Kino Lorber (Firm)

Chronicles the bittersweet journey of one woman’s determination to survive: from an arranged marriage in old China to working class comforts in modern America. Produced in 1982 and Oscar®-nominated for Best Short Documentary, this classic film continues to screen widely and is now treasured by a new generation of film goers.SEWING WOMAN is based on a series of oral histories and the life story of the filmmaker’s mother, Zem Ping Dong, an immigrant...

From acclaimed filmmaker Mark Pellington (The Mothman Prophecies) comes a visceral and powerful feature-length dance film. This cathartic movement piece was created in collaboration with the brilliant choreographer Nina McNeely (Gaspar Noe’s Climax), rising Dutch cinematographer Evelin Van Rei, and editor Sergio Pinheiro. Inspired by the Wim Wenders film Pina, Pellington was interested in expressing feelings and emotions through a ‘narrative of...

In Hollywood's studio system, sets and equipment are used over and over again. Mark Rappaport shows not only opera boxes and stage rooms, which seem to be part of the permanent décor in MGM backstage musicals, but also curious connections such as a Spanish wall with orientalist ornamentation that appears in various films or the famous portrait painting by Gene Tierney in Laura, which surprisingly can be seen again in On the Riviera.

It was the swinging 30s. The big bands of the 40s. It was San Francisco night life – Baghdad by the Bay. And the crowds were packing the nation’s premiere all-Chinese nightclub, Forbidden City. Like the Cotton Club of Harlem which featured America’s finest African American entertainers, Forbidden City gained an international reputation with its unique showcase of Chinese American performers in eye-popping all-American extravaganzas.FORBIDDEN...

A half century after its release, Midnight Cowboy remains one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era. With beguiling performances from Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman as two loners who join forces out of desperation, blacklist survivor Waldo Salt's brilliant screenplay, and John Schlesinger's fearless direction, the 1969 film became the only X- rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Its vivid and compassionate...

When Dr. Haing S. Ngor was forced into labor camps by the Khmer Rouge, little did he know he would escape four years of torture and be called upon to recreate his experiences in a film that would earn him an Academy Award®. For the Chinese-Cambodian doctor, “Nothing has shaped my life as much as surviving the Pol Pot regime. I am a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust. That’s who I am.” And little did anyone know that some twenty years later,...

The story of Donald Rugoff, who was the crazy genius behind Cinema 5, the mid-century theater chain and film distribution company. Rugoff was a difficult (some would say impossible) person but was also the man who kicked art films into the mainstream with outrageous marketing schemes and pure bluster. His impact on cinema culture in the United States is inestimable, and his influence on the art film business—from the studio classics divisions to...

An exploration of our interest in stars on the screen. Their images never grow old but we do. We can love them but they never love us back—until we force them to acknowledge our existence by putting ourselves in the same frames that they inhabit. And, even then, they live in a rarified world of their own which we can never enter, frozen forever—on the screen and in our imaginations.

John Dall was in two great movies—Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) and Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy (1950). But, for some reason, it’s not enough for a career. The road to success in show business is lined with many pitfalls. And what do you do when you know the director preferred another actor but had to settle for you? Would it have made a different movie had he gotten that actor? Let’s try to find out…

Paul Henreid, perhaps most famous for his roles in Casablanca and Now, Voyager became a star at Warner Brothers during World War II, as the exotic lead with the European accent. After the war, his contract was cancelled and he was left to his own devices. He continued acting and also began producing and directing. In his choices, both as actor and director, his work evinces an increasing bitterness and cynicism. A personal statement? Or a result of...