Kino Lorber August 2021 Home Video Releases

 

Willow Street Date: 8/3/21 Director: Milcho Manchevski Actors: Sara Klimoska, Natalija Teodosieva, Kamka Tocinovski, Nikola Risteski, Nenad Nacev Language: Macedonian with English subtitles 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

Emily @ the Edge of Chaos Street Date: 8/3/21 Director: Wendy Apple Actors: John Lithgow, Lily Tomlin, Leonard Nimoy, Richard Lewis, Matt Groening 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 Street Date: 8/10/21 Director: Peier Tracy Shen, Nicole Magabo Kiggundu, Olive Nwosu, Samira Saraya, Faye Ruiz, Lesley Steele, Emily Packer, Alex Westfall, Nicole Otero, Jermaine Manigault Actors: Chedi Chang, Chloe Kabuye, Chidera Chidiume, Samira Saraya, Faye Ruiz, Polly Cabrera In English, Mandarin, Luganda, Igbo, Arabic, Hebrew, Tagalog with English subtitles 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. 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"

Weed the People Street Date: 8/10/21 Director: Abby Epstein Actors: Amanda Reiman, Donald Abrams, Bonni Goldstein, Ethan Nadelman, Angela Smith, Chico Ryder 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 Street Date: 8/17/21 Director: Lisa Immordino Vreeland Actors: Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, David Frost, Dick Cavett 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 (Love, Cecil and Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel) masterfully collages a wealth of archival material, including dishy talk show appearances with David Frost and Dick Cavett, with clips from some of the duo’s most memorable movie adaptions: 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

The Indian Doctor: Complete Series 3-Disc Set Street Date: 8/17/21 Director: Tim Whitby, Deep Sehgal, Gwennan Sage, Lee Haven-Jones Actors: Sanjeev Bhaskar, Ayesha Dharker, Jacob Oakley, Mali Harries, Ifan Huw Dafydd 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.

Overwhelm the Sky Street Date: 8/17/21 Runtime: 170 Director: Daniel Kremer Actors: Alexander Hero, Raul Delarosa, William Cully Allen, Catherine Lerza, Nima Slone Black & White 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

Viva Street Date: 8/24/21 Director: Anna Biller Actors: Anna Biller, Jared Sanford, Bridget Brno, Chad England 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

Berlin Alexanderplatz Street Date: 8/31/21 Director: Burhan Qurbani Actors: Welket Bungué, Jella Haase, Albrecht Schuch, Joachim Krol, Annabelle Mandeng German with English subtitles 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 Street Date: 8/31/21 Actors: Lydia Lunch, Thurston Moore, Kembra Pfahler, Nicolas Jaar, Donita Sparks, Richard Kern Color and Black & White Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over is a deep dive into life and work of the fearless musician and performer Lydia Lunch that echoes the urgent, aggressive, unapologetic attitude that Lunch inhabits. Lunch hit the late 1970s New York City downtown scene with the band Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, a central pillar of the No Wave music movement. Since then, she has forged paths in the underground film scene as a director, actor, lecturer and women’s empowerment coach, feminist writer and spoken word performer. Directed by boundary-breaking filmmaker Beth B (Two Small Bodies), whose collaborations with Lunch span more than four decades, Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over presents the artist’s electric body of work with archival footage, vintage photographs and interviews with Lunch and longtime collaborators. Actively performing to expose the patriarchy, sexual abuse, cycle of violence, and corporate greed, Lunch continues to tirelessly bring her passionate artistry to the stage—and now to the screen.