Kino Lorber (Firm)
Description
In Hollywood's studio system, sets and equipment are used over and over again. Mark Rappaport shows not only opera boxes and stage rooms, which seem to be part of the permanent décor in MGM backstage musicals, but also curious connections such as a Spanish wall with orientalist ornamentation that appears in various films or the famous portrait painting by Gene Tierney in Laura, which surprisingly can be seen again in On the Riviera.
Description
What happens when religiously conservative Christian parents have children who have "become homosexual?" FAMILY FUNDAMENTALS is filmmaker Arthur Dong's personal attempt to answer that explosive question. Armed with a digital camera, Dong takes viewers into the private and public lives of three families who have responded to gay offspring by actively opposing homosexuality. FAMILY FUNDAMENTALS goes to the heart of today's debate over homosexuality,...
Description
LIGHTNING OVER BRADDOCK: A RUSTBOWL FANTASY is as eccentric a picture of America as has emerged in the last two decades. Like Buba's earlier short films, it chronicles the decline of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a hard-luck town which once flourished as "Pittsburgh's shopping center." It concerns a director (Buba, playing himself) trying, without much success, to make a movie with a crazy street hustler named Sal, who considers himself responsible for...
Description
It was the swinging 30s. The big bands of the 40s. It was San Francisco night life - Baghdad by the Bay. And the crowds were packing the nation's premiere all-Chinese nightclub, Forbidden City. Like the Cotton Club of Harlem which featured America's finest African American entertainers, Forbidden City gained an international reputation with its unique showcase of Chinese American performers in eye-popping all-American extravaganzas.FORBIDDEN CITY,...
Description
Features nine gay and lesbian veterans who recount how they joined the patriotic war against fascism in the 1940s only to find themselves fighting two battles: one for their country and another for their right to serve. They first remember warm and entertaining stories of finding each other in a compulsory heterosexual environment and reminisce over tales of first love and deep friendships. Their good times were short-lived, however, as they became...
6) Who's Crazy?
Description
WHO'S CRAZY? was long thought to be lost by jazz-on-film scholars and the Library of Congress. In early 2015, the only surviving copy of the film, a 35mm print struck for the film's debut at Cannes in 1966, was salvaged from director Thomas White's garage after sitting on a shelf there for decades. Ornette's soundtrack exists as a hard-to-find LP, but audiences have never before had the opportunity to see what Ornette saw when he composed it. The...
Description
In 1924, documentary film pioneers Robert and Frances Flaherty and family traveled to the Samoan island of Savaii to record the native life and make a film that would try to match the success of Nanook of the North. Restored in 2K with native sounds and traditional songs that Flahertys daughter recorded over a half-century after they shot it, Monica Flaherty's MOANA is a beautiful work of docufiction and an important piece of film history.
Description
This documentary weaves the stories of patients with life-threatening illness, with the stories of the nurses who guide them as they make choices about how they want to live, how much medical technology they can accept, what they hope for and how that hope evolves. DEFINING HOPE focuses on palliative care, end of life issues, hospice care and what 'quality of life' really means. It offers a hopeful message about bringing power back to the patient...
Description
In February 2002 - about a year before the U.S. invasion - Iraqi filmmaker Abbas Fahdel traveled home from France to capture everyday life as his country prepared for war. No strangers to war, the Iraqis thought they understood what was coming, and could even manage to be grimly humorous about what they felt would likely be a major and lengthy inconvenience. And then, the war began. When Fahdel resumed filming in 2003, two weeks after the invasion,...
10) Whose Country?
Description
A young Egyptian filmmaker gains first-hand accounts of corruption and abuse within the security forces from Egyptian police officers. Narrated in English by the filmmaker, WHOSE COUNTRY? reveals not only why police injustice can be considered a leading cause of the 2011 Revolution but also how the perpetuation of injustice within the security force itself led to widespread dissatisfaction amongst the lower ranks. A fascinating look at how victimization...
11) Walden
Description
Jonas Mekas' first completed diary film is an epic portrait of the New York avant-garde arts scene of the 1960s, featuring many of Mekas' friends of that period, including Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and The Velvet Underground. *"...a groundbreaking work of personal cinema." - **Experimental Cinema***
12) Taking Venice
Description
At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. government is determined to fight Communism with culture. The Venice Biennale, the world's most influential art exhibition, becomes a proving ground in 1964. Alice Denney, Washington insider and friend of the Kennedys, recommends Alan Solomon, an ambitious curator making waves with trailblazing art, to organize the U.S. entry. Together with Leo Castelli, a powerful New York art dealer, they embark on a daring...
13) Martin Und Hans
Description
Martin Kosleck and Hans Heinz von Twardowski, two German actors, fleeing the Nazi regime, come to Hollywood to find work. Most of the time they are asked to play Nazi officers and are reminded all the time what they fled from. But you can never escape your accent. In a sense, they are ground up in the Hollywood system. Although they were stars who worked on the stage and in movies in Germany, in Hollywood they were minor character actors, completely...
14) Las Sandinistas
Description
¡LAS SANDINISTAS! reveals the untold stories of Nicaraguan women warriors and social revolutionaries who shattered barriers to lead combat and social reform during Nicaragua's 1979 Sandinista Revolution, the ensuing US-backed Contra War, and documents their leadership in the continuing struggle for justice today. The film portrays a magical moment in world history when thousands of female rebel fighters transformed society's definition of womanhood...
15) BloodSisters
Description
During the early 1990s, San Francisco was the epicenter of body modification and gender nonconformity, with transgender pioneers like Patrick Califia and Tala Brandeis fighting for visibility, alongside the voice of a bold S/M community. From pushy bottoms to macho femmes, BLOODSISTERS immerses the viewer in the San Francisco leather dyke scene, shattering assumptions about gender and lesbian sexuality, while broadening the discussion about personal...
16) The Sentence
Description
Drawing from hundreds of hours of footage, filmmaker Rudy Valdez shows the aftermath of his sister Cindy's 15-year sentence for conspiracy charges related to crimes committed by her deceased ex-boyfriend-something known, in legal terms, as "the girlfriend problem." Valdez's method of coping with this tragedy is to film his sister's family for her, both the everyday details and the milestones-moments Cindy herself can no longer share in. But in the...
17) A State of Mind
Description
A STATE OF MIND follows two North Korean schoolgirls and their families in the lead up to the "Mass Games" â€" the biggest and most elaborate human performance on earth â€" and in the process reveals more of North Korea than ever before. Following on from the 2002 award-winning documentary The Game of Their Lives, VeryMuchSo productions was granted permission from the North Korean film authorities to make a second documentary: an observational...
18) The Severing
Description
From acclaimed filmmaker Mark Pellington (The Mothman Prophecies) comes a visceral and powerful feature-length dance film. This cathartic movement piece was created in collaboration with the brilliant choreographer Nina McNeely (Gaspar Noe's Climax), rising Dutch cinematographer Evelin Van Rei, and editor Sergio Pinheiro. Inspired by the Wim Wenders film Pina, Pellington was interested in expressing feelings and emotions through a 'narrative of movement...
Description
Movies about movies-they always seem to have scenes set in screening rooms. And we, the audiences, are invited in, to see how the film business works. The screening rooms seem to be sacrosanct chapels where one can worship but it's also a place where the people behind the movie screens can let their hair down and reveal their most inner thoughts about each other. It's a private place in a very public arena. It's a microcosm of the world but it can...
Description
When a Chinese-American police officer kills an innocent, unarmed Black man in a darkened stairwell of a New York City housing project, it sets off a firestorm of emotion and calls for accountability. When he becomes the first NYPD officer convicted of an on-duty shooting in over a decade, the fight for justice becomes complicated, igniting one of the largest Asian-American protests in history, disrupting a legacy of solidarity, and putting an uneven...