By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Filmmaker, IFP And MOMA Announce “Best Picture Not Playing” Series
For immediate release
FILMMAKER MAGAZINE, INDEPENDENT FILMMAKER PROJECT (IFP) AND THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ANNOUNCE EIGHTH ANNUAL BEST FILM NOT PLAYING AT A THEATER NEAR YOU SERIES
PROGRAM RUNS NOVEMBER 15-18 AT MoMA
NEW YORK (November 7, 2013) – Filmmaker Magazine, Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) and The Museum of Modern Art announce today the five films selected for the organiza- tions’ annual “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” series, running November 15 – 18 in MoMA’s Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2. They are: Eddie Mullins’ Doomsdays; Kevin Jerome Everson’s The Island of St. Matthews; Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love; Aaron Douglas John- ston’s My Sister’s Quinceanera and Benjamin Greené’s Survival Prayer.
For the eighth year running, the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You series presents highlights from the festival circuit that have yet to be picked up for theatrical distribution. Curat- ed by the Filmmaker Magazine editors, MoMA Department of Film Curatorial Assistant Sophie Cavoulacos, and IFP Senior Director, Programming, Milton Tabbot, the series selects from a wide range of work, including emerging narrative and documentary filmmakers as well as visual and conceptual artists working in the film medium. Past selections include Terence Nance’s An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, Alex Karpovsky’s Red Flag, Mark Jackson’s Without, Laurel Nakadate’s The Wolf Knife, Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues, So Yong Kim’s In Between Days, and Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland.
About the series, Filmmaker Editor-in-Chief Scott Macaulay said, “As the distribution options open to filmmakers are constantly upended by new technologies and viewing patterns, the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You series makes a stand for great pictures whose pleasures are enhanced by that most basic of cinematic pleasures — watching them on the big screen with an engaged audience.”
Details of the five films follow:
It Felt Like Love
2013. USA. Directed by Eliza Hittman. Awkwardly adrift one summer in the seaside districts of South Brooklyn, 14-year-old Lila (newcomer Gina Piersanti, in a raw, startling debut) tries to mimic the cool of her precocious older best friend as she gropes toward sexual awareness by way of one local boy. In her first feature, director Hittman exhibits a real formal control, while Piersanti brings a heartbreaking impassivity to her character. Hittman keeps a cool, analytical dis- tance from her protagonist’s bad behavior while evocatively accessing her interior states through expert framing and expressive sound design. A Sundance 2013 premiere that has been a hit at U.S. and international festivals, It Felt Like Love has earned comparisons to the work of Lynne Ramsay and Catherine Breillat even as Hittman’s take on adolescent female sexuality and New York’s working-class neighborhoods contains an approach and imagination that’s wholly its own. 82 min.
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The Island of St. Matthews
2013. USA. Directed by Kevin Jerome Everson. Combining documentary and lyrical modes, Kevin Jerome Everson creates a portrait of Westport, a Mississippi town ravaged by the 1973 flood of the Tombigbee River, “the flood that carried everything away.” Residents recall high- ways under water, destroyed homes, and the loss of family heirlooms and memories—including Everson family photographs, once stored in the Westport home of his aunt. Interspersed with these reminiscences are recurring vignettes: a baptism being performed in the water, a water ski- er riding along the river, and long, painterly takes of calm waters lapping up against the dam. Everson’s film honors the losses caused by the flood but, like his interlocutors, depicts the river as an immutable force, a source of both life and death. 64 min.
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Survival Prayer
2013. USA/Canada. Directed by Benjamin Greené. Washington-based filmmaker Greené’s debut feature is a hypnotic cinematic portrait of a people out of time. Captured with stillness and re- strained poeticism, Survival Prayer introduces audiences to the residents of Haida Gwaii, a re- mote archipelago off the northwest coast of Canada, who live simple lives as contemporary hunter-gatherers, relying on age-old practices as they reject modernity and the slow erosion of their culture. Beautifully shot by Greené and featuring a shimmering, evocative score by Michael Beharie, Survival Prayer won a Special Jury Prize at the Sarasota Film Festival. 70 min.
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My Sister’s Quinceanera
2013. USA. Directed by Aaron Douglas Johnston. Set in small-town Iowa, My Sister’s Quinceanera eloquently, gently explores the burden of family responsibility on a young Mexican American man who yearns to see the wider world, while his sister’s titular coming-of-age ritual dominates a long Midwestern summer. A dress must be bought, dances must be practiced, and tentative romances form, but for this working-class, matriarchal family, a seismic shift is occur- ring just beneath the surface as Silas (an excellent Silas Garcia) makes tentative plans to leave the cornfields and strip malls of his hometown for nothing else in particular while his fatherless family struggles to maintain the rituals of middle class life. Johnson’s naturalism, complete with local non-professionals in the lead roles, is pitched just right; the film exudes an emotional com- plexity and unforced sweetness that finds the sublime in the seemingly mundane. 72 min.
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Doomsdays
2013. USA. Directed by Eddie Mullins. In this apocalyptic comedy, a pair of deadbeats spends their days breaking into off-season vacation homes in the Catskills, living off stocked pantries
and destroying property as a lark. Dirty Fred has a penchant for whiskey and women, while the pugnacious Bruho destroys any car in his path to curb the nation’s reliance on peak oil—which is bound to bring about the world’s end before too soon. The story unfolds in daily episodes, as the duo brings acolytes into their ranks and as the gang moves from one squat to the next. This clever debut feature puts forth an irreverent refusenik mantra: in the age of global warming, eco- nomic crises, and government shutdowns, why not “drop out, break in, pig out”? 91 min.
ABOUT FILMMAKER MAGAZINE
Under the guidance of founder and editor-in-chief, Scott Macaulay, Filmmaker Magazine has grown into the foremost magazine in the independent film community. Published by IFP – the Independent Filmmaker Project — Filmmaker is the go-to publication for writers, directors, pro- ducers, film industry representatives, and others working in independent film. Written by work- ing independent filmmakers, and with a unique, authoritative voice, Filmmaker’s print edition is published quarterly with new interviews, festival reports, and technical and business news ap- pearing on its website daily. Learn more at: www.filmmakermagazine.com.
ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019, (212) 708-9400, Mo- MA.org.
Hours: Saturday through Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Friday, 10:30 a.m.–8:00 p.m. Museum Admission: $25 adults; $18 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $14 full-time students with current I.D. Free, members and children 16 and under. (Includes admittance to Museum gal- leries and film programs). Free admission during Uniqlo Free Friday Nights: Fridays, 4:00 p.m.– 8:00 p.m.
MoMA.org: No service charge for tickets ordered on MoMA.org. Tickets purchased online may be printed out and presented at the Museum without waiting in line. (Includes admittance to Mu- seum galleries and film programs).
Film and After Hours Program Admission: $12 adults; $10 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $8 full-time students with current I.D. The price of an After Hours Program Admission ticket may be applied toward the price of a Museum admission ticket or MoMA Membership within 30 days.
ABOUT IFP
The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) is the premier organization for independent filmmak- ers, championing the future of storytelling in the digital age by fostering a vibrant and sustain- able independent storytelling community. IFP guides filmmakers in the art, technology, and business of independent storytelling through its annual programming and with the introduction of
the state-of-the-art Made in NY Media Center by IFP, a new incubator space developed with the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, where storytellers from multiple disciplines, indus- tries, and platforms create, collaborate, and connect.
IFP has supported over 7,000 films and offered resources to more than 20,000 filmmakers over its 34-year history, developing 350 new feature and documentary films each year. IFP represents a growing network of 10,000 storytellers in New York City and around the world.
In addition to its workshops, seminars, conferences, mentorships, and Filmmaker Magazine, IFP’s annual programs include The Gotham Independent Film AwardsTM, Independent Film WeekTM, EnvisionTM, and the Independent Filmmaker LabsTM.
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Founded in 1979, IFP is the largest and oldest not-for-profit dedicated to independent film. For more information and to become a member, visit www.ifp.org.
