COMING SOON: Spring 2020 MOVIE CALENDAR
In light of the ongoing concerns regarding Covid 19, we are temporarily closing until further notice. We believe this step will be the most effective way to mitigate the spread of the virus. Stay safe and healthy.
Virtual Screening Room
Greetings, Film Afficianados!
We miss seeing you in person, but our team has been working hard behind the scenes to offer some of our great, curated Film Society of Summit programming.
Your rental of these films and purchase of tickets for virtual Q + A'S helps support our work during this unprecedented time. Thank you!
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Thanks for your support, and stay well.
New Releases
Saint Frances
1hr 41mins
Alex Thompson's sneakily poignant and instantly loveable indie comedy, starring and written by Kelly O’Sullivan.
Flailing thirty-four-year-old Bridget (Kelly O'Sullivan) finally catches a break when she meets a nice guy and lands a much-needed job nannying six-year-old Frances (played by a scene-stealing Ramona Edith-Williams). But an unwanted pregnancy introduces an unexpected complication. To make matters worse, she clashes with the obstinate Frances and struggles to navigate a growing tension between Frances's moms. Amidst her tempestuous personal relationships, a reluctant friendship with Frances emerges, and Bridget contends with the inevitable joys and shit-shows of becoming a part of someone else's family.
Rated NR, 1 hour 40 minutes
($12 per household. Available for 48 hours from time of purchase)
Fantastic Fungi
Fantastic Fungi is all about our interconnectedness and the common issues that we face as a species. We know that our biggest defense from these viruses is our own sense of wellbeing, our own immunity and the ability to live from a place of health and wellness both individually and collectively.
Directed by Louie Schwartzberg, this is a consciousness-shifting film that takes us on an immersive journey through time and scale into the magical earth beneath our feet, an underground network that can heal and save our planet. Through the eyes of renowned scientists and mycologists like Paul Stamets, best-selling authors Michael Pollan, Eugenia Bone, Andrew Weil and others, we become aware of the beauty, intelligence and solutions the fungi kingdom offers us in response to some of our most pressing medical, therapeutic, and environmental challenges.
Phoenix, Oregon
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A comedy of midlife reinvention and the redeeming power of friendship. Written and Directed by Gary Lundgren (Calvin Marshall, Redwood Highway, Black Road). Produced by Annie Lundgren and Luis Rodriguez.
Defying midlife haze, two friends, a graphic novelist and a chef, seize an unlikely opportunity to reinvent their lives, quitting their jobs to restore an old bowling alley and serve the “world's greatest pizza."
Phoenix, Oregon stars James Le Gros (Drugstore Cowboy, Living in Oblivion), Lisa Edelstein (Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce, House), Jesse Borrego (Fame, Blood In Blood Out), Reynaldo Gallegos (Triple Frontier, American Sniper), Diedrich Bader (Napoleon Dynamite, Office Space, Veep), and Kevin Corrigan (The Departed, Pineapple Express, True Romance).
The film takes a comedic look at the existential crisis many face when trying to find meaning and relevancy at midlife. Despite controlling bosses, dead-end jobs, and broken relationships, the two leads must awaken hibernating courage and resilience in order to take new risks and keep dreams alive.
All ticket purchases receive a one-time link to watch the movie at home + a free digital copy upon its official release this summer.
Private screening links expire in 3 days from purchase at 11:59PM PT.
($6.50 per household. Available for 48 hours from time of purchase)
And Then We Danced
Directed by Levan Akin. World Premiere: 2020 Sundance Film Festiva.
A gifted dancer named Merab moves beautifully, but his mannerisms enrage his coach, who finds them too effeminate. Merab, however, quietly defies not only his coach but his community’s hyperconservative constraints. An aura of danger emerges when he meets a handsome new dancer named Irakli, whose gifted technique becomes a source of attraction and competition for Merab. As the two fall into a secretive affair, whispers of their newfound romance threaten their respective careers.
Far from fitting into the traditional coming-out narrative, And Then We Danced represents something especially joyful, romantic, and transgressive. It stands confidently as one of the most important films—gay or otherwise—of the year.
Sweden, Georgia, France, 2019
In Georgian with English subtitles.
113 minutes
($12 per household. Available for 48 hours from time of purchase)
The Traitor
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The real life of Tommaso Buscetta, the so-called "boss of the two worlds," the first mafia informant in Sicily in the 1980s.
Low ranking, but faithful and reliable foot soldier Tommaso Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino) is convinced by an Italian magistrate (Fausto Russo Alesi) to become the first snitch against La Cosa Nostra after the mafioso grieves for the loss of his two sons, who were gunned down during the heroin wars of the 1980s. The unprecedented information provided by Buscetta led to a media circus and controversy in his community, as many working class people depended upon the mob for work. Across trials that lasted for nearly a decade, Buscetta’s cooperation led to the filing of a whopping 366 arrest warrants.
Corpus Christi
The Wild Goose Lake
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After spending years in a Warsaw prison for a violent crime, 20-year-old Daniel is released and sent to a remote village to work as a manual laborer. The job is designed to keep the ex-con busy, but Daniel has a higher calling. Over the course of his incarceration he has found Christ, and aspires to join the clergy - but his criminal record means no seminary will accept him. When Daniel arrives in town, one quick lie allows him to be mistaken for the town’s new priest, and he sets about leading his newfound flock. Though he has no training, his passion and charisma inspire the community. At the same time, his unconventional sermons and unpriestly behavior raise suspicions among some of the townsfolk - even more so as he edges towards a dark secret that the community hasn't revealed in the confessional booth.
Rated NR, 1 hour 55 minutes, Poland, Subtitles.
A gangster on the run sacrifices everything for his family and a woman he meets while on the lam.
From acclaimed director Diao Yinan.
When small-time mob leader Zhou Zenong (Chinese superstar Hu Ge) accidentally kills a cop, a dead-or-alive bounty is placed on his head, forcing him on the lam from both the police as well as dangerous gangsters out for the reward. Hiding out in China’s densely populated (and deeply divided) Wuhan province, Zhou becomes entangled with a beautiful, enigmatic woman, who has mysterious intentions of her own. Featuring gorgeous, neon-drenched cinematography and bursts of shocking, expertly choreographed action, THE WILD GOOSE LAKE is “spellbinding” (Rolling Stone), “brilliant" (Indiewire) and “downright Hitchcockian” (AV Club).
Rated NR, 1 hour 57 minutes, China, Subtitles.
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Repertory
In a small city of Brazil, a woman named Flor marries a man named Vadinho, but once married she finds that he is a good-for-nothing. She works teaching cooking and he takes all of her money to gamble. After Vadinho dies, Flor marries Tedoror, the owner of a drugstore. Flor is happy with her new husband but misses the love life with her previous husband. When one day the ghost of Vadhino comes back to peruse her.
L'INNOCENTE
Exhibition on Screen
MATISSE
FROM MOMA AND TATE MODERN
Virtual Cinema & Conversation with Mary Birmingham, Curator at the Visual Arts Center of NJ
COMING SOON
Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs was hailed the most successful exhibition in Tate Modern’s history. See this show again at your local cinema, featuring exclusive footage from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Audiences are invited to enjoy an intimate, behind-the-scenes documentary about this acclaimed exhibition with contributions from people who knew Matisse and experts such as curators, historians and Tate director Nicholas Serota and MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry. Plus there are breathtaking, specially commissioned performances by Royal Ballet principal dancer Zenaida Yanowsky and jazz musician Courtney Pine. Acclaimed British actor Simon Russell Beale brings insight and emotion to the words of Henri Matisse himself, while actor Rupert Young (Merlin) narrates.
‘The way the film captured Matisse at work, bringing his artistry to life – including resonant readings from Simon Russell Beale – was genuinely inspiring’ – Apollo Magazine
Exhibition on Screen
The Artists' Garden:
American Impressionism
Virtual Cinema & Conversation with Mary Birmingham, Curator at the Visual Arts Center of NJ
COMING SOON
From the exhibition walls to the wonder and beauty of artists’ gardens like Giverny and Seebüll, the film takes a magical and widely travelled journey to discover how different contemporaries of Monet built and cultivated modern gardens to explore expressive motifs, abstract colour, decorative design and utopian ideas. Guided by passionate curators, artists and garden enthusiasts, this remarkable collection of Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century will reveal the rise of the modern garden in popular culture and the public’s enduring fascination with gardens today. Long considered spaces for expressing colour, light and atmosphere, the garden has occupied the creative minds of some of the worlds greatest artists. As Monet said, ‘Apart from painting and gardening, I’m no good at anything’. For lovers of art or lovers of gardens, this is an ideal film.
CITIZEN K - Postponed
(dOCUMENTARy feature)
Discussion to Follow w/
Director Alex Gibney
Playing Friday, March 27 at 7 pm
Oscar-winning writer/director Alex Gibney’s revelatory CITIZEN K is an intimate yet sweeping look at post-Soviet Russia from the perspective of the enigmatic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned political dissident. Benefitting from the chaos that ensued after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Khodorkovsky was able to amass a fortune in financing and oil production and became the richest man in Russia. But when he accused the new Putin regime of corruption, Khodorkovsky was arrested, his assets were seized and following a series of show trials, he was sentenced to more than ten years in prison. Today, as an exile living in London, he continues to speak out against Putin’s two-decade stranglehold on power. Expertly researched and photographed, Gibney uses Khodorkovsky’s story as a way to explore the complex interplay between oligarchy and government and its destructive effect on democracy, in Russia and beyond.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.
Beanpole - Postponed
Directed By Kantemir Balagov
(dOCUMENTARy feature)
Discussion to Follow
IN RUSSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
Playing Friday, April 3 at 8 pm
It's 1945, and Leningrad lies in ruins, wartorn and paralyzed. Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), a nurse, and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), a soldier, are traumatized from the siege and its aftermath, and struggling to rebuild their lives.
A film about relationships between broken people, living in a ravaged nation after a catastrophic war – BEANPOLE exudes deep empathy for its characters in the face of many obstacles fate has thrown in their path. This is a film about Russian history and the Russian soul, about overcoming loss and inventing new ways to get through each day. Balagov is a major talent who has only just begun to make his mark.Drawing loosely from Nobel Prize–winning author and historian Svetlana Alexievich's 1985 book The Unwomanly Face of War, Balagov creates a world where women's suffering and resilience becomes elliptic — with proactivity and punishment at either side of an ever-swinging pendulum. Their hardships in the face of unspeakable tragedy are palpable through their sunken eyes and shallow gazes, but we are simultaneously pulled along in their perseverance. Survival of the fittest takes on a new meaning, as gains seem tiny and incremental yet everything is at stake. Spiritually bleak, yet rich in colour and remarkably precise in its style, the cinematic language of Balagov speaks to a new generation of Russian filmmakers telling stories of a homeland that has yet to reconcile with its historical cataclysms.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.
Beanpole trailer
Portrait of a Lady On Fire
Directed BY Celine sciamma
(Dramatic feature)
Discussion to Follow
Playing Friday, April 10 at 8 pm
In French w/ English subtitles
A ravishing masterpiece. France, 1760. Marianne is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent. Because she is a reluctant bride-to-be, Marianne arrives under the guise of companionship, observing Héloïse by day and secretly painting her by firelight at night. As the two women orbit one another, intimacy and attraction grow as they share Héloïse’s first moments of freedom. Héloïse's portrait soon becomes a collaborative act of and testament to their love.
Winner of a coveted Cannes prize and one of the best reviewed films of the year, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE solidifies Céline Sciamma as one of the most exciting filmmakers working in the world today. Noémie and Adèle Haenel turn the subtle act of looking into a dangerous, engrossing thrill, crafting the most breathtaking and elegant performances of the year. With contemporary themes in period dress, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE is one of the greatest love stories ever told.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.
The New Bauhaus: Rescheduled
Directed By Alysa Nahmias
(dOCUMENTARy feature)
Discussion to Follow
Playing Friday, May 1 at 7 pm
An odyssey through the life and legacy of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the innovative artist and educator whose pioneering approach to integrating technology into design continues to influence and inspire.
In Chicago, The New Bauhaus evolved from its origins at the German Bauhaus into an extraordinary flowering of interdisciplinary design pedagogy premised on the notion that “the whole field of contemporary architecture and design must be based upon an indivisible unification of formerly separated and independent fields.”
Following recent retrospectives of Moholy’s work at major museums, this film offers a more accessible and intimate, emotional journey through Moholy’s life and his work as an artist, designer, visionary, and teacher.
Tickets: $12 in advance, $14 at the door.
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63 Up
Directed BY Michael Apted
(Documentary feature)
Discussion to Follow
Playing Friday, May 8 at 7 pm
"Visionary. The noblest project in cinema history." -- Roger Ebert
63 Up continues a groundbreaking documentary series with another gently eye-opening look at the human experience.
The latest installment of the groundbreaking, award-winning documentary series from director Michael Apted (Gorky Park, Gorillas in the Mist) returns to visit the people whose lives have been followed since they were seven. Featuring more of the original line-up than ever before, we discover what has happened to the group over the last seven years and what life has thrown at them in their sixties. The 'Up' series stands as one of cinema's greatest achievements, a use of the medium that's at once blatantly logical and profoundly affecting.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.
Incitement
Directed BY Yaron Zilberman
(Dramatic feature)
Discussion to Follow
Playing Saturday, May 9 at 7 pm
This rigorous psychological thriller depicts the lead-up to the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin through the worldview of his assassin, Yigal Amir. Israeli-American filmmaker Yaron Zilberman sets out, with a rigourous, exacting gaze, to expose, through the eyes of Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, the motivations that led to Rabin's death. Set in the year preceding the incident,
Zilberman's meticulously crafted period piece is embedded in the world of Amir (portrayed with unsettling stoicism by Yehuda Nahari Halevi), moving from his family home to his failed relationships to his radicalization on illegal settlements.
At its core a psychological thriller, Zilberman's film also neatly weaves in archival footage, foregrounding the high political stakes of the era, and boldly showing the ways in which Israeli society incited one man to such deadly lengths.
Radium Girls
Directed BY Lydia Dean Pilcher & Virginia Mohler
(Dramatic feature)
Discussion to Follow w/Virgina Mohler
Playing Friday, May 15 at 7 pm
Based on a true story, Bessie and Josephine are sisters employed at American Radium, where they paint glow-in-the-dark watch dials at a New Jersey factory. They take pride in their jobs and Bessie dreams of becoming an actress in the new motion picture industry and having crowds of adoring fans. However, when her younger sister Josephine becomes ill, the sisters uncover the unknown truth about radium: it’s a deadly poison. With Jo’s life dwindling, just as those of her former colleagues have, Bessie becomes determined to bring the horrors of radium poisoning to light and fights not only for her sister, but also for the rest of the women around her; she becomes a powerful advocate as she risks everything to stand up to the corporation that provides her family's livelihood. Starring Emmy and Golden Globe nominee Joey King (“The Act,”, “The Kissing Booth”) and Abby Quinn (“Mad About You” reboot, “Little Women”).
The national sensation following the case of the Radium Girls ultimately led to significant and lasting impact in the area of workplace health and safety and the study of radioactivity.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.
In Search of Chopin
Directed BY Phil Grabsky
(Documentary feature)
Live Music to Follow
Playing Friday, May 22 at 7 pm
Phil Grabsky brings us the music and life story of Fryderyk Chopin, considered one of the greatest composers of all time.
Chopin’s grave in Paris remains a place of pilgrimage and his music continues to sell out concert halls worldwide – but who exactly was this astonishing man? He was terrified of public performance; he fled his Polish homeland for Paris never to return; took up with the most notorious transvestite in France and, despite a life of ill-health, wrote some of the deepest and most powerful music ever written. How exactly did a young Polish boy rise to such heady heights?
For four years, Phil Grabsky has travelled the globe in his quest to lay bare the life and music of Chopin. By talking to acclaimed musical historians such as Jeremy Siepmann and bringing to the screen performances by such esteemed musicians as Leif Ove Andsnes, Daniel Barenboim, Ronald Brautigam, Kevin Kenner and Lars Vogt he hopes to answer those questions.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.