Kino Lorber has unveiled some of the details of their May 2021 Blu-Ray and DVD releases from their Kino Lorber, Kino Classics, Cohen Media Group, Virgil Films and Artsploitation Films imprints. Get all the details on this incredibly packed lineup below:
Street Date: 5/4/21
Synopsis: In 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland toured an anti-war comedy show across Southeast Asia. Despite being highly controversial, it was a huge success among stationed soldiers. Out of circulation and difficult to see for decades, F.T.A. has now been fully restored by IndieCollect in 4K.
Bonus Features: New introduction by Jane Fonda | Interview with Jane Fonda (2005) | SIR! NO SIR! (2005 documentary by David Zeiger, 83 min.) | Booklet with essays by historians David Cortight and Mark Shiel [Blu-ray only] | Dolby Atmos audio [Blu-ray only] | Trailer
Street Date: 5/11/21
Synopsis: Based on the bestselling book by Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump is an immersive cinematic exploration of neurodiversity through the experiences of nonspeaking autistic people from around the world. The film blends Higashida’s revelatory insights into autism, written when he was just 13, with intimate portraits of five remarkable young people. It opens a window for audiences into an intense and overwhelming, but often joyful, sensory universe.Moments in the lives of each of the characters are linked by the journey of a young Japanese boy through an epic landscape; narrated passages from Naoki’s writing reflect on what his autism means to him and others, how his perception of the world differs, and why he acts in the way he does: the reason he jumps. The film distills these elements into a sensually rich tapestry that leads us to Naoki’s core message: not being able to speak does not mean there is nothing to say.
Bonus Features: English audio description | Interview with director Jerry Rothwell | Q&A with Jerry Rothwell, courtesy of the ReelAbilities Film Festival | Trailer
Street Date: 5/18/21 (DVD Only)
Synopsis: Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker is a fiery and urgent documentary portrait of downtown New York City artist, writer, photographer, and activist David Wojnarowicz. As New York City became the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, Wojnarowicz weaponized his work and waged war against the establishment’s indifference to the plague until his death from it in 1992 at the age of 37. Exclusive access to his breathtaking body of work — including paintings, journals, and films — reveals how Wojnarowicz emptied his life into his art and activism. Rediscovered answering machine tape recordings and intimate recollections from Fran Lebowitz, Gracie Mansion, Peter Hujar, and other friends and family help present a stirring portrait of this fiercely political, unapologetically queer artist.
Bonus Features: New material not included in the feature | Q&A with director Chris McKim | Trailer
THE BUREAU: THE COMPLETE SERIES
Synopsis: All five seasons of Eric Rochant’s award-winning spy thriller television series The Bureau are collected in this 15-disc set. The Bureau is a secretive department in charge of training elite undercover agents for the French secret service (known as the DGSE – Directorate-General for External Security). Dispatched to key locations all around the world and living under false identities for years, their mission is to identify potential sources. The series begins with the return to the DGSE headquarters of top spy Malotru (Matthieu Kassovitz, Amélie, La Haine), after a six-year mission in Syria. But his return to “normal” life is proving difficult, especially when he is informed that Nadia (Zineb Triki), a woman he was madly in love with in Damascus is actually in Paris. For love, he is willing to take risks…for him and the Bureau.
Bonus Features: Trailers
Street Date: 5/4/21
Synopsis: Weary of repackaging the creaky melodramas of the 1930s and ’40s, exploitation distributors in the 1960s began importing European films, which were more frank in their depictions of sexual matters. Any integrity the original films may have possessed was obliterated by the sensational titles and ad campaigns employed to market them to the American grindhouse. A perfect example is Der Arzt stellt fest… (The Doctor notes…), directed by Aleksander Ford (Mir Kumen On). A soap-style dramatization of life inside a women’s clinic, the film argues on behalf of birth control and safe, legal abortion. In the U.S., the film was released by Donn Davison as The Wages of Sin and accompanied by a live lecture and additional childbirth shorts, both of which are included here. This Kino Classics edition includes another serious treatise on birth control (though one not sold on the exploitation circuit): The Misery and Fortune of Women, produced by Der Arzt stellt fest… co-producer Lazar Wechsler.
Bonus Features: Audio commentary by film historian Alexandra Heller-Nicholas | The Misery and Fortune of Women (1929, 58 min.) | Donn Davison medical lecture/book pitch | Life and Its Secrecies (11 min.) | Triplets by Cesarean Section (8 min.) | Trailer gallery
Street Date: 5/11/21
Synopsis: Douglas Sirk (All That Heaven Allows) would become synonymous with the 1950s American melodrama, but he was already reinventing the genre while working in Germany in the 1930s. This disc collects two of these rarely-seen, innovative films, both showcasing the talents of Swedish-born superstar Zarah Leander. To New Shores stars Leander as a woman sentenced to an Australian penal colony for a crime committed by her former lover (Willy Birgel). She eventually marries a farmer (Viktor Staal) and returns to the cabaret stage, but remains tragically fixated on the man who broke her heart. In La Habanera, Leander plays Astree, a Swedish woman who marries a Puerto Rican land baron (Ferdinand Marian). As years pass, their love fades, and Astree’s passions are reawakened by a doctor (Karl Martell) who has come to help fight a devastating epidemic, igniting the fury of her jealous husband. While she bore certain resemblances to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich (with her sultry insouciance, defiance of authority, and her low singing voice), Zarah Leander was in fact a striking original, and has largely been overlooked by American audiences because of the inaccessibility of her films (produced at Ufa when the studio was under Reich control).
Bonus Features: Audio commentary for To New Shores by film historian Josh Nelson | Audio commentary for La Habanera by film historian Olaf Möller
Street Date: 5/18/21
Synopsis: Winner of the Academy Award® for Best Foreign Film, Madame Rosa (1977) is an enduring classic of cross-cultural understanding. Simone Signoret (Diabolique) stars as Madam Rosa, a French-Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who now runs a boarding house in Paris for the children of prostitutes. She takes a liking to Momo (Samy Ben Youb), an Algerian boy who she raises in the Muslim faith, a controversial decision in the midst of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But their bond transcends religion, and they scrape by as an unlikely but loving family. That is, until her health declines and the intolerance around them threatens to tear them apart.
Bonus Features: Audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger | 4K restoration
Street Date: 5/25/21
Synopsis: Four-year-old Ponette (Victoire Thivisol) loses her mother (Marie Trintignant) in a tragic automobile accident. Her father (Xavier Beauvois) passes her along to an aunt and then to a boarding school. Believing that life cannot simply stop, Ponette continues to yearn for her mom. She speaks to her, she waits for her, she looks for her. Uncertainly but stubbornly, she tries to bring her mother back. This heartbreaking drama from director Jacques Doillon was named one of the Best Foreign Language Films of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review.
Bonus Features: Audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan | Trailer
Synopsis: Throughout the 1920s, MGM released a series of lavishly-produced films showcasing the talents of comic actress Marion Davies, often placing her in nostalgic turn-of-the-century settings. Among the most elaborate of these vehicles was Lights of Old Broadway, set among the music halls and shantytowns of what was soon to become known as the Great White Way, just before the streets and marquees were electrified, forever changing the face of New York City. Davies plays twins, orphaned in childhood, who grow up unaware of one another’s existence. Anne is taken in by wealthy socialites, while scrappy Fely lives with the brawling Irish-American O’Tandy family. Class-conscious romantic entanglements ensue, enlivened by Davies’s boundless physical energy and impeccable comic timing. This 2K master was derived from from the Library of Congress’s 2018 35mm preservation of the film, which includes footage colored via three different techniques: two-strip Technicolor, the Handschiegl process, and color tinting (evidence of the star’s prestige at MGM).
Bonus Features: Audio commentary by film historian Anthony Slide | New orchestral score composed, arranged, and conducted by Robert Israel
Synopsis: What would happen if someone could get tomorrow’s newspaper headlines today? This charming period comedy tells the story of a reporter (Dick Powell) who wishes he could scoop his colleagues by knowing about events before they occur. When a mysterious old man gives him the news a day in advance, his life is turned upside down. Racing to prevent a headline predicting his own death, he gets mixed up with a beautiful fortune teller (Linda Darnell) and her overprotective uncle (Jack Oakie). It Happened Tomorrow was acclaimed French director René Clair’s (Beauty of the Devil) follow up to his equally enchanting I Married a Witch, both made during his exile in Hollywood during World War II. Clair’s famous whimsical style is evident in this cautionary tale; be careful—what you wish for might come true. This sparkling black and white film was restored from a 4K scan.
Bonus Features: Trailer
M.C. ESCHER: JOURNEY TO INFINITY
Synopsis: M.C. Escher: Journey To Infinity tells the story of world famous Dutch graphic artist M.C Escher (1898-1972). Equal parts history, psychology, and psychedelia, Robin Lutz’s entertaining, eye-opening portrait gives us the man through his own words and images: diary musings, excerpts from lectures, correspondence and more (voiced by British actor Stephen Fry, Gosford Park), while Escher’s woodcuts, lithographs, and other printing techniques appear in both original and playfully altered form. Two of his sons, George (92) and Jan (80), reminisce about their parents while musician Graham Nash (Crosby, Stills & Nash) talks about Escher’s rediscovery in the 1970s. The film looks at Escher’s legacy: one can see tributes to his work in movies, in fiction, on posters, on tattoos, and elsewhere throughout our culture; indeed, few fine artists of the 20th century can lay claim to such popular appeal.
Bonus Features: Making-of Featurette | Behind-the-scenes stills gallery | M.C. Escher Home Movies | Stephen Fry, Narrating the Film | Trailers
Synopsis: Her Name is Chef showcases the stories of six amazingly talented, inspiring, females of the kitchen. Each share their triumphs in cutting through the clichés of the restaurant industry, and explore how they broke down the doors to ‘earn’ the title of Chef.
Bonus Features: Trailers
Street Date: 5/25/21 (DVD Only)
Synopsis: A remake of the Indian-Malaysian film Drishyam, this Chinese box-office blockbuster is a Hollywood-esque cat-and-mouse crime thriller. Working family man and self-described movie-geek Li (Xiao Yang) is thrown into a battle of wits with the law after his daughter accidentally kills, and his wife hurriedly buries, a fellow student who had sexually molested her. The dead boy’s father is an ambitious politician, and his mother (Twin Peaks’ Joan Chen) is La Wen, a steely eyed, morally corrupt police chief. Utilizing his encyclopedic knowledge of crime cinema, Li concocts a complicated alibi but for La Wen, the crime is personal, and she smells a coverup. Sheep Without a Shepherd is an inventive, twistily-plotted tale of blackmail, murder and justice, with the two families caught up in a deadly game.
Bonus Features: Trailer
Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.
