Category Archives: Acquisitions

INDIEWIRE: Cinelicious Pics Acquires Tim Sutton’s Critically Acclaimed Sundance Premiere ‘Dark Night’

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By Kate Erbland
September 28, 2016

Cinelicious Pics has acquired all North American rights to Tim Sutton’s critically acclaimed “Dark Night.” Billed as “an artfully understated critique of American gun culture,” the film is “loosely based around the 2012 massacre that took place during a multiplex screening of ‘The Dark Knight’ in Aurora, Colorado.” Sutton’s feature uses pseudo-documentary technique and a cast of non-professional actors to chart the course of six strangers — including the eventual shooter — over one fateful day. The film was shot in Sarasota, Florida, and lensed by veteran French DP Helene Louvart and boasts an original score by Montreal-based Maica Armata.

The film debuted at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was later selected as Closing Night Film at BAM CinemaFest. In recent weeks, the film played out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, where it took home the Lanterna Magica Award.

Our own Eric Kohn wrote of the film, “at every turn, the movie casts a haunting spell…’Dark Night’ plays more like a plea for scrutinizing people rather than the reductive tales of their fates…Despite its real world inspiration, ‘Dark Night’ creates the impression that exclusively focusing on the horrific events — and not the people impacted by them — buries the lede.”

“I am so proud of how this film was made and equally proud of the people who made it,” commented Sutton. “Now I get to take pride in how it will meet American audiences because Cinelicious Pics — a tasteful, intelligent and thoughtful team — will lead Dark Night into theaters with as much passion as we put into making it.”

“We’re incredibly proud and excited to be working alongside Tim,” added Cinelicious Pics’s Vice-President of Acquisitions and Distribution, David Marriott. “His is a singular and much-needed voice in American Independent cinema. DARK NIGHT is not only an important addition to the conversation surrounding gun culture in this country, but a visionary work of art in its own right.”

Cinelicious Pics is planning an early 2017 theatrical and VOD release for the film.

INDIEWIRE: Cinelicious Restoring Japanese Queer Classic ‘Funeral Parade of Roses’

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By Vikram Murthi
June 30, 2016

Exclusive: Cinelicious Restoring Japanese Queer Classic ‘Funeral Parade of Roses’

Cinelicious Pics and actor Elijah Wood’s production company SpectreVision will restore and re-release Toshio Matsumoto’s Japanese queer cinema classic “Funeral Parade of Roses.” A loose adaptation of “Oedipus Rex” set in the gay underground of 1960’s Tokyo, the film follows a group of transgender people as they travel through a largely unseen world of drag bars and nightclubs, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitar, performance art and black mascara.

Long unavailable in the United States, “Funeral Parade of Roses” is an intoxicating masterpiece of subversive imagery, combining elements of documentary and the avant garde. Stanley Kubrick acknowledged that the film was a major influence on “A Clockwork Orange.” Check out some exclusive images from the film below.

“Funeral Parade of Roses” is slated for a theatrical release in early 2017 with VOD and Blu-ray to follow.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Japan Cuts Film Festival at Japan Society Emphasizes the Eccentric

BoS

By Mike Hale
July 3, 2015

The annual cinematic cornucopia known as Japan Cuts — the largest festival of Japanese film in the United States — has previously been presented in association with the even larger New York Asian Film Festival. This year, its ninth, Japan Cuts is going it alone as it presents 28 features and a program of experimental shorts beginning Thursday through July 19 at Japan Society in Manhattan.

BELLADONNA OF SADNESS The most distinctive item on the program is this restoration of a 1973 animated feature produced by the anime legend Osamu Tezuka and directed by his colleague Eiichi Yamamoto. It’s an Age of Aquarius curio, based on a 19th-century study of witchcraft and featuring alternately flowery and surprisingly graphic depictions of sex. (No one under 18 will be admitted to the screening.) Fair warning: The story, about a peasant woman assaulted by the king on her wedding night, is both a female-empowerment fable and a rape fantasy, in which the initial attack is followed by less violent anime-style intrusions of flowering tendrils and devilish imps. But the impact of the story is secondary to the strangeness and beauty of the mostly still images (the camera moves slowly across them) done in styles resembling Klimt, O’Keeffe, Op Art, Ralph Steadman and the higher class of Playboy illustration.

DEADLINE: CINELICIOUS PICS On SXSW Pic ‘The Mend’

MEND_mattsmoking_760x318_web Josh Lucas in THE MEND

By Ross A. Lincoln and Amanda N’Duka
April 8, 2015

Cinelicious Pics has snatched up all North American rights for The Mend, the debut film from director John Magary. Starring Josh Lucas, Stephen Plunkett, Lucy Owen, Mickey Sumner, Austin Pendleton, Cory Nichols, Louisa Krause, Leo Fitzpatrick and Sarah Steele, The Mend is a trippy comedy about a pair of NYC-based brothers stumbling through relationships, family and their own manhood. From Moxie Pictures in association with Discount Films, it’s produced by Myna Joseph and Michael Prall, executive produced by Robert Fernandez, Dan Levinson, Michael Hacker and Susannah Hacker, and presented for its North American release by Pineapple Express helmer David Gordon Green. The deal was negotiated by Kristine Blumensaadt, Dennis Bartok, and David Marriott, all of Cinelicious, with Traction Media’s Maren Olson on behalf of the filmmakers.

INDIEWIRE: Cinelicious Pics is bringing two rarely seen Agnès Varda gems to a new generation of audiences.

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Agnès Varda and Jane Birkin in JANE B. PAR ANGES V.

by Ryan Lattanzio | TOH!

APRIL 13, 2015 | LOS ANGELES

LA cinephiles had the pleasures of seeing two Agnès Varda discoveries from the middle of her career, and of seeing the legendary French filmmaker speak, at an American Cinematheque retrospective this past weekend.

Cinelicious Pics has just acquired the double bill “Jane B. by Agnès V.” and “Kung-Fu Master,” both starring Euro icon Jane Birkin, for US theatrical, VOD and Home Video distribution. Supervised by Varda, the new restorations made their West Coast debut over the weekend, and looked gorgeous in digital 2K.

Less a biopic than a quasi-fiction, poetic-realist documentary, “Jane B. By Agnes V” looks at the actress’ many faces. Really, it’s Varda’s “Orlando,” a time-hopping stitching together of Birkin’s best and least-favorite roles, and the parts she dreams of playing (including Joan of Arc). The film features Birkin’s longtime collaborator and erstwhile lover Serge Gainsbourg, New Wave actor Jean-Pierre Léaud (a.k.a. Antoine Doinel), Birkin’s daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg (who went on to star in the films of Lars von Trier) and Varda’s son Mathieu Demy, whom she had with her filmmaker-husband Jacques Demy.

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Mathieu Demy and Charlotte Gainsbourg in KUNG FU MASTER

A young Mathieu Demy and 14-year-old Charlotte Gainsbourg also appear in Varda’s challenging romance “Kung Fu Master,” which stretches the “May-December” definition to its extremes. Aside from a video game that Demy’s early-teens Julien obsessively plays, the film has nothing to do with kung fu. Instead, the 40-year-old Birkin plays the single mother of two who falls in love with him. Their relationship is treated very matter-of-factly by Varda, who imbues it with a tenderness that is well-played, and earnestly acted, by Demy and Birkin.

At the Aero Theatre on Saturday, Varda said she wrote the film in “two minutes” after Birkin pitched the story to her during the making of “Jane B.” They took a break on that production and shot “Kung-Fu” quickly in the summer. Varda, who most famously directed “Cleo From 5 to 7” and “The Gleaners and I,” didn’t feel weird about directing her young son as the object of a much older woman’s affections. “From the minute we started to film, he was Julien.”

According to Varda, “Kung-Fu Master” hasn’t played much on French TV due to its controversial subject matter. The film also deals head-on with the rise of AIDS in the ’80s, interjecting its whimsical broken-fairytale romance with PSAs about sexual awareness and the disease’s ever-growing reach.

When asked if “Jane B.” (never released in the US) and “Kung-Fu” (released briefly in the 80s) belong together as a double bill, Varda said, “I don’t think so. They’re two separate films.” She may be right, but it’s a treat we get to see them at all, and newly resurrected from their original 35mm negatives.

Release dates forthcoming.

INDIEWIRE: Cinelicious Pics Restoring Animated Masterpiece BELLADONNA OF SADNESS for U.S. Release

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 29, 2014 | 9:00AM PT

Cinelicious Pics has signed an exclusive deal to restore and distribute the long-unavailable 1973 Japanese animated masterpiece BELLADONNA OF SADNESS, as its first major restoration and re-release. The last film in the groundbreaking Animerama trilogy produced by the godfather of Japanese anime & manga, Osamu Tezuka (METROPOLIS, ASTRO BOY) and directed by his long time collaborator Eiichi Yamamoto, BELLADONNA is a mad, swirling, psychedelic lightshow of medieval tarot-card imagery with horned demons and haunted forests. Never before released in the U.S., BELLADONNA OF SADNESS unfolds as a series of spectacular still watercolor paintings that bleed and twist together like an animated version of Chris Marker’s LA JETEE. Cinelicious will restore the feature using the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements in anticipation of a 2015 theatrical, VOD, and home video re-release in North America.

Cinelicious Pics, which launched earlier this year, is uniquely positioned to restore film through its parent company Cinelicious. “It took months of negotiations to convince the Japanese rightsholders to entrust us with the original camera negative of the film which we’re restoring in-house,” says Cinelicious Pics’ President Paul Korver. “People will be simply blown away by the wild, hallucinatory images and soundtrack,” he adds. “BELLADONNA OF SADNESS belongs on a short list with Rene Laloux’s FANTASTIC PLANET and Ralph Bakshi’s WIZARDS as one of the trippiest animated films ever conceived,” adds Cinelicious Pics’ EVP of Acquisitions & Distribution Dennis Bartok. “This is a major rediscovery – and I have to give credit to Hadrian Belove at The Cinefamily here in L.A. for bringing the film to our attention.”

An innocent young woman, Jean (voiced by Katsutaka Ito) is savagely assaulted by the local lord on her wedding night. To take revenge, she makes a pact with the Devil himself (voiced by Tatsuya Nakadai, from Akira Kurosawa’s RAN) who appears as an erotic sprite and transforms her into a black-robed vision of madness and desire. The film is fueled by a Japanese psych rock soundtrack by Masahiko Sato. The deal was negotiated by Cinelicious Pics’ President Paul Korver, President of Business Affairs Kristine Blumensaadt and EVP Dennis Bartok with Japanese rightsholders Gold View Co. and Mushi Productions.

VARIETY: Josephine Decker’s ‘Butter’ and ‘Lovely’ Bought by Cinelicious

Mild and Lovely

VARIETY
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014 | 09:29AM PT
Carole Horst

Cinelicious Pics has acquired all North American rights to Josephine Decker’s “Butter on the Latch” and “Thou Wast Mild and Lovely,” above.

A theatrical and VOD release is planned for November.

Tyro distrib Cinelicious Pics aims to bring an eclectic mix of U.S. indie and foreign features and docs to auds via theatrical release, VOD and Blu-ray. It also handles 4K-restored arthouse and cult classics, brought to pristine viewing quality by sister post and digital restoration studio Cinelicious.

The deal was negotiated by Cinelicious Pics’ president Paul Korver, president of business affairs Kristine Blumensaadt and exec VP Dennis Bartok, with Ben Weiss and Meghan Oliver from Paradigm and Craig F. Cohen of McCue Sussmane & Zapfel.

“Paul and I are incredibly excited to be working with Josephine on her first two features, which have a beautiful, sensual, poetic and intensely visual style that sets her apart from many indie filmmakers today,” says Bartok. “Her work reminds me in a wonderful way of filmmakers like David Lynch and Nicolas Roeg but with a voice all her own.”

“I’m thrilled to be bursting out of the gate with a company who is also hurtling into new territory,” says Decker. “The guys at Cinelicious are passionate, visionary film lovers, incredibly hard workers and just good people. I feel very lucky to be working with them.”