the ongoing totalitarian state of Kim Jong Il, the last large-scale totalitarian state of the twentieth century.
Not yet available on DVD, Kimjongilia is accessible now from the comfort of home or on iPod, iPhone, or iPad at MyFilmBlog.com. Winner of the Best Film 2010 from One World Brussels, in co-op with Human Rights Democracy Network, Kimjongilia is a cri de coeur that will put North Korea on the table in human rights debates around the world.
To read Filmmaker N.C. Heikin's blog visit Kimjongilia.MyFilmBlog.com. Access bonus interviews not included in the final cut, ask the filmmaker questions, and learn what you can do to stop the death camps in North Korea.
Kimjongilia had its U.S. premiere at New York's Cinema Village and will also be available at select theaters and community screenings across America before the DVD release. Click here to find out about upcoming screenings and learn how you can host a screening in your community.
In a remote wintry forest, a hunter discovers the mummified corpse of a 40-year-old man. A diary is found near the body, detailing the man’s everyday thoughts as he commits suicide through self-imposed starvation. Based on an incredible true story, and adapted from the novella “Until I am a Mummy“ by Shimada Masahiko, Peter Liecthi’s THE SOUND OF INSECTS is a stunning investigation into the mystery of the man’s enigmatic self-destructive motivations. Taking on his point-of-view, the film presents the notebook entries as stream-of-consciousness musings on the world around him as his body dissipates, an attempt to piece together the causes of his disillusionment. With luminous cinematography of the vaulting trees that surround his tented tomb, and of hallucinated memories of the cities and people he left behind, THE SOUND OF INSECTS is a hypnotic and transcendent meditation on how the renunciation of life paradoxically reveals its beauty.
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In Emmanuel Laurent’s new documentary, “Two in the Wave,” the “two” are the filmmakers François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. The wave, needless to say, is La Nouvelle Vague, a journalistic name that not only stuck to Truffaut, Mr. Godard and their colleagues, but that also changed the way film history is understood.
Watch a trailer (Flash) and read the overview
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Arthouse distributor Richard Lorber, of Kino Lorber, was one of the few arriving at the festival in a “glass half-full” kind of mood. Lorber sees the landscape changing for the better, and is eager to find opportunities. But he releases movies in a handful of theaters; this festival is made for his kind of business.
Count on Lorber and IFC and Sony Classics to be picking up quality titles for crumbs.
The documentary Kimjongilia is a total experience of North Korea that layers music, animated sequences, interpretive dance, and, most strikingly, harrowing interviews with escapees of the totalitarian state, interwoven with hallucinatory propaganda footage. Filmmaker N.C. Heiken creates a consistent and incredibly unusual sensibility in her film of pain and propaganda. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans fill stadiums in praise of their leader with gymnastics, fireworks and synchronized marching formations – the footage may remind viewers of Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will. This footage is edited together with the voices and faces of victims behind the veneer who reveal a human loneliness and despair that is rarely communicated in life.
This film is a visceral reminder of the devastating injustices practiced around the world today. This is a country where a “crime” committed by one person leads to the life-long imprisonment of three generations of his or her family, and where children are forced to watch their family members publicly executed. In one particularly memorable testimonial, a man recounts how he escaped the prison camp at the expense of his friend’s life: the friend was electrocuted as he passed through the barbed wire fence, allowing him to escape unscathed.
Awarded the EST FILM 2010 from One World Brussels, in co-op with Human Rights Democracy Network, Kimjongilia examines the mass illusion possible under totalitarianism and the human rights abuses required to maintain that illusion.
Italy's culture minister has snubbed an invite to the Cannes Film Festival in protest at a decision to screen a film about the L'Aquila earthquake. Sandro Bondi has objected to the satirical documentary which criticises Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's handling of the disaster. Read more
Lagos, Nigeria, a city of 15 million people, is the capital of contemporary African cinema. Since 1992, with the popular success of Living in Bondage, a film in which the Nigerian elite use black magic to maintain their social and financial prestige, the Nigerian movie industry (christened Nollywood) has become the third largest in the world after Hollywood and Bollywood. In this exploding market for locally made home videos, Nigerian filmmakers cast, shoot and sell films at lightning speed in the heart of Lagos. A truly populist cinema, Nollywood produces up to 2,000 films a year, reaching African audiences throughout the continent and the world.
Nollywood Babylon demonstrates the power of cinema to speak to and create a social identity. According to filmmakers Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, the themes of these films "reflect the collision of traditional mysticism and modern culture." The films temper frightening, ecstatic visions of cult practices and witchcraft with redemptive Christian endings that seek to reconcile their deep contradictions. Despite this sensationalism, Addelman and Mallal show how these films deal with the defining conflicts of African life, and hone in on the profound, universal human struggles contained within the films’ melodramatic excess. Addelman and Mallal take the viewer into the complex world of Nigerian cinema in this captivating documentary, and leave us with the feeling that we are on the brink of a truly immortal Nigerian cinema. The Great African Film will come out of this movement.
Watch Nollywood Babylon online
I think festivals should always pray for chilly, rainy weather because there is a direct correlation between screening attendance and sunshine, i.e. the better the weather the fewer movie goers, which might explain this years long lines and inability to get in to watch some films last week in Austin. With all the rain, I felt like I had never left the East Coast.
Much has been said about the films in Austin and how it is a growing festival with a unique angle on the intersection between film distribution and technology. Panel after panel discussed why some digital ventures don’t deliver, the future of independent film distribution, and how to succeed in making a video go viral (without kittens). We are entering what is probably phase 2 of DIY film distribution, where ventures such as BSide proved that there were audiences to be reached using online outreach to get niche audiences to screenings, but failed to generate sufficient revenue for their investors. We have the Auteurs who offer a proprietary VOD platform but can’t get eyeballs, suggesting that technology and content alone are not sufficient. And now YouTube has announced that it will offer Pay Per View to independent filmmakers. Is it the solution filmmakers have been waiting for or is the habit of free to deeply entrenched in the YouTube culture to translate to Pay Per View? I guess we’ll see… one of our upcoming Knitting Factory Entertainment releases is a YouTube Pay Per View feature and so far it is going well at more than 166,000 views.
On the film side, I had my favorites. I think the highlight was the after-party for CANAL STREET MADAM. Talking to the (in)famous Jeanette was a pleasure and only proved my hunch that the lady might be a whore, but she isn’t anybody’s victim. Another viewer over at Indiewire suggested that she is simply ‘libidouness,’ but that is like saying that most people go to work in the morning not for the money but for the pleasure. Perhaps that is true for the guys over at IndieWire, but tell that to your average joe and he’ll probably spit in your coffee. Most of us, alas, must work for our bread and Jeanette earned hers the old fashioned way. Nothing wrong with that – like she said, if it is between two consenting adults it shouldn’t be illegal.
The EyeSteel Films crew was out in full force. Omar Majeed, the filmmaker behind TAQWACORE: THE BIRTH OF MUSLIM PUNK will be keeping fans new and old abreast of all things Taqwacore related at taqwacore.myfilmblog.com. Sign-up and stay tuned for updates regarding festival screenings, the upcoming NYC premier and theatrical dates throughout the summer.
REEL INJUN, which will open theatrically at MoMA in June, and THE SOUND OF INSECTS also garnered attention. Stay posted for further updates.
Watch «Theater of War» Now Online Exclusively from Alive Mind
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Critically acclaimed documentary about the dramatic performance of one of the reigning queens of contemporary theater and film, Meryl Streep, as she interprets the role of Mother Courage in Tony Kushner's The Public Theater/NY Shakespeare Festival in Central Park production of Mother Courage and Her Children.
This inspired doc investigates the power of theater to provoke its viewers out of their complacency in the midst of protracted war, and proves the urgent relevancy of the great 1939 anti-war play by one of the twentieth century's most renowned playwrights, Bertolt Brecht.
"...filmmaker John Walter jumps from art to history and politics and back again, from the theater of the streets to the theater of the stage, without pause. That makes the movie... tough to summarize, which is part of its appeal" - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Definitive film on the gypsy punk rock band and international sensation uncovers the insane party culture of the band and its leader and borderline movie star Eugene Hutz.
“In “Gogol Bordello Non-Stop” [Eugene Hutz] emerges as a passionate, articulate philosopher of punk’s democratic participatory aesthetic who espouses the rejection of social hierarchies in concerts that are raucous, bacchanalian performance-art carnivals.” — Stephen Holden, The New York Times
A vibrant chronicle of one of today’s most notorious and revered live bands, GOGOL BORDELLO NON-STOP follows Eugene Hütz’s gypsy-punk brigade around the world as they spread their liberating libertine musical gospel. Filmmaker Margarita Jimeno tracks their raucous gigs from 2001 to 2006, from NYC to Italy, as the band rises from dingy basements to festival main-stages. The cast is a rotating circus of polyglot personalities from Israel, Russia and America, who dish on their music, their heritage, and their favored vices. Hütz, a sardonic mustachioed Ukrainian immigrant and the group ringleader, fuses his gypsy heritage with a love of punk rock and burlesque. Part carnival barker, social organizer, and poet, he’s a mesmerizing presence on-stage and off.
GOGOL BORDELLO NON-STOP is an artful documentary that mixes flamboyant costumes, intricate dance choreography, a relentless beat and an explosive energy not seen since the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll.