Kino Lorber (Firm)
Author
Summary
Invisible Valley weaves together the disparate stories of undocumented farmworkers, wealthy snowbirds, and music festival-goers over the course of a year in California's Coachella Valley. In exploring the Valley's history as well its imperiled future, this riveting documentary uncovers an imminent environmental and social crisis, and the looming consequences for the people who call it home.
Summary
A STATE OF MIND follows two North Korean schoolgirls and their families in the lead up to the "Mass Games" — the biggest and most elaborate human performance on earth — 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...
Summary
¡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...
Summary
Jackson Pollock said, “he makes the rest of us look academic,” Mark Rothko acknowledged him as a “myth-maker” and Clement Greenberg called him “a highly influential maverick and an independent genius.” Clyfford Still, one of the strongest, most original contributors to abstract expressionism, walked away from the commercial art world at the height of his career. Extremely disciplined, principled, and prolific, Still left behind a treasure...
5) The Severing
Summary
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...
6) BloodSisters
Summary
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...
7) Sewing Woman
Summary
Chronicles the bittersweet journey of one woman’s determination to survive: from an arranged marriage in old China to working class comforts in modern America. Produced in 1982 and Oscar®-nominated for Best Short Documentary, this classic film continues to screen widely and is now treasured by a new generation of film goers.SEWING WOMAN is based on a series of oral histories and the life story of the filmmaker’s mother, Zem Ping Dong, an immigrant...
8) The Sentence
Summary
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...
Summary
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...
10) Defining Hope
Summary
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...
Summary
A half century after its release, Midnight Cowboy remains one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era. With beguiling performances from Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman as two loners who join forces out of desperation, blacklist survivor Waldo Salt's brilliant screenplay, and John Schlesinger's fearless direction, the 1969 film became the only X- rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Its vivid and compassionate...
12) Moana With Sound
Summary
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.
13) Licensed to Kill
Summary
Takes a riveting journey into the minds of men whose contempt for homosexuals led them to murder. Attacked in 1977 by gay bashers on the streets of San Francisco, filmmaker Arthur Dong confronts murderers of gay men face-to-face in his film. He asks them directly: “Why did you do it?”Probing on-camera interviews with seven convicted killers behind bars propel the narrative drive of LICENSED TO KILL. These inmates include a wide range of distinct...
14) Protagonist
Summary
This documentary features four individuals who have been devoted to personal odysseys - a cause, a quest, an ideal - to the point of total consumption. At first glance the characters appear disconnected: a former German terrorist, an “ex-gay” evangelist, a bank robber and a martial arts student. But as their stories unfold, one starts to see the parallels between the uncommon, common experience of these four men. In telling this echoing story,...
15) Witness to War
Summary
One man's journey of conscience from Vietnam to El Salvador, WITNESS TO WAR is the Academy Award winning story of Dr. Charlie Clements, who was a pilot in Vietnam until he refused further combat missions. Stripped of his military identity, Clements dedicated his life to non-violence and healing, ultimately tending to the wounded behind rebel lines in El Salvador. WITNESS TO WAR is a personal testament to the enduring tragedy of war as relevant in...
Summary
Based on the acclaimed web series, THE 78 PROJECT MOVIE is a journey across America to record today's musical artists as they perform the early American songs that inspired a century of popular music -- exactly as they were originally recorded, instantaneously, on one-of-a-kind 78rpm lacquer discs. Inspired by Alan Lomax and his quest to capture music where it lived throughout the early 20th Century, the film celebrates the artistry and craft that...
Summary
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...
Summary
Hilma af Klint was an abstract artist before the term existed, a visionary, trailblazing figure who, inspired by spiritualism, modern science, and the riches of the natural world around her, began in 1906 to reel out a series of huge, colorful, sensual, strange works without precedent in painting. The subject of a recent smash retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, af Klint was for years an all-but-forgotten figure in art historical discourse, before...
Summary
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,...
20) Walden
Summary
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***
