Kino Lorber (Firm)

Drawing from hundreds of hours of footage, filmmaker Rudy Valdez shows the aftermath of his sister Cindy’s 15-year sentence for conspiracy charges related to crimes committed by her deceased ex-boyfriend—something known, in legal terms, as “the girlfriend problem.” Valdez’s method of coping with this tragedy is to film his sister’s family for her, both the everyday details and the milestones—moments Cindy herself can no longer share...

During the early 1990s, San Francisco was the epicenter of body modification and gender nonconformity, with transgender pioneers like Patrick Califia and Tala Brandeis fighting for visibility, alongside the voice of a bold S/M community. From pushy bottoms to macho femmes, BLOODSISTERS immerses the viewer in the San Francisco leather dyke scene, shattering assumptions about gender and lesbian sexuality, while broadening the discussion about personal...

What happens when religiously conservative Christian parents have children who have “become homosexual?” FAMILY FUNDAMENTALS is filmmaker Arthur Dong’s personal attempt to answer that explosive question. Armed with a digital camera, Dong takes viewers into the private and public lives of three families who have responded to gay offspring by actively opposing homosexuality. FAMILY FUNDAMENTALS goes to the heart of today’s debate over homosexuality,...

From acclaimed filmmaker Mark Pellington (The Mothman Prophecies) comes a visceral and powerful feature-length dance film. This cathartic movement piece was created in collaboration with the brilliant choreographer Nina McNeely (Gaspar Noe’s Climax), rising Dutch cinematographer Evelin Van Rei, and editor Sergio Pinheiro. Inspired by the Wim Wenders film Pina, Pellington was interested in expressing feelings and emotions through a ‘narrative of...

Hilma af Klint was an abstract artist before the term existed, a visionary, trailblazing figure who, inspired by spiritualism, modern science, and the riches of the natural world around her, began in 1906 to reel out a series of huge, colorful, sensual, strange works without precedent in painting. The subject of a recent smash retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, af Klint was for years an all-but-forgotten figure in art historical discourse, before...

Jackson Pollock said, “he makes the rest of us look academic,” Mark Rothko acknowledged him as a “myth-maker” and Clement Greenberg called him “a highly influential maverick and an independent genius.” Clyfford Still, one of the strongest, most original contributors to abstract expressionism, walked away from the commercial art world at the height of his career. Extremely disciplined, principled, and prolific, Still left behind a treasure...

A STATE OF MIND follows two North Korean schoolgirls and their families in the lead up to the "Mass Games" — the biggest and most elaborate human performance on earth — and in the process reveals more of North Korea than ever before. Following on from the 2002 award-winning documentary The Game of Their Lives, VeryMuchSo productions was granted permission from the North Korean film authorities to make a second documentary: an observational...

Martin Kosleck and Hans Heinz von Twardowski, two German actors, fleeing the Nazi regime, come to Hollywood to find work. Most of the time they are asked to play Nazi officers and are reminded all the time what they fled from. But you can never escape your accent. In a sense, they are ground up in the Hollywood system. Although they were stars who worked on the stage and in movies in Germany, in Hollywood they were minor character actors, completely...

LIGHTNING OVER BRADDOCK: A RUSTBOWL FANTASY is as eccentric a picture of America as has emerged in the last two decades. Like Buba’s earlier short films, it chronicles the decline of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a hard-luck town which once flourished as “Pittsburgh’s shopping center.” It concerns a director (Buba, playing himself) trying, without much success, to make a movie with a crazy street hustler named Sal, who considers himself responsible...

It was the swinging 30s. The big bands of the 40s. It was San Francisco night life – Baghdad by the Bay. And the crowds were packing the nation’s premiere all-Chinese nightclub, Forbidden City. Like the Cotton Club of Harlem which featured America’s finest African American entertainers, Forbidden City gained an international reputation with its unique showcase of Chinese American performers in eye-popping all-American extravaganzas.FORBIDDEN...