Street Date: 8/3/21 (DVD Only)
Synopsis: A medieval couple in Macedonia cannot conceive. An old woman offers help – but only if they give her their firstborn. A year after they have a baby, she pays them a visit. A taxi driver hits a man in the street. The ambulance and neighbors come and go. Seated alone on the curb in the rain, he waits for the police. Taken with his honesty, Rodna brings him an umbrella. Three years later they are married, but can’t conceive – until they try in-vitro. She gets pregnant with twins, but it turns out one of the babies will be deformed. Knowing that he opposes abortion, she faces a tough choice. Rodna’s sister has adopted a 5-year-old boy. He is very intelligent, but does not say a word. One day he goes missing. Willow is a powerful, poignant, brilliantly acted, and visually stunning look at motherhood spanning centuries. Willow is North Macedonia’s international feature film submission for the 93rd Academy Awards®. Directed by Oscar®-nominated Milcho Manchevski (Before the Rain), Willow is comprised of three stories and three unlikely heroines.
Bonus Features: Director’s Cut of the Feature (120 minutes) | Making-of Willow | Trailer
Street Date: 8/3/21 (DVD Only)
Synopsis: The brilliantly illuminating Emily @ the Edge of Chaos interweaves Emily Levine’s live performance with animation, appearances by scientists, and animated characters (John Lithgow as Sir Isaac Newton, Lily Tomlin as Ayn Rand, Leonard Nimoy as Sigmund Freud, Richard Lewis as Aristotle, Matt Groening as Aldo Leopold). The film uses physics – which explains how the universe works – to explain our metaphysics – the story of our values, our institutions, our interactions. Using her own experience and a custom blend of insight and humor, provocation and inspiration, personal story and social commentary,
Emily takes her audience through its own paradigm shift: from the Fear of Change to the Edge of Chaos.
Emily Levine, like her film, was one-of-a-kind. She was a television writer, a stand-up performer, and an out-of-the box-thinker, whose brilliant TED talks have been seen by millions. She made this film with Wendy Apple, who produced and directed it. Wendy died in 2017 and Emily continued working on the film until she also passed away in 2019.
Bonus Features: Trailer
WHO WILL START ANOTHER FIRE: A SHORT FILM ANTHOLOGY BY EMERGING FILMMAKERS
Synopsis: Who Will Start Another Fire is a collection of 9 films by emerging filmmakers from underrepresented communities around the world. Each of these stories are personal and distinctly told, but unified by themes of rebirth and growing as above, so below, growing into your future and into your past rather than forgetfully forward. These films deny the idea of art for art’s sake and do not exist in self-designed aesthetic vacuums. Their creation represents a necessary reckoning for their makers and so perhaps too the viewers. These are growing films by growing filmmakers, made for the future and the past, all brought to you to experience now and onwards.
Bonus Features: Introduction by Charles Burnett | Trailers | The Shorts: “LIKE FLYING”, “FAMILY TREE”, “TROUBLEMAKER”, “POLYGRAPH”, “THE LIGHTS ARE ON, NO ONE’S HOME”, “BY WAY OF CANARSIE”, “THE ROSE OF MANILA”, “SLIP”, and “NOT BLACK ENOUGH”
Synopsis: Cannabis has been off-limits to doctors and researchers in the US for the past 80 years, but recently scientists have discovered its anti-cancer properties. Armed with only these laboratory studies, desperate parents obtain cannabis oil from underground sources to save their children from childhood cancers. Weed the People follows these families through uncharted waters as they take their children’s survival into their own hands. Some of their miraculous outcomes beget the unsettling question at the heart of the film: If weed is truly saving lives, why doesn’t the government want people to access it?
Bonus Features: 15 Deleted Scenes | Trailer
TRUMAN & TENNESSEE: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION
Synopsis: The brilliant work, personal struggles, and cultural impact of iconic American writers Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams explodes onto the screen in this innovative dual-portrait documentary. Filmmaker Lisa Immordino Vreeland masterfully collages a wealth of archival material, including dishy talk show appearances with Dick Cavett and David Frost, with clips from some of the duo’s most memorable movie adaptations: A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and In Cold Blood. Featuring vibrant voiceover work by award-winning actors Jim Parsons (Capote) and Zachary Quinto (Williams), the film is dripping with wit and wisdom. It is a celebration of both men’s fearless candor and often tumultuous friendship that honors how their identity as gay Southerners informed their timeless artistic achievements and relationships with family, colleagues, confidants, and – most significantly – each other.
Bonus Features: Trailers
Street Date: 8/17/21
Synopsis: The Indian Doctor is a heartwarming and award-winning British comedy series that originally aired on BBC One. All three seasons and 15 episodes are presented in this 3-disc set. It tells the classic “fish out of water” story of Prem Sharma (Sanjeev Bhaskar, Yesterday), a highly educated Indian doctor, and Kamini (Ayesha Dharker, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, The Father), his beautiful upper class wife, who, attracted by the promise of opportunities in the new National Health Service and a glamorous lifestyle in London, leave India in 1963 only to find themselves sent to a small practice in a Welsh coal mining village. This comes as quite a shock to both the Sharmas and the villagers, who have to learn to live with each other.
Bonus Features: Trailers
Street Date: 8/17/21 (DVD Only)
Synopsis: Daniel Kremer’s Overwhelm the Sky is an epic odyssey of a spiritually shell-shocked man searching for answers in a world of loners, mourners, kooks, seducers, deceivers, and sleepwalkers. The San Francisco Chronicle aptly describes it as “part noir, part epic journey from inner mind to outer expanses.” Loosely adapted from the 1799 gothic novel Edgar Huntly, or Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockden Brown, the film follows Eddie Huntly (Alexander Hero), an east coast radio personality who moves to San Francisco to marry Thea, the sister of his best friend Neil. Shortly before Eddie’s arrival, however, Neil is found murdered in Golden Gate Park, in what the police surmise was a simple mugging gone awry. As the sullen Eddie steps in as interim host of his old friend Dean’s late-night talk-radio show, he obsessively makes regular visits to the forested spot where Neil’s corpse was discovered. One such visit unleashes a chain of unpredictable events that sends Eddie snooping into the life of a sleepwalking drifter with a mysterious past. These mysteries and others can only be sorted out in the Arizona desert, where Eddie has a series of surreal, frightening encounters that forever alter his reality. Featuring evocative San Francisco location shooting, strikingly gorgeous monochrome cinematography, and an extraordinary original music score that blends full orchestra with experimental instrumentation, Overwhelm the Sky is a wildly acclaimed American original that goes daringly big on a low budget.
Bonus Features: Audio commentary by director Daniel Kremer, star Alexander Hero, and DP/co-screenwriter Aaron Hollander | An Overwhelming Sound: Costas Dafnis Discusses His Score | Deleted Scene | Outtake Reel | Roadshow Premiere Q&A | Trailer
Street Date: 8/24/21 
Synopsis: Viva (2007) is a cult retro spectacle about a bored 1970s housewife who gets sucked into the sexual revolution. Abandoned by her perfect Ken-doll husband, Barbi (writer/director Anna Biller, The Love Witch) is dragged into trouble by her girlfriend, who spouts women’s lib as she gets Barbi to discard her bra and go out on the town. Barbi becomes a Red Riding Hood in a sea of wolves, and quickly learns a lot more than she wanted to about the different kinds of scenes going on in the wild ’70s, including nudist camps, the hippie scene, orgies, bisexuality, sadism, drugs, and bohemia. Viva is a highly stylized film that draws on classic exploitation cinema and vintage Playboy magazines for its look and characters. Saturated to the hilt with vibrant color, and exquisitely detailed in its depiction of the period, Viva looks like a lost film from 1972, even down to the campy and self-assured performances, the big lighting, the plethora of negligées, and the delirious assortment of Salvation Army ashtrays, lamps, fabrics, and bric-a-brac. Whether you’re looking for naked people dancing, alcoholic swingers, stylish sex scenes, a sea of polyester, Hammond organ jams, glitzy show numbers, white horses, blondes in the bathtub, gay hairdressers, or psychedelic animation, Viva has it all!
Bonus Features: New audio commentary by writer/director/star Anna Biller | Behind-the-scenes footage narrated by Anna Biller | Trailer
Synopsis: An African immigrant struggles to make a new life for himself in the big city in director/co-writer Burhan Qurbani’s audacious, neon-lit reinterpretation of Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (famously adapted by Reiner Werner Fassbinder in 1980). After surviving his perilous journey, Francis (Welket Bungué) vows to be a good man, but he soon realizes how difficult it is to be righteous while undocumented in Germany—without papers, without a nationality, and without a work permit. When he receives an enticing offer for easy money from the psychopathic gangster Reinhold (Albrecht Schuch), Francis initially resists temptation, but eventually he is sucked into Berlin’s underworld and his life spirals out of control. –Alissa Simon
Bonus Features: Trailer
LYDIA LUNCH: THE WAR IS NEVER OVER
Synopsis: Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over by Beth B is the first career-spanning documentary retrospective of Lydia Lunch’s confrontational, acerbic and always electric artistry. As New York City’s preeminent No Wave icon from the late 70’s, Lunch has forged a lifetime of music and spoken word performance devoted to the utter right of any woman to indulge, seek pleasure, and to raise voice in a rage as loud as any man. The film frames Lunch’s work through the lens of the various philosophical themes that have obsessed her for years to enlighten and empower women to voice the unheard and to break the cycle of violence toward women throughout the world. Lydia Lunch is the psycho sexual transgressive who revoked patriarchal expectations of what a female performer might mean, while forging a vocabulary of rare emotional honesty, philosophy and humor.
Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over includes interviews with Lydia Lunch and longtime collaborators and colleagues including: Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth; performance artist Kembra Pfahler; Teenage Jesus bass player, Jim Sclavunos; Donita Sparks from L7; famed DJ and musician Nicolas Jaar; Art Critic Carlo McCormick; Filmmaker Richard Kern and a long list of other groundbreaking artists connected to Lunch’s past and present. Filming in rehearsal and on tour with her band Retrovirus, the behind-the-scenes footage reveals a side of Lunch’s personality that has been unseen. Her warmth and generosity in private interactions along with hilarious banter in the rehearsal studio with band members contrasts wonderfully with her brash, assaultive style of performance. The film is not only about Lunch, but about the scene that she helped spawn, continues to grow and influence, and the creative people who join her in creating a new vision of woman.
Bonus Features: You Telling Me To Calm Down? (2020, 3 Min.), a short film by Beth B featuring Lydia Lunch | Deleted scenes | Excerpts of live musical and spoken-word performances 1991-2016 | Extended interview with cultural critic Carlo McCormick | Theatrical trailer
Synopsis: A spectacular German science fiction film in the tradition of Metropolis (1927) and Gold (1934), F.P. 1 Doesn’t Answer dramatizes the creation of a massive floating airport serving as a way station between four continents. Hans Albers (The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes) stars as Ellissen, a dashing pilot who helps pursuade an heiress (Sybille Schmitz, Vampyr) to fund the visionary project. When communication with Floating Platform 1 is mysteriously interrupted, Ellissen risks his life to investigate its disappearance. Produced just as the Nazi government was taking control of the German film industry, F.P.1 was writer Kurt Siodmak’s last film before emigrating to England and eventually America, where (as Curt Siodmak) he would write The Ape, The Wolf Man, Donovan’s Brain, and many other classic Hollywood horrors). It was also the last pre-war German film of Peter Lorre (M, The Maltese Falcon), who costars as a sly photojournalist. This special edition includes both the restored German-language version of F.P.1 Doesn’t Answer as well as the English-language version, Secrets of F.P.1, featuring Conrad Veidt (The Man Who Laughs).
Bonus Features: The complete English-language version, Secrets of F.P.1, starring Conrad Veidt, Jill Esmond, and Leslie Fenton | Audio commentary by film historian Eddie von Mueller
FORBIDDEN FRUIT: THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE EXPLOITATION PICTURE, VOL. 12
Synopsis: From the era of pasties and a g-string come a bevy of burlesque beauties performing their signature striptease acts, accompanied by a raucous gang of hairy-armed, baggy-pants comedians, testing the boundaries of what was morally permissible on the midcentury movie screen. Both Peek-a-Boo and “B” Girl Rhapsody are directed by burlesque impresario Lillian Hunt, who shot the film in a style that preserves the theatrical experience, never allowing the viewer to cross the footlights, never affording the audience too close a view. The results are two time capsules that offer priceless front-row views of old-school bump and grind (shot on location at the New Follies Theater in Los Angeles), a treat for nostalgic octogenarians and millenial New Burlesque fans alike.
Bonus Features: Audio commentary for Peek-A-Boo by Eric Schaefer, author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films 1919-1959 | Audio commentary for “B” Girl Rhapsody by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas | Theatrical trailers
Street Date: 8/24/21
Synopsis: The Clockmaker of St. Paul is the debut feature of legendary director Bertrand Tavernier (A Sunday in the Country, Journeys Through French Cinema). Adapted from Georges Simenon’s novel The Watchmaker of Everton (1954), it stars Philippe Noiret (Cinema Paradiso) as the unassuming title character, a man who begins to reexamine his life when his son is wanted for murder. Asked for help by the police inspector (Jean Rochefort, Man on the Train), he realizes how little he knew about his son, and begins to seek out the truth hidden behind his family’s walls. It’s “a work of assurance and ease” (New York Times) that was cowritten by the famed duo of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost (Forbidden Games).
Bonus Features: New introduction by filmmaker Walter Hill | Audio commentary by director Bertrand Tavernier | Booklet with excerpts from Tavernier’s memoir [Blu-ray only] | Interview with Tavernier and Philippe Noiret (2001) | Interview with Tavernier (2008) | Trailer
Synopsis: Love Rites (Cérémonie d’amour) is cult director Walerian Borowczyk’s (The Beast) subversively erotic final feature. He returns with a vengeance to a signature theme—emasculation. Vain clothing buyer Hugo (Mathieu Carrière) meets beautiful Myriam (Marina Pierro) on the subway and pursues her, discovering to his delight that she’s a prostitute. The crafty Myriam, of course, has more in mind for their encounter than smug Hugo bargained for. Love Rites turns the sexual tables with perverse exactitude.
Bonus Features: Brief von Paris (1976, short film by Walerian Borowczyk) | Audio commentary by film historian Daniel Bird | Interview with Mathieu Carriere | Trailer | Shorter director’s cut of the feature [Blu-ray only]
Synopsis: How far do you have to travel to find yourself? And what sacrifices are you willing to make to get there? Veiga Grétarsdóttir is the first person in the world to attempt to kayak over 2,000 kilometers around Iceland, counter-clockwise and “against the current.” This achievement has been said to be comparable to climbing the mountain K2. Veiga’s personal journey is no less remarkable. She was born 44 years ago as a boy in a fishing village on the far west coast of Iceland. Veigar had a wife and family but decided that she could no longer live as a man, and at the age of 38, decided to undergo gender reassignment. The inner struggle for Veigar to become Veiga was a journey as difficult if not more so than the solo kayak expedition she undertakes. These two stories of conflict and struggle are intertwined as the film follows her amazing 103 day journey around Iceland, with the magical, rugged coastline of the country a backdrop to the story of Veiga’s transition.
Bonus Features: Trailers
Street Date: 8/3/21 (DVD Only)
Synopsis: The Phantom tells the story of one of the darkest episodes in the long history of American justice. A story of how the State of Texas knowingly sent an innocent man to his death and left a serial killer at large. A case in which—for the first time—it can be conclusively proven that the US courts executed a blameless man. This film uncovers the shocking truth behind a tale of murder, corruption and lies that unfolded in the dusty, desperate streets of a Texas oil town nearly thirty years ago.
Bonus Features: Trailers
THE GANG/THREE MEN TO KILL: TWO NEWLY RESTORED FILMS BY JACQUES DERAY
Synopsis: THE GANG (1977): In 1945, as World War Two comes to a close, five small time crooks unite to form a gang lead by the charismatic Alain Delon. After several bold robberies they become notorious as “the front-wheel drive gang.” The police attempt to stop their crime spree with little success, but how long will their luck last? / THREE MEN TO KILL (1980): In this Gritty, violent and suspenseful thriller, Delon plays Gerfaut who comes to the aid of a man laying wounded in the road, not knowing the man has taken two bullets to the belly. Soon he becomes the target for the killers, who see him as a dangerous witness. But Gerfaut has been around the block a couple of times and he won’t be so easily eliminated.
Bonus Features: Trailers
Synopsis: In a sleepy provincial town, a Jehovah’s Witness community is under attack from an extremist group. In the midst of this conflict is Yana, the wife of the community leader, whose familiar world is slowly crumbling around her. Meanwhile, a detective intrudes on her home with devastating consequences.
Recalling the films of Michael Haneke, Carlos Reygadas and Chantal Akerman, this is a provocative and visually arresting feature debut from Georgian writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili that will shake you to your core.
Bonus Features: Q&A with Dea Kulumbegashvili and Luca Guadagnino
Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.
