Theater Temporarily Closed —
Virtual Screening Rooms Open
On Friday, March 13, 2020, the Film Society of Summit closed its doors due to Covid-19
Until we can be together again, we have opened a virtual cinema for you, accessible through this website.
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New To Our Virtual Cinema
JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE
Using interviews and rare archival footage, JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE chronicles Lewis' 60-plus years of social activism and legislative action on civil rights, voting rights, gun control, health-care reform and immigration. Using present-day interviews with Lewis, now 80 years old, Porter explores his childhood experiences, his inspiring family and his fateful meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957. In addition to her interviews with Lewis and his family, Porter's primarily cinema verite film also includes interviews with political leaders, Congressional colleagues, and other people who figure prominently in his life.
$12 per household
MISS JUNETEENTH
Miss Juneteenth is a soulful journey of a determined woman who takes on the burden of representing history, and generations of black women, while standing tall despite her own shortcomings as she marches, step by step, toward self-realization. Director Channing Godfrey Peoples has created a film that draws us deep into a honey-bourbon South that is rich with heat, sincerity, and thick, Texan charm. In its center is an undeniable performance by Nicole Beharie as Turquoise, a woman radiating elegance as she strives to survive while finding ways to thrive.
$6.99 per household
ELLA FITZGERALD:
JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS
Opens Friday, June 26
Director Leslie Woodhead, UK / 2020
Canvassing five decades of Ella Fitzgerald's astonishing trajectory from a teenager living on the streets of Harlem to her life changing appearance at the Apollo Theatre, JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS illustrates her sublime transformation.
$12 per household
QUARANTINE CAT FILM FESTIVAL
Amateur filmmakers from around the world filmed their beloved cats during COVID-19 lockdowns to create Quarantine Cat Film Fest — a compilation reel of the cutest, funniest, bravest, and most loving feline friends.
We mined the best and most adorable cats out of more than 1,300 submitted videos from around the world to create a fun and engaging, professionally edited 80-minute feature for indie theaters to distribute via virtual cinema. The trailer has received over 25,000 views in May and has received a ton of national press.
$12 per household
PICTURE OF HIS LIFE
Amos Nachoum is one of the greatest underwater photographers of all times. Fascinated by the most fearsome creatures on Earth, he has developed a unique approach, that puts him face to face with his subjects, without any protection.
He swam with crocodiles and killer whales, with anacondas and with great white sharks but one major predator has always eluded him, the Polar bear. He tried before and barely escaped, but now, as he nears the end of his career, he is determined to give it one last shot. Watch trailer:
Executive Producer: Nancy Spielberg
$10 per household
HILL OF FREEDOM
“A masterwork. Achieves a complexity akin to the grand historical meditations of Alain Resnais.”
NY Times Critic's Pick
Kwon (Seo Young-hwa) returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori (Ryo Kase, Like Someone In Love), who has come back from Japan to propose to her. As she walks down a flight of stairs, Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology… and so must we. Shot in the narrow alleys, petite cafes and beautiful hanok inns of Seoul’s historic Jong-ro district, a favorite Hong location, Hill of Freedom is a masterful, alternately funny and haunting, tale of love and longing from the great director.
$10 per household
Coming Soon
Salutogenic Series: Film, Food and Nutrition
To advance the health and well-being of our patrons, the Film Society of Summit is launching a Salutogenic Series that combines a featured film in our Virtual Screening Room with presentations about food and nutrition. Nutrition offers benefits to health and well-being including support for the immune system. Participants will acquire the knowledge to select health-promoting foods while experiencing the cuisine of various cultures.
Salutogenic Series #1The Mexican Diet
Please join us for our first featured film in the Salutogenic Series, “Nothing Fancy” by Diana Kennedy, cookbook author and environmental activist, who reflects on an unconventional life spent mastering Mexican cuisine.
A power-point presentation and question/answer session about the anti-inflammatory properties of Mexican Cuisine will be conducted by Mary Therese Hankinson on Tuesday, July 7 at 1 p.m. or Wednesday July 8 at 7 p.m.
Each discussion is $10, $5 for Starter Members and Free for Single and Dual Members.
Playing in Our Virtual Cinema
Papicha
by Mounia Meddour
Ursula Von Rydingsvard:
Into Her Own
A FILM BY DANIEL TRAUB
Ursula von Rydingsvard: Into Her Own is an artistic biography of one of the few women in the world working in monumental sculpture.
“I have been able to manipulate cedar in ways that are almost outrageous.” – Ursula von Rydingsvard
The sculptures are massive, yet strangely intimate. Some feel imbued with an almost primal energy: a series of installations reminiscent of wings in New York’s Battery Park, a monumental yet inviting piece outside Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, the stunning “Scientia” which evokes the power of nature and the firing of brain synapses.
$10 per household
Algeria, 1990s. Nedjma (Lyna Khoudri starring in Wes Anderson’s upcoming ‘The French Dispatch’), an 18 year-old student passionate about fashion design refuses to let the tragic events of the Algerian Civil War to keep her from experiencing a normal life and going out at night with her friend Wassila. As the social climate becomes more conservative, she rejects the new bans set by the radicals and decides to fight for her freedom and independence by putting on a fashion show.
Festival de Cannes 2019 – Un Certain Regard. NY Times Critic's Pick
“BURSTING WITH ENERGY”
— Variety
$10 per household
Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy
Cookbook author and environmental activist Diana Kennedy reflects on an unconventional life spent mastering Mexican cuisine.
Diana has always been a rogue pioneer, and at 95, she’s a living legend. A master cook, a sustainability advocate, and, at her core, an Englishwoman, Diana embodies many different elements at once. Armed with an unstoppable drive, Diana is well-accustomed to defying conventional stereotypes, having found both love and her life’s work along a deliberately divergent path.
$10 per household
CRESCENDO
When a world famous conductor tries to create an Israeli-Palestinian orchestra, it takes all his skill and resources to overcome the discord and get them to play in harmony, rising to a tense and emotional finale.
When world-famous conductor Eduard Sporck accepts the job to create an Israeli-Palestinian youth orchestra, he is quickly drawn into a tempest of sheer unsolvable problems. Having grown up in a state of war, suppression or constant risk of terrorist attacks, the young musicians from both sides are far from able to form a team. Lined up behind the two best violinists – the emancipated Palestinian Layla and the handsome Israeli Ron – they form two parties who deeply mistrust each other, on and off-stage alike. Will Sporck succeed and make the young people forget their hatred, at least for the three weeks until the concert? With the first glimmer of hope, however, the political opponents of the orchestra show them how strong they are…
Loosely inspired by Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
$12 per household
Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint
by Halina Dyrschka
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 her long-delayed rediscovery. Director Halina Dryschka’s dazzling, course correcting documentary describes not only the life and craft of af Klint, but also the process of her mischaracterization and erasure by both a patriarchal narrative of artistic progress and capitalistic determination of artistic value.
Called "one of the best films I've seen about fine art" by RogerEbert.com's Matt Fagerholm.
A portion of all ticket sales will be donated to FLAG - Summit 'Front Line Appreciation Group.'
$12 per household
UP FROM THE STREETS
NEW ORLEANS: THE CITY OF MUSIC
This award-winning documentary looks at the culture of New Orleans through the lens of music. New Orleans has a distinct history as a result of its political and social history. There is a thread that runs through the city that can be heard from the drumming at Congo Square in the 1700’s through to today’s vibrant music scene. The music of this city is a powerful form of expression. It was a vehicle to communicate a desire for freedom, express frustration of the injustices of segregation and Jim Crow laws, a healing force that helped bring the city back from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and is still a vital form of expression against ongoing cultural & racial biases. Executive Producer Terence Blanchard and Director Michael Murphy, show how the culture of the city is reflected in its music, how music impacts culture; and how even in the darkest of times, music lifts and unites.
$12 per household
The Booksellers
179 Maplewood Ave, Maplewood, NJ 07040
Antiquarian booksellers are part scholar, part detective and part businessperson, and their personalities and knowledge are as broad as the material they handle. They also play an under-appreciated yet essential role in preserving history. THE BOOKSELLERS takes viewers inside their small but fascinating world, populated by an assortment of obsessives, intellects, eccentrics and dreamers.
Directed by D.W. YOUNG
$10 per household
BOTERO by Don Miller
BOTERO is a poetic documentary of one of the world's most prolific living artists, Fernando Botero. Born in Medellin, Colombia in 1932, the worldly Botero had experienced a violent and tumultuous political landscape in his youth during the Colombian civil war which had a profound impact on his art and humanitarianism. This film is a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the life of the 86-year-old master artist.
“Through a series of interviews this documentary beautifully tells the story of an intensely private man whose paintings and sculptures blend his observations of everyday people, his reverence for the art of centuries past, his political leanings, and his sense of humor.” –Chicago Reader
$12 per household
The Times of Bill Cunningham
Told in Bill Cunningham’s own words from a recently unearthed six-hour 1994 interview, the iconic street photographer and fashion historian chronicles, in his customarily cheerful and plainspoken manner, moonlighting as a milliner in France during the Korean War, his unique relationship with First Lady Jackie Kennedy, his four decades at The New York Times and his democratic view of fashion and society. Narrated by Sarah Jessica Parker, The Times of Bill Cunningham features incredible photographs chosen from over 3 million previously unpublicized images and documents from Cunningham.
Your rental helps support the Film Society of Summit.
($5 per household. Available for 48 hours from time of purchase)
INCITEMENT
Acclaimed writer-director Yaron Zilberman (A Late Quartet) chronicles the disturbing descent of a promising law student to an intransigent ultranationalist obsessed with murdering his country's leader, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Incitement is a gripping and unnerving look through the eyes of a murderer who silenced a powerful voice for peace.
Your rental helps support the Film Society of Summit
($12 per household. Available for 48 hours from time of purchase)
The Infiltrators
The Sundance award-winning The Infiltrators blends traditional documentary and narrative recreation to tell the thrilling true story of young immigration activists who get arrested by Border Patrol – on purpose – in order to provide legal help to immigrants at a shadowy for-profit detention center.
Marco and Viri are members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of radical DREAMers who are on a mission to stop unjust deportations. And the best place to stop deportations, they believe, is in detention. However, when Marco and Viri attempt a daring reverse ‘prison break,’ things don’t go according to plan. By weaving together documentary footage of the real infiltrators with re-enactments of the events inside the detention center, THE INFILTRATORS tells an incredible and thrilling true story in a genre-defying new cinematic language.A rag-tag group of undocumented youth - Dreamers - deliberately get detained by Border Patrol in order to infiltrate a shadowy, for-profit detention center.
Directed by Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera
$12 per household
Saint Frances
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’s most pressing environmental and global challenges.
Your rental helps support the Film Society of Summit.
$4.99 per household
And Then We Danced
Directed by Levan Akin. World Premiere: 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
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)
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