So sooner had the last Oscars been given out when a plethora of announcements from all over the distro globe came out about new theatrical acquisitions and releases. So, here's a recap:
Lorber Films has acquired the US rights to the all-time cinema classic David Holzman's Diary by Jim McBride. This landmark work from 1967 blends fiction and reality, and made a deep impression on an entire generation of filmmakers in the 1970s. This staged documentary chronicles the character David Holzman's efforts to make a film about himself. The film was one of the first to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, with the criteria of being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
"This film is timely right now because it is part of the very DNA of the YouTube generation," Richard Lorber said in a statement. "Jim McBride was the first to bring the immediacy and spontaneity."
Lorber Films will soon announce plans for the theatrical release of this refreshing and timeless work, but for now, in collaboration with the Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Film Series, David Holzman's Diary will be presented at a special one-night only screening of at the IFC Center in New York on Tuesday, March 16 at 8:00 p.m. L.M. Kit Carson, the man who played David Holzman, will be on hand for a post-screening Q&A.
And keeping in it in the Kino Lorber family, Winnebago Man, which premiered at SXSW 2009, was picked up by Kino International for a July premiere in New York City, with a summer and fall rollout to follow. The film, directed and produced by Ben Steinbauer and produced by Joel Heller and Malcolm Pullinger, tells the story of Jack Rebney (a.k.a. "the angriest man in the world"), who has delighted and fascinated millions of viewers with his hilariously foul-mouthed outtakes from an RV sales video--one of the first and most infamous underground videos to be passed hand-to-hand on VHS tapes, before YouTube turned it into a full-blown viral phenomenon. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer takes on the seemingly impossible task of tracking down Rebney, who is more savvy, irascible, deep, weird and cool than you could possibly imagine. In short, he is a star. The film is a hilarious, smart and unexpectedly poignant look at one man's response to unintended Internet celebrity, and ultimately a story of how a so-called "humiliation" can become a beacon of light to many.
And back to Lorber Films, which seems to be on a shopping binge lately...The company acquired three more docs on the eve of their respective premieres at SXSW 2010. Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, by Pakistani-Canadian director Omar Majeed, follows the progression of the Muslim Punk scene, from its imaginary inception in a novel written by a white convert named Michael Muhammad Knight to a full-blown, real-life scene of Muslim punk bands and their fans. Reel Injun, from Cree-Canadian filmmaker Neil Diamond, takes an entertaining and insightful look at the Hollywood Indian, exploring the portrayal of North American Natives through the history of cinema. And Sound of Insects, the European Film Academy Award-winning documentary from Swiss filmmaker Peter Liechti, is a film meditation based on the detailed notes left behind by a man who committed suicide through self-imposed starvation. All three docs will be released theatrically this year, with Reel Injun already scheduled for a June run at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
Elsewhere in distro land, 45365, fresh from its Film Independent Spirit Award for its makers, Bill Ross and Turner Ross, makes its theatrical premiere through 7th Art Releasing this Friday, March 19 at The Downtown Independent in Los Angeles for a weeklong run, followed by gigs in Denver, Seattle, Chicago and New York City. The film, which premiered a year ago at SXSW, where it won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary, is an intimate vérité portrait of the Ross brothers' hometown of Sidney, Ohio (the zip code for which is the title of the film).
Finally, as reported in indieWIRE, Zeitgeist Films picked up two docs that screened at Sundance and are on the slate at SXSW: Laura Poitras' award-winning The Oath and Lixan Fan's Last Train Home, which picked up the Joris Ivins Award for Best Feature Documentary at IDFA.
The Oath tells the tale of two brothers-in-law, one who served as Osama bin-Laden's bodyguard, and the other who served as his driver, and their respective fates with respect to their associations with al Qaeda. Abu Jandal, the bodyguard, is a taxi driver in Yemen, and the film's charismatic and somewhat wily main character, while we meet Salim Hamdan, who had been imprisoned and put on trial in Guantamano, through his letters to Jandal.
Last Train Home follows one family over three years as they struggle in the face of a dieing rural economy, which has necessitated a mass migration of 130 million people to work in cities. These migrants go home once a year--Chinese New Year--and the wait for a ticket on the train is a nerve-wracking, often weeklong ordeal.
The Oath opens in May, and Last Train Home opens this summer.