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Kino Lorber has picked up U.S. rights to Johan Grimonprez’s Sundance-winning documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, which traces how the U.S. used “Jazz Ambassadors” like Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone and Duke Ellington, to build goodwill during the Cold War all while orchestrating clandestine operations to destabilize the Congo.

Kino Lorber will partner with specialist streamer Kanopy on the U.S. release of the film. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat marks Lorber’s second collaboration with Grimonprez following their 2010 release of his hybrid doc-drama Double Take, which stitches together clips from Alfred Hitchcock’s films and TV work, together with 50s news footage and commercials, to tell a fictional story of Cold War paranoia.

“Johan Grimonprez is a master of making political history feel newly alive and utterly fascinating, and he’s done it again with his latest film Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” said Richard Lorber,...

Mubi is exclusively playing Tyler Hubby's Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present (2016) from April 8 - May 8, 2017 in the United Kingdom and United States.Tyler Hubby (left) and Tony Conrad (right)I met Tony Conrad in 1994 just as he was re-emerging as a composer and musician. I was recording with my Hi-8 camera when he played one of his first public shows as a violin soloist and have been recording since.Tony was electrifying in how he could always find ways to confront establishment ideas and personal belief systems. Not only was his sabre rattling at the foundations of western culture inspiring, it was also just, and deeply resonated with my ideas of the role of art in society.Over the years as I worked as an editor on films like The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Double Take and The Great Invisible I kept shooting performances and interviews with Tony,...

The global arms trade makes billions of profit each year off the backs of countless human lives, all while fostering corruption, controlling international policy and creating suffering around the world. Johan Grimonprez’s (“Double Take”) new documentary “Shadow World” examines the shady world of the arms trade in order to shed light on the malfeasance that occurs right under our noses every single day.

Read More: Watch: ‘Shadow World’ Trailer Shines a Light on Hard Truths the Government Doesn’t Want You to Know About

Based on Andrew Feinstein’s book “The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade” and produced by Joslyn Barnes (Louverture Films) and Anadil Hossain (Dillywood, Inc), the film unravels some of the world’s largest arms deals via those involved in perpetrating and investigating them, exploring how it operates under the guise of legality and why high-level leaders are never prosecuted for their crimes.

A pair of titles in our Most Anticipated Films for 2012 in #39. Andrew Dosunmu (Ma George) and #30. Mark Jackson (Untitled Sicily Project) are two of the lucky fifteen filmmakers to have received coin in the shape of 2012 Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grants. Recipients include a trio of titles that we caught in Park City back in January in Terence Nance’s An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, Ira Sach’s Keep the Lights On, and Destin Daniel Cretton’s I Am Not a Hipster. Here’s the press release.

Post-Production Feature Film Grants

Keep the Lights On

Writer/director: Ira Sachs

The story of a tumultuous, decade-long relationship between two men in New York City. Keep the Lights On premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Ira Sachs is a writer and director based in New York City. His films include Married Life (2007), The Delta (1997) and the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize-winning Forty Shades of Blue.

In the 10 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks, film directors have responded in myriad ways. Peter Bradshaw charts the rise and fall of the 9/11 movie

At the Venice film festival last week, George Clooney unveiled his new backstairs political drama, The Ides of March, about a Democratic presidential candidate getting bogged down in compromise, backstabbing and the dark political arts. Clooney said that he could conceivably have completed the film before now, but President Obama had been doing too well, and therefore the time wasn't right.

Perhaps Clooney was being serious and perhaps he wasn't. But the remark typifies the dwindling of the memory of 9/11 in Hollywood cinema. The Obama presidency, ushered in by the catastrophe of the Bush reign, is now perceived to be in trouble, and this enables a prominent Hollywood liberal to make the kind of savvy, ahistorically pessimistic political movie that could have been produced at...

Summary: Although it’s hard to follow in parts, 'Double Take' is terrifically smart and appropriately wry--and elicits more than a few goosebumps.

Johan Grimonprez blends satire, capitalism, and history in Double Take, his examination on society’s dualities and the life and work of Alfred Hitchcock. One man alone cannot properly tell this story—and so it is that Grimonprez tracks down Ron Burrage, a famous Hitchcock lookalike in his twilight years, and voice artist Mark Perry. The film cuts between Burrage’s TV gigs and a fictional account by novelist Tom McCarthy, in which Hitchcock encounters his older self on the set of The Birds in 1962. “If you meet your double,” Hitchcock intones, “you should kill him.” He and his shadowy doppelganger regard each other with a mixture of revulsion and confusion, both knowing how the encounter must end.

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Is it a revelation or a revolution? It’s both! The Revelation Perth International Film Festival is tackling the theme of “Revolution” when its 13th annual edition begins violating Australia on July 8-18. Get set for 11 days filled French zombies, Belgian cowboys, outer space outlaws, Beat poets, cat ladies, gospel musicians and other revolutionaries.

Actually, one of the main features of the festival this year is a slew of music documentaries, mostly spotlighting both American and Australian music. On the U.S. side of things there’s Wheedle’s Groove, a look at the history of Seattle funk; Rejoice and Shout, which examines gospel music’s impact on African-American culture — and vice versa; Tom Dicillo’s Doors documentary When You’re Strange; plus The Family Jams and 72 Musicians. And, from Australia, there’s Megan Simpson-Hubberman’s classic concert film The Night of the Triffids.

There’s lots more than music docs,...

Los Angeles may be considered the film capital of the world, but what is “film” these days anyway? A new L.A-based festival has just popped up that addresses and celebrates all of the unique forms that visual storytelling can take in our new media world.

The inaugural New Media Film Festival will run the course of one weekend, June 11-13, at the Downtown Independent theater and show a mix of Internet-based short films, “webisodes,” documentaries that deal with the way media influences and is influenced by real world affairs and feature films in which new media figures as a major story element.

While the festival is strictly concerned with new media, I do want to note that there is a slight “underground” connection. While the fest was founded by Susan Johnston, the event’s Artistic Director is David Kleiler, who founded the Boston Underground Film Festival way back in 1998. Plus,...

While Hollywood continued to have one its slowest summer box offices in recent memory ("Shrek Forever After" topped the charts for a third weekend in a row with just $25 million), Indiewood didn't fare much better. Of a small batch of openers, only three reported estimates early today - none of which were particularly earth shattering. Johan Grimonprez's Hitchcock/Cold War documentary "Double Take" grossed $5,000 from its exclusive engagement at New ...

Johan Grimonprez’s Double Take is an ambitious essay-film, examining Cold War paranoia through the prism of Alfred Hitchcock’s films and TV shows from the late ’50s to the mid ’60s. With no narration (outside of vintage radio broadcasts and some recitations by a Hitchcock impersonator) and very few on-screen titles, Double Take relies heavily on old news footage and Hitchcock promotional appearances, mixed in with some new day-in-the-life scenes featuring a man who looks a lot like Hitchcock. Grimonprez’s associations are loose, but clear. He’s illustrating how Hitchcock fed on—and fed—the atmosphere of suspicion ...

"Cinema is the art of appropriation — whether taking that which is before the camera or that which has already been filmed." J Hoberman in the Voice: "We'll never know who first discovered the possibility of re-editing existent footage, but, as Jay Leyda noted in his pioneering Films Beget Films, 'We can be sure that the practice is as old as the newsreel itself.' These days, film history is a hall of mirrors in which not just film footage but filmmakers may be incorporated in other filmmakers' work. Johan Grimonprez's Double Take gives Alfred Hitchcock a new role; Chuck Workman's Visionaries popularizes a persona invented by Jonas Mekas."...

Hitchcock's Psycho gets a welcome cinematic rerelease, accompanied by the fascinating Double Take, which plays upon the Master's preoccupations to illuminating, often hilarious effect, writes Philip French

Eleven years after the celebration of his centenary, 30 years after his death, 50 years after the appearance of his most sensational movie, Hitchcock remains a subject of inexhaustible interest to critics, artists and fellow film-makers. The latest are Don DeLillo, whose novel, Point Omega, features a man obsessed with Douglas Gordon's art installation, 24 Hour Psycho, and the Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez whose Double Take, a fascinating film about Hitchcock, fear and the Cold War, is going around the country with the rereleased Psycho.

Grimonprez's movie is a riveting montage (and sometimes collage) of clips from Suspicion, Psycho, North by Northwest, The Birds, Topaz and the Master's often wildly funny trailers and introductions to his TV series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. They're accompanied by unintentionally...

Kick-Ass (15)

(Matthew Vaughn, 2010, Us/UK) Aaron Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Chloë Moretz. 118 mins

Now that the likes of Batman and Spider-Man are risk-averse, broad-spectrum cash juggernauts, it's refreshing to see a comic-book movie that doesn't play by the rules. Like a spoilt brat, this is foul-mouthed, hyperactive, extremely violent, and all the better for it. And despite dealing with the pitfalls of becoming a real-life vigilante (with no super-powers), it successfully segues from teen loser comedy to full-on action fantasy without losing its stride, just as it straddles the divide between fan-friendly cult material and mainstream crowd-pleaser.

Clash Of The Titans 3D (12A)

(Louis Leterrier, 2010, Us) Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson. 106 mins

So much state-of-the-art technology and A-list talent has been thrown at this sword-and-sandals epic, some of it is bound to stick. And if the 3D looks like a hurried afterthought and the story a bit of a Greek salad, there's always another giant scorpion,...

Johan Grimonprez's new film Double Take brings to light a kinship between Alfred Hitchcock and Jorge Luis Borges

Tom McCarthy, who wrote Double Take for director Johan Grimonprez, based his screenplay on a story by Jorge Luis Borges called August 25th, 1983, in which the author encounters and talks with his 83-year-old self on his deathbed as a slightly younger man, on the date specified. Quite apart from the wittily Hitchcockian weirdness that Grimonprez has confected in his movie (the Master Of Suspense as ranting, paranoid cold war commentator developing his end-of-the-world masterpiece, The Birds, hardly begins to convey it), I'm grateful to McCarthy for alerting me to a hitherto unsuspected, but actually quite obvious kinship between the Fat Man and the Blind Man.

Just the title of Borges's story puts one in mind of the opening caption in Psycho: "Friday, December the Eleventh," and the doubling of authors...

Celebrating its 40th anniversary, New York's Film Forum has announced its summer 2010 slate, which includes Dover Kosashvili's "Anton Chekov's The Duel," Jessica Oreck's "Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo," Emmanuel Laurent's "Two In The Wave," Johan Grimonprez's "Double Take," Kate Davis & David Heilbroner's "Stonewall Uprising," Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio's "Alamar," Vikram Jayanti's "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector," Tamra Davis's "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child," Marco Amenta's "The Sicilian Girl," and ...

One of the buzz-words of Sundance 2010 is "rebel," conveniently usable as either a noun or a verb. Of the six movies I saw on Friday (Jan. 22) -- a number I have no intention of equalling in the days to come -- no film fulfilled that edict to be rebellious with as much zeal as Johan Grimonprez's "Double Take," part of Sundance's New Frontiers program. I could write thousands of words trying to explain how "Double Take" is structured and it functions, but at 1 a.m. that might not be a good idea. Suffice to say that almost no simple...

Something tells me I'll be indulging in the Nf section with a quota of at least three works. Dammit, I'm already breaking out in hives with the monstrous task ahead of me of covering the festival from top to bottom. - This year's New Frontier section, a collection of six works that bend the rules of cinema, and are generally neglected from the press includes Johan Grimonprez's Double Take (another picture that received its North American premiere at the Nouveau Cinema Festival in Montreal, making the Park City screening a U.S. premiere. Something tells me I'll be indulging in the Nf section with a quota of at least three works. Dammit, I'm already breaking out in hives with the monstrous task ahead of me of covering the festival from top to bottom. All My Friends Are Funeral Singers / USA (Director and screenwriter: Tim Rutili)&mdash...

Canada's most avant-garde film festival have released their entire slate for their 38th edition. Apart from Lee Daniel's pegged for Oscar - Precious, Lone Scherfig's An Education, Lars von Trier's Antichrist and Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces (Los abrasos rotos), this year's edition is filled to the gills with obscure titles and names that even a hardcore connoisseur of world cinema such as myself is unfamiliar with. - I've just completed an exhaustive 35 film slate at Tiff and I've got very little time to recharge the batteries for The Festival du nouveau cinéma. Canada's most avant-garde film festival have released their entire slate for their 38th edition. Apart from Lee Daniel's pegged for Oscar - Precious, Lone Scherfig's An Education, Lars von Trier's Antichrist and Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces (Los abrasos rotos), this year's edition is filled to the...

On Wednesday the Sundance Film Festival unveiled the films competing in late January 2010. Yesterday they announced the rest of the line-up of independent films vying for attention for industry types and the curious public.

The entire list of 53 films is below, but here are a few that stood out to me from the premieres alone:

Mumblecore directors the Duplass Brothers, have a new, untitled movie starring an unusually high-profile cast compared to their usual improvisational crew. John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill, and Catherine Keener. Reilly and Keener are actually in two films at the 2010 festival.

The Company Men, starring Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Rosemarie DeWitt about corporate downsizing.

Rodrigo Cortes’ Buried, starring Ryan Reynolds as a man buried alive in a coffin. I’ve read the script and its great. More on that as soon as I can.

The Runaways, the...

And you thought Hitchcock was dead.

Don’t worry, this isn’t some zombie Hitchcock risen from the dead to make more great films (though I wouldn't be against that) but it sure looks like Johan Grimonprez has outdone himself in the found footage department. I’ve now seen four different cuts of the trailer and read the synopsis and I’m still not 100% sure what Double Take is about but I’m definitely kicking myself for having skipped it at Viff.

Here’s the official word:

Alfred Hitchcock is unwittingly caught up in a double take on the cold war period. As television hijacks cinema, and Khrushchev debates Nixon, sexual politics quietly take off and Hitchcock himself blackmails housewives with brands they can't refuse.

Though the purpose appears to be very different, Double Take reminds me a little of Koji Masutani’s Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived.

What's that?  You didn't realize that Alfred Hitchcock was up to no good during the Cold War?  Well, that's because you have not yet witnessed Johan Grimonprez's Double Take.  Reality gets cut up into a whole new form and fused with outright fiction as Grimonprez creates a whole new history for the famous director we thought we knew ...

Alfred Hitchcock is portrayed as a paranoid history professor, unwittingly caught up in a double take on the Cold War period. The master says all the wrong things at all the wrong times, and politicians on both sides desperately stammer to say the right things, live on TV.

We've got the first trailer for this embedded below but be sure to check out the other trailers and clips on the official site.  Brilliant is what this is.

We are 49 days out and counting down to Sundance 2010. Yesterday, we unveiled the list of competition films for the upcoming festival. Today, we have your list of out-of-competition films which include Premieres, Spotlight, New Frontier, and, my personal favorite, Park City at Midnight, which has featured past entries like Black Dynamite, The Descent, and Saw.

Check out next year’s lineup for the out-of-competition films:

Premieres

To showcase the diversity to contemporary independent cinema, the Sundance Film Festival Premieres section offers the latest work from American and international directors as well as world premieres of highly anticipated films. Presented by Entertainment Weekly.

Abel / Mexico, USA (Director: Diego Luna; Screenwriters: Diego Luna and Agusto Mendoza)–A peculiar young boy, blurring reality and fantasy, assumes the responsibilities of a family man in his father’s absence. Cast: Jose Maria Yazpik, Karina Gidi, Carlos Aragon, Christopher Ruiz-Esparza, Gerardo Ruiz-Esparza. World Premiere

Cane Toads:...

Yesterday we got the list for the films playing in competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and today we get the rest of the films that will be featured and there are quite a few that make 2010 look much stronger based on pedigree alone than I have seen in quite some time. Variety has a big write-up detailing the categories and more on the festival right here, but I am just going to offer up the titles and let you sort it all out.

The titles already in the RopeofSilicon database are linked.

Premieres

All films are from the United States unless otherwise noted Abel (Mexico-u.S.), the directorial debut of actor Diego Luna, written by Luna and Agusto Mendoza, about a peculiar young boy who, as he blurs reality and fantasy, takes over the responsibilities of a family man in his father's absence. With Jose Maria Yazpik, Karina Gidi,...

In addition to the competition titles which were announced yesterday, Sundance has announced the remainder of their line-up and it includes some titles we’re already familiar with along with a huge number of premieres.

Also on the docket are two new series: Next which showcases low/no budget films and Spotlight which highlights films which festival programmers deem worthy of extra love including Enter the Void (review) and Lourdes (the trailer for which I really liked).

I’m particularly excited to see some of the titles in the New Frontier program but overall, the line-up is an impressive one but the Kristen Stewart fan in me is excited to see her turn as Joan Jett in The Runaways and I think it’s fair to say we’re all dying to see Vincenzo Natali’s hotly anticipated Splice (trailer).

In the Midnight section, Adam Green's Frozen is sounding mighty find,...

Sundance released their slate for 2010. It includes:43 documentaries on the Middle East12 films about friends who 'discover' something33 movies about people you've never heard about1 comedyHopefully the lineup this year is strong but it doesn't look that way compared to last year. Last year we had Push (Precious), that Lil Wayne documentary that never went anywhere, Mystery Team which might make my top ten, Moon, Mike Tyson documentary, Cold Souls. Just so much last January that was excellent. I hope I don't go out therer and freeze my tail off just to see...I don't know, a documentary about a former Pakistani prime minister or something silly like that.Here's the lineup so far: Premieres To showcase the diversity to contemporary independent cinema, the Sundance Film Festival Premieres section offers the latest work from American and international directors as well as world premieres of highly anticipated films. Presented by Entertainment Weekly.

The Sundance Film Festival's competition lineup for 2010, announced Wednesday, might demand that audiences wear their serious caps. But the out-of-competition selections allow programmers and viewers to cut loose a little.

The 53 films that populate this year's Premieres, Next, Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and New Frontier sections run the gamut from the cosmically experimental to the star-studded and silly. There is indeed something for everyone at this year's event, which runs Jan. 21-31 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

As usual, Premieres collects work involving the industry's higher-profile talent, none more so than John Wells' feature directorial debut, "The Company Men," which stars Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper. Mexican actor Diego Luna's directorial debut, "Abel," will screen, as will Philip Seymour Hoffman's "Jack Goes Boating."

Michael Winterbottom has the rare distinction of having two films in...

Toronto ­-- Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani¹s horror homage "Amer," a Belgium-France film that depicts three parts in a woman's life, took home the top audience award at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema.

Meanwhile, the Greek satirical film "Canine" from Yorgos Lanthimos took home the juried Louve d'Or trophy as Montreal's top auteur film festival wrapped Saturday night.

"Canine" won out over 16 other competition titles that included U.S. director Sean Baker's "Prince of Broadway"; "Les Signes Vitaux," by Canadian director Sophie Deraspe; Ryan Arnold's "Skidlove," also from Canada; and Johan Grimonprez's "Double Take," a Benelux co-production.

The Louve d'Or jury gave special mention to the China/Germany co-production "The Red Race" by Chao Gan.

Montreal's best acting award went to Magaly Solier, star of Claudia Llosa's Peruvian film "Fausta: La Teta Asustada."

The festival¹s 38th edition also saw the Turkish film "Should I Really Do It?...