In my most recent post to this column (of Francois Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses), I mentioned that I would skip the next film on my chronological list, Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell, because I had already podcasted about it not that long ago. But I changed my mind. That decision was partially driven by a mistaken assumption on my part that the next title on my list, namely Orson Welles’ The Immortal Story, was about to get a new release from Criterion the following Tuesday. Actually, that disc won’t hit the market for another couple of weeks, not until August 30, which is too long for me to just let this column sit idle. The reason that I thought that The Immortal Story‘s Blu-ray debut was imminent was because I’ve seen pictures of review copies in circulation and Criterion started yapping about Orson Welles in The Current earlier this month,...

The Look of Silence

Written and directed by Joshua Oppenheimer

For those who already have a low opinion of humanity, The Look of Silence will do little to alleviate your misanthropy. It’s a gorgeously-crafted documentary, and it will likely resonate with people of at least decent moral standing, but it depicts humanity at their worst, and offers no hope at the end. A unnervingly tranquil depiction of men as monsters, Joshua Oppenheimer’s film attempts to confront the leaders of the 1960s Indonesian Genocide, a one-sided civil war that resulted in the deaths of over 1 million people. The killers admit to nothing, of course, and the elected officials–”elected”– write off the genocide as “politics.” Children are programmed to think that those who were murdered deserved it: they were communists, Godless heathens, sinners. Victims’ families don’t dare address the decades-long suppression of truth because subversives are still killed in Indonesia today.

Brooklyn-based distributor Factory 25 has acquired North American rights to Hellaware, writer-director Michael M. Bilandic’s indie satire about a wannabe photographer caught in the lowbrow-highbrow collision between the NYC art gallery scene and the grimy rapcore world of Juggalo culture. Keith Poulson stars as Nate, whose coked-up YouTube search leads him to a music video by Insane Clown Posse knockoff the Young Torture Killers. The fictional band drew free publicity for the film when online viewers took a controversial music video from the movie for the real thing. Factory 25 will open the film in NYC on September 26 and digitally on September 23.

DigiNext has pacted directly with indie shingle Vision Vehicle Productions for worldwide rights to two features from the label co-founded by actor Malcolm Goodwin (American Gangster, Leatherheads, Breakout Kings, iZombie). Faith-inspired flick Pass The Light stars Cameron Palatas as a 17-year-old high school student who runs for Congress to...

Cinedigm Corp has struck a multi-year deal with Edward Noeltner’s Cinema Management Group to handle home entertainment distribution on the Moriah Films’ documentary film collection of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The deal covers home video, digital, television and non-theatrical rights in the Us and all digital rights in Canada. The titles will also be available on Cinedigm’s direct-to-consumer digital channel, Docurama.

Los Angeles-based Moriah Films has won two best documentary Academy Awards for Genocide in 1981 and The Long Way Home in 1997.

The Moriah catalogue includes The Prime Ministers: Tnhe Pioneers; Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny:

I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy Of Simon Wiesenthal; Ever Again; and Echoes That Remain.

“Cinedigm is proud to represent this historically rich and profoundly important catalogue of films and, through Docurama, provide another outlet to those searching for beautifully produced films that tell a moving story of a people’s courage, faith and unbelievable...

The First Amendment denotes a separation between Church and State. However, nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is there a clause proposing separation between Church and Oscar voters, which is why Rabbi Marvin Hier is able to be a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. How did this Talmudist and founder of the Jewish human rights organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, find himself voting for the year's best films? According to the New York Times, it all started through his production company, Moriah Films, which produces documentaries on contemporary Jewish history -- the first of which, "Genocide," was narrated by Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles. As Hier recounted to writer Michael Cieply: "On his way to the first day's voice work with [Elizabeth] Taylor, Rabbi Hier picked up a salted beef sandwich from a deli, so he could keep kosher. 'Rabbi, what is that delicious smell?' he recalls Ms.

Nik Xhelilaj in Artan Minarolli’s Alive! The 2010 edition of Los Angeles’ South-East European Film Festival kicks off this evening with a screening of Arnold Schwartzman’s one-minute "photo-documentary" The Wall, about the bit-by-bit destruction of the Berlin Wall, at 7 p.m. at the Goethe-Institut in the Mid-Wilshire Area. Schwartzman, the Oscar-winning director of the documentary feature Genocide (1982), will be present to introduce his film. The Wall will be immediately followed by an intriguing double-bill: the Us premiere of Boris Mitic’s Serbian documentary Goodbye, How Are You?, and the Los Angeles premiere of Artan Minarolli’s Albanian social-drama-cum-thriller Alive!. Minarolli will be present for a q&a after the screening. Mitic’s Goodbye, How Are You? is described as a quirky look back at the [...]...

Starz Entertainment has acquired five documentaries from Moriah Films of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Simon Wiesenthal, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, dedicated his life to documenting the crimes of the Holocaust and to locating the perpetrators still at large. His work stands as a reminder and a warning for future generations. Academy Award.winning films Genocide and The Long Way Home, as well as I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal, Unlikely Heroes and Liberation. The important films will air on Starz.s IndiePlex channel on October 1, 2009 beginning at 4:00 p.m. (et/pt). The October 1st premiere date marks the anniversary of the mass, open execution of more than 1,000 of...