Films

For the first time, more than twenty years after his death, the first fully-authorized feature documentary on Kurt Cobain, legendary lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of Nirvana, “the flagship band of Generation X,” will be released. Titled, KURT COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK, the documentary film is scheduled for international release in 2015, and will debut exclusively on HBO in the U.S. Cobain’s daughter Frances Bean Cobain is executive producer, but no Courtney Love.

Brett Morgen, the Oscar®-nominated filmmaker behind acclaimed documentaries such as the HBO presentations “Crossfire Hurricane,” which celebrated the 50th anniversary of The Rolling Stones, and “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” is writer, director and producer of KURT COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK. 

The first documentary to be made with the cooperation of Kurt Cobain’s family, the film is a raw and visceral journey through Cobain’s life and provides no-holds-barred access to Kurt Cobain’s archives, home to his never-before-seen home movies, recordings, artwork, photography, journals, demos, personal archives, family archives and songbooks. The film features dozens of Nirvana songs and performances as well as previously unheard Cobain originals.

“I started work on this project eight years ago,” says Morgen. “Like most people, when I started, I figured there would be limited amounts of fresh material to unearth. However, once I stepped into Kurt’s archive, I discovered over 200 hours of unreleased music and audio, a vast array of art projects (oil paintings, sculptures), countless hours of never-before-seen home movies, and over 4000 pages of writings that together help paint an intimate portrait of an artist who rarely revealed himself to the media.”

He adds, “I could not be happier with our partners at HBO and Universal. We look forward to sharing this film with audiences around the world.”

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The documentary, I Am Big Bird, which had its world premiere at Hot Docs earlier this year and will screen at DOC NYC in November, will be released theatrically and on VOD in early 2015 via Tribeca Film. Directed by Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker, I Am Big Bird focuses on Caroll Spinney, who since1969, is the man behind Sesame Street’s Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. Now at 80 years old, I Am Big Bird features incredible footage of Spinney’s earliest collaborations with Jim Henson as it traces his journey from bullied child to celebrated performer. 

I AM BIG BIRD is a feature-length documentary about Caroll Spinney, who has been Sesame Street’s Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since 1969… and at 80 years old, he has no intention of stopping. Think you know everything there is to know about Sesame Street ? You don’t. You might know that Frank Oz turned down an offer to play Big Bird, but you probably don’t know that until a last minute change of heart by NASA, Big Bird was supposed to go to space aboard the Challenger. Or you may know that Oscar the Grouch got his voice from a cantankerous cabbie, but you’d be surprised to learn that a fire in his trash can almost led to Caroll’s untimely demise. Caroll’s stories are the stuff of legend. He has been a constant presence in our lives for over 40 years, his path weaving through American history like that of Forrest Gump. His time inside the Bird has taught him about the world and about himself.

I AM BIG BIRD will peel away the instances in Caroll’s life that inspired his creation of characters that influenced generations of children. And, as the yellow feathers give way to grey hair, it is the man, not the puppet, who will steal your heart.

http://youtu.be/uFTCUF853H0

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The trailer is released for the Orson Welles documentary Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles from Oscar-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman.  The film which was released at the Telluride Film Festival features interviews with with Richard Linklater, Peter Bogdanovich, Frank Marshall, Anthony Perkins, Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Steven Spielberg. Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles opens on December 12th.

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles looks at the remarkable genius of Orson Welles on the eve of his centenary – the enigma of his career as a Hollywood star, a Hollywood director (for some a Hollywood failure), and a crucially important independent filmmaker. From Oscar-winner Chuck Workman.

http://youtu.be/VN8L7TsjfDk

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THE LAST PATROL  

A few years ago, Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Sebastian Junger (“Restrepo”) planned a walk from Washington, D.C. to New York City along Amtrak railroad lines with his close friend, acclaimed war reporter Tim Hetherington. After Hetherington was killed covering the Libyan civil war in 2011, Junger decided to take the same trip, joined instead by a Spanish photographer who was at Hetherington’s side when he died and two combat vets they’d known in Afghanistan.

Chronicling their journey, the moving documentary THE LAST PATROL debuts MONDAY, NOV. 10 (9:00-10:30 p.m. ET/PT), the day before Veterans Day, exclusively on HBO.

Other HBO playdates: Nov. 10 (5:15 a.m.), 13 (9:15 a.m., 4:00 p.m.), 16 (1:00 p.m.), 18 (3:00 p.m.) and 22 (8:15 a.m.)

HBO2 playdates: Nov. 19 (8:15 a.m., 8:30 p.m.), 25 (12:30 a.m.) and 30 (8:15 a.m.), and Dec. 5 (3:00 p.m.) and 8 (10:15 a.m.)

Junger was accompanied by combat veterans Brendan O’Byrne (previously seen in “Restrepo”) and Dave Roels, as well as acclaimed Spanish photojournalist Guillermo Cervera. Naming their journey The Last Patrol, they walked from D.C. to Philadelphia and then turned west, away from the cluttered Northeast Corridor, and headed for the Allegheny Mountains and Pittsburgh.

Junger chose railroad lines because, he believes, “they go straight through the middle of everything,” including ghettos, suburbs, farms and woods, and offer the only way to see the country from the inside out. The group decided not to take tents, since brightly-colored nylon attracts too much attention. Instead, they slept under bridges, in abandoned buildings or simply in the woods. This high-speed vagrancy saw them bathing in rivers, getting water out of creeks, cooking over open fires and talking their way past motorcycle gangs, COPS and suspicious homeowners.

After extensive experience in combat and the loss of good friends, all four men declared they never wanted to go to war again. The goal was to get to know America again after a decade of war, and discuss why combat is so incredibly hard to give up. The Last Patrol recreated the hardship, brotherhood and closeness of combat, without getting fired upon – except once in Pennsylvania.

In conjunction with the film’s premiere, Manhattan’s Anastasia Photo will present Guillermo Cervera’s first solo exhibition in New York, scheduled to run from Oct. 24 to Jan. 4.  In addition to photos he took during the filming of THE LAST PATROL, the show includes selections from 20 years of documenting armed conflict and social issues around the world.

Sebastian Junger is a New York-based writer, journalist and filmmaker. THE LAST PATROL concludes his trilogy on war, following 2014’s “Korengal” and “Restrepo,” which he co-directed with Tim Hetherington. “Restrepo” won the 2010 Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature the following year. Junger’s accompanying book, “War,” was a New York Times bestseller. His other books include “The Perfect Storm,” which was adapted for the hit feature film of the same name, “Fire” and “A Death in Belmont.”

Junger’s other credits include the 2013 HBO documentary “Which Way Is The Front Line From Here? The Life And Time Of Tim Hetherington.”

THE LAST PATROL was directed by Sebastian Junger; producers, Sebastian Junger and Nick Quested; editor, Michael Levine; cinematographer, Rudy Valdez. For HBO: supervising producer, Sara Bernstein; executive producer, Sheila Nevins.

http://youtu.be/Ddambdna4JU

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Bitter Honey is a feature-length documentary presenting an intimate and emotionally charged portrait of three polygamous families in Bali, Indonesia.  Following these families over a seven year period, the film portrays the plight of Balinese co-wives, for whom marriage is frequently characterized by psychological manipulation, infidelity, domestic violence and economic hardship. The film opened in Los Angeles on October 3, 2014, San Francisco on October 17, Boston at the Apple Cinemas Freshpond on October 24, New York and Chicago onOctober 31, 2014 and Washington DC on November 7, 2014. More cities to be announced.

http://youtu.be/lEMmp3h8c3E

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SHE’S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE’S ANGRY

SHE’S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE’S ANGRY, directed by Mary Dore, an award-winning documentary producer who brings an activist perspective to her films, will open at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema in NYC on December 5, and at the Landmark Nuart Theatre in LA on December 12. A national release will follow.

SHE’S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE’S ANGRY resurrects the buried history of the outrageous, often brilliant women who founded the modern women’s movement from 1966 to 1971. SHE’S BEAUTIFUL takes us from the founding of NOW, when ladies wore hats and gloves, to the emergence of more radical factions of women’s liberation; from intellectuals like Kate Millett to the street theatrics of WITCH (Women’s International Conspiracy from Hell!). Remarkably, there has never been a theatrical documentary about the early days of women’s liberation. SHE’S BEAUTIFUL aims not to romanticize the early movement, but to dramatize it in its exhilarating, quarrelsome, sometimes heart-wrenching glory.The film does not shy away from the controversies over race, sexual identity and leadership that arose in the women’s movement.  SHE’S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE’S ANGRY captures the spirit of the time — thrilling, scandalous, and often hilarious.

http://youtu.be/rizJQ7WOS_0

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Director Vivien Lesnik Weisman’s THE HACKER WARS opens Friday, October 17, 2014 at the Village East Cinema in New York.  Ripped from international headlines, The Hacker Wars takes you to the front lines of the high-stakes battle over the fate of the Internet, freedom and privacy. Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Vivien Lesnik Weisman melds her distinctive, subversively bent style with the real-life stories of the cyberpunk vanguards who blur the line between hacking and activism. Locked in a murky conflict against world governments, these so-called hacktivists are waging a life-or-death struggle for the freedom of public information and the defense of privacy under siege.

The Hacker Wars tells the tales of the anarchic troll provocateur Andrew “weev” Aurenheimer, prodigy hacker hero Jeremy Hammond, and incendiary watchdog journalist Barrett Brown — three larger than life characters whose separate quests to expose the secrets of empire hurled them into a fateful collision course with shadowy corporations, the FBI, and ultimate betrayal by one of their own.

Featuring interviews with NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, The Hacker Wars traces the steps that led from the Internet’s murkiest corners to the heavy shadow of censorship and a century’s worth of prison time.

http://youtu.be/dm-eYgtxh8Y

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 THE INVISIBLE FRONT, a documentary directed by Vincas Sruoginis and Jonas Ohman, and winner of the Audience Award at the international film festival “Kino Pavasaris” in Vilnius 2014, will open at the Cinema Village in New York on November 7, at the Music Box in Chicago on November 14, and at the Music Hall in Los Angeles on November 21. A national release will follow.

THE INVISIBLE FRONT is the story of one of the twentieth centuries most significant anti-Soviet resistance movements, told through the words and experiences of Juozas Luksa and his fellow Forest Brothers. Their war was completely unknown to the public in the West. The Soviet Security forces, fighting against them, dubbed the conflict “The Invisible Front”.

In 1944, Soviet forces occupied Lithuania for the second time. At the first occupation. 1940‐41, the government offered no resistance and the Lithuanians had quickly learned the brutal lessons of Communism. This time, they decided to resist. Tens of thousands of young Lithuanian men and women from the villages, schools and universities took to the forests and formed a guerrilla movement, the so­‐called Forest Brothers. One of their most charismatic leaders was Juozas Luksa, an architecture student. Along with his three brothers he joined the underground resistance, challenging the Soviets for years to come. In 1947 Luksa broke out from the Soviet Union to seek support and to tell the tale of Lithuanians desperate resistance to the West.

When in Paris he met the love of his life, Nijole Brazenaite, and married her. He wrote a touching memoir about the origins of the resistance, which was later published by his wife. Shortly after their wedding, Luksa returned to Lithuania, air dropped by the CIA, for intelligence gathering. Panicking, Moscow launched vast resources to hunt him down, once for all ending the threat from the resistance to Communist rule in Lithuania.

http://youtu.be/pUWST7fNkqo

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