10 Years of Magnolia Pictures

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 23 August 2011 03:29

Written by Film FestivalTraveler Staff

BAMcinématek is presenting 10 Years of Magnolia Pictures, Aug 24 - 29 and August 31, 2011, a 13-film celebration of the visionary independent film distribution company, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York.

"This 10th-anniversary salute provides a snapshot of the provocative and intelligent independent and international cinema that the pioneering company -- formed in 2001 by Bill Banowsky and Eamonn Bowles -- has brought to screens in the past decade."

"We're incredibly pleased to have BAM showcase some of the signature films from our first decade. It’s been a remarkable 10 years with enormous changes in the film landscape, and we look forward to the next 10," says Magnolia Pictures President Eamonn Bowles.

The 13 films are:

Documentaries:

Man on Wire (2008),
directed by James Marsh
The unique take on death-defying tightrope walker Philippe Petit, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010)
directed by Alex Gibney
Spitzer‛s self-destructive mistake, "subsequent resignation and precipitous fall led his supporters to question the timing of it all: as he fell, so did the financial markets, in a cataclysm that threatened to unravel the global economy.

Narratives:

Read My Lips / Sur mes lèvres (2001)directed by Jacques Audiard
with Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos
"Carla, who is partially deaf, works long, thankless hours as a secretary for a property development company, suffering daily abuse from her coworkers. When her boss allows her to hire an intern, she chooses 25-year-old Paul, who’s sorely underqualified but makes up for it in other ways: he's good looking and somewhat of a bad boy -- an ex-con, in fact, fresh out of jail."

The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
directed by Steven Soderbergh
With Sasha Grey, Chris Santos
In the midst of the Great Recession in 2008, and the dénouement of a pivotal presidential election, high-priced Manhattan call girl Chelsea specializes in giving her Upper East Side clients the complete "girlfriend experience" -- dining out, going to bed with them, and lending them an ear as they fret about their dwindling 401ks.

Ong-Bak (2003)
directed by Prachya Pinkaew
with Tony Jaa, Petchtai Wongkamlao, Pumwaree Yodkamol
A former native of a rural Thai village has his men steal the head of the town's ong bak (Buddha statue) to win favor with a ruthless crime boss. The locals regard the theft as a catastrophe, and seek a champion to retrieve their lost treasure: Ting (Jaa), an orphaned youngster raised at the local temple and schooled by monks in the Thai martial art of muay thai. The Thai martial arts film that made an international star of Tony Jaa.

The Host (2006)
directed by Bong Joon-ho
with Song Kang-ho, Byeon Hie-bong, Park Hae-il
"A gargantuan mutant tadpole emerges from Seoul’s Han River, eating dozens of picnickers and kidnapping a young girl. ...Bong’s clever monster movie follows the girl’s haplessly dysfunctional family as it plans to rescue her from the creature’s slimy clutches." This movie became the highest-grossing South Korean film of all time

Let the Right One In (2009)
directed by Thomas Alfredson
This Swedish vampire coming-of-age love story far exceeded expectations and became an international sensation. It has already been treated to a Hollywood remake.

Bronson (2009)
directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
The biopic formula gets a reworking in Bronson, his stylized character study of one of Britain’s most notorious prisoners, which had its New York premiere at the inaugural BAMcinemaFest. The director is the winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes for this year’s Drive and the subject of a 2009 BAMcinématek retrospective.

I Am Love / Io sono l’amore (2010)
directed by Luca Guadagnino
with Tilda Swinton ( co-producer), Flavio Parenti, Edoardo Gabbriellini
A Russian/Italian housewife of a wealthy industrial family breaks out of her straitlaced lifestyle when she meets a young chef.

Night Catches Us (2010)
directed by Tanya Hamilton
with Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington
After a long, mysterious absence, Marcus returns to the Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age in the midst of the Black Power movement. He quickly finds himself at odds with the organization he once embraced, whose members suspect he had a hand in the killing of their former comrade.

Two Lovers (2008)
directed by James Gray
with Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw
A troubled young man moves back into his childhood home in Brighton Beach following a break-up. He quickly meets two women and soon has to make an impossible decision.

Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America (2007)
directed by Tony Stone
with Clare Amory, Noelle Bailey, Nathan Corbin
Abandoned by a western exploration party and stranded in the New World, two lone Vikings make their way through a grand primeval landscape, struggling for survival while still in the grip of their Norse ways. Stone‛s visionary take on the 11th-century settlers of the New World.

Great World of Sound (2007)
directed by Craig Zobel
with Pat Healy, Kene Holliday, John Baker
Two men attend a training seminar to be an A&R exec for Great World of Sound, an independent record company setting up shop in a generic office park. But when the company sends the two men on the road to audition prospective talent in cheap hotel rooms, the veneer of GWS quickly begins to fall away.

For more information, visit www.bam.org.

10 Years of Magnolia Pictures
August 24 - 29 & 31, 2011

BAMcinématek
Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 Lafayette Avenue
Brooklyn, New York
718-636-4100
718-636-4129

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