PRODUCTION
Cinema Conservancy has produced or given production support to the following films. As part of our mission to make these films accessible to the public, they are now available digitally and remain available to be booked by arthouse cinemas across the country.
FREE TIME Directed by Manfred Kirchheimer
2020. 63 min. Shot on 16mm. Exhibition on DCP.
Manny Kirchheimer is one of the great masters of the American city symphony, as is clear from films like Stations of the Elevated (1981) and Dream of a City. In his latest work, the 88-year-old Kirchheimer has meticulously restored and constructed 16mm black-and-white footage that he and Walter Hess shot in New York between 1958 and 1960. This lustrous evocation of a different rhythm of life captures the in-between moments—kids playing stickball, window washers, folks reading newspapers on their stoops—and the architectural beauty of urban spaces, set to the stirring sounds of Ravel, Bach, Eisler, and Count Basie. The breathtaking footage was shot in several distinct New York neighborhoods, including Washington Heights, the Upper West Side, and Hell’s Kitchen, and features impressionistic stops throughout the city, making time for an auto junkyard in Inwood, a cemetery in Queens, and the elegant buildings of the financial district.
Hermia & Helena Directed by Matías Piñeiro
2017. 87 min. Digital
Hermia & Helena is now available on Blu-ray and DVD! More info at Kino Lorber.
Shooting outside his native Argentina for the first time, New York–based Matias Piñeiro fashions a bittersweet comedy of coupling and uncoupling that doubles as a love letter to his adopted city. Working on a Spanish translation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on an artist residency, Camila (Agustina Muñoz) finds herself within a constellation of shifting relationships (an old flame, a new one, a long-lost relative). Mingling actors from the director’s Buenos Aires repertory with stalwarts of New York’s independent film scene (Keith Poulson, Dustin Guy Defa, Dan Sallitt), Hermia and Helena offers the precise gestures, mercurial moods, and youthful energies of all Piñeiro’s cinema, with an emotional depth and directness that make this his most mature work yet. (New York Film Festival)
Mati Diop and Agustina Muñoz in Hermia & Helena
"By positioning Shakespeare within a chatty tale of young adulthood — and giving it a feminist slant — Piñero proves the vitality of the material without becoming subservient to it... In the process of toying with Shakespeare’s voice, Piñero has found a distinct one himself." — Eric Kohn, Indiewire
Peter Dunning in Peter and the Farm
"There are ugly and beautiful qualities to Dunning and his domain, and Stone renders them with a texture as rich as the soil through his fingers." — Scott Tobias, Variety
Peter and the Farm Directed by Tony Stone
2016 . 91 min . Digital
Peter and the Farm is now available to watch at home via Magnolia Pictures! Click here for VOD info.
Peter Dunning is a rugged individualist in the extreme, a hard-drinking loner and former artist who has burned bridges with his wives and children and whose only company, even on harsh winter nights, are the sheep, cows, and pigs he tends on his Vermont farm. Peter is also one of the most complicated, sympathetic documentary subjects to come along in some time, a product of the 1960s counterculture whose poetic idealism has since soured. For all his candor, he slips into drunken self-destructive habits, cursing the splendors of a pastoral landscape that he has spent decades nurturing. Imbued with an aching tenderness, Tony Stone’s documentary is both haunting and heartbreaking, a mosaic of its singular subject’s transitory memories and reflections—however funny, tragic, or angry they may be. (Josh Siegel, MoMA)
“The best science fiction tells stories about people in extraordinary environments or situations that serve to open up the vast, still largely unexplored terrain of the human heart... Another Earth is science fiction at its best." —Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter
Another Earth Directed by Mike Cahill
2011 . 90 min . Digital
Director Mike Cahill's debut narrative feature is set on the eve of the discovery of a duplicate Earth, when a tragedy irrevocably intertwines the lives of two strangers: Rhoda Williams and John Burroughs. Estranged from the world and the selves they once knew, the two outsiders begin an unlikely love affair that reawakens them to life. But when one is presented with the rare opportunity to travel to the other Earth and embrace an alternative reality, they are forced to make a choice between the life they know and the possibility of another.
Walter Schretzman in Call of Duty
Call of Duty Directed by Matt Lenski
2015. 7 min. Digital
Call of Duty is a profile of New York City Jury Duty Clerk Walter Schretzman, who has learned how to lull thousands of his fellow grumpy New Yorkers into Jury Duty compliance. He plays the role of Government worker, crisis negotiator, and borscht belt comedian and shares his wisdom with Jurors during their days together. Given access to the normally restricted waiting area of a New York Court building, director Lenski paints a brief but comic and profound portrait of the intersection between professionalism, entertainment and civic responsibility.
Anabelle LeMieux in For the Plasma
For the Plasma Directed by Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan
2014. 94 min. 16mm
Pre-order DVD/Blu-ray and Original Soundtrack by Keiichi Suzuki at Factory 25!
In a remote house in Maine, two old friends analyze CCTV footage of the surrounding forest to predict shifts in global financial markets. From this cryptic premise grows a lo-fi mind-bender of intimate scale and startling relevance that flirts with sci-fi and horror conventions even as it subverts them. To the strains of Keiichi Suzuki’s electronic score, For the Plasma juxtaposes pastoral imagery with surveillance technology, every shade and shadow captured in gorgeous 16mm.
“For the Plasma delivers a dry New England strain of crazy, set in a serene seaside village in Maine. […] The smooth yet floaty direction sublimates the rocky, implacable landscape into something disturbingly ethereal.” –Richard Brody, New Yorker
"A work of fiction, based on present-day fact, that's quietly affecting and surprisingly dramatic…" —Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
The Forgiveness of Blood Directed by Joshua Marston
2011. 109 min. 35mm
When his father and uncle become entangled in a land dispute that leaves a fellow villager murdered, carefree Albanian teenager Nik becomes the prime target in a centuries-old tradition: According to the code of law, the dead man's family is entitled to take the life of a male from Nik's family as retribution. With his uncle in jail and his father in hiding, Nik is confined to the home while his younger sister is forced to leave school and take over their father's business. Working with non-professional Albanian actors and a local co-writer, Marston boldly contrasts antiquated traditions with the lives of the young people whose future is put at risk by them.
"Deliberately divisive...," "Unforgettable..." —Robert Koehler, Variety
Memorial Day Directed by Josh Fox
2008. 96 min. Digital
Memorial Day offers a dark perspective on the hearts and minds of members of the American armed forces. The film is an adaptation of theater work by director Josh Fox and features actors from his International Wow Company. It follows a group of off-duty military men and women, from their indulging in a rowdy and morally questionable Memorial Day weekend party in Ocean City, Maryland to their troubling actions as military prison guards in Iraq.
"A touchingly true film…this is independent film defined." —Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Momma's Man Directed by Azazel Jacobs
2008. 94 min. Digital
Mikey is preparing to board an airplane bound for his home in California, when he inexplicably finds himself fleeing back to the comfort of his parents' New York home. Mikey's doting mother is more than happy to enable her son's indecision, but as time goes on, the grown man-child finds it increasingly difficult to make the choice between going back to reality, or drifting ever further into his second adolescence.
"In the traditions of Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy . . . Plumb is funny." —Regina Weinrich, The Huffington Post
Towheads Directed by Shannon Plumb
2013. 86 min. Digital
Brooklyn mother-of-two Penelope (Shannon Plumb, who also directs), struggles to traverse the daily obstacle course that is motherhood with little help from her husband, Matt (Derek Cianfrance). As his flourishing creative career consumes all of his time, Penelope struggles to balance her artistic aspirations with her motherly responsibilities, stopping at nothing in a quest to find her artistic voice. Plumb's real-life husband and children play her family in this playful, honest, and at times, harsh look at modern-day motherhood and the difficulties families face everyday.
"Made for a song with a non-pro cast and DV camera gear out of his backpack, Tariq Tapa’s debut feature shows the young Kashmiri-American as a filmmaker of enormous promise and precocious maturity." —Ella Taylor, The Village Voice
Zero Bridge Directed by Tariq Tapa
2008. 96 min. Digital
The first film to be made in Kashmir in over 40 years, Zero Bridge is a hopeful, humane portrait of a teen pickpocket, whose chance encounter with one of his victims upends his escape plans. The gritty, moving narrative uses neo-realist technique and non-professional actors to reflect the daily lives of citizens of the city of Srinagar, and touch on the larger socio-economic issues of the region.