Tag Archives: Josephine Decker

VARIETY: Josephine Decker’s ‘Butter’ and ‘Lovely’ Bought by Cinelicious

Mild and Lovely

VARIETY
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014 | 09:29AM PT
Carole Horst

Cinelicious Pics has acquired all North American rights to Josephine Decker’s “Butter on the Latch” and “Thou Wast Mild and Lovely,” above.

A theatrical and VOD release is planned for November.

Tyro distrib Cinelicious Pics aims to bring an eclectic mix of U.S. indie and foreign features and docs to auds via theatrical release, VOD and Blu-ray. It also handles 4K-restored arthouse and cult classics, brought to pristine viewing quality by sister post and digital restoration studio Cinelicious.

The deal was negotiated by Cinelicious Pics’ president Paul Korver, president of business affairs Kristine Blumensaadt and exec VP Dennis Bartok, with Ben Weiss and Meghan Oliver from Paradigm and Craig F. Cohen of McCue Sussmane & Zapfel.

“Paul and I are incredibly excited to be working with Josephine on her first two features, which have a beautiful, sensual, poetic and intensely visual style that sets her apart from many indie filmmakers today,” says Bartok. “Her work reminds me in a wonderful way of filmmakers like David Lynch and Nicolas Roeg but with a voice all her own.”

“I’m thrilled to be bursting out of the gate with a company who is also hurtling into new territory,” says Decker. “The guys at Cinelicious are passionate, visionary film lovers, incredibly hard workers and just good people. I feel very lucky to be working with them.”

BUTTER ON THE LATCH

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BUTTER ON THE LATCH

2014 | dir: Josephine Decker | 72 min

IN THEATERS ON DEMAND

Former performance artist Josephine Decker’s stunning debut feature is a deeply subjective, mysterious and erotic portrait of a frantic young woman, Sarah (Sarah Small) who leaves the city for the apparent safety of a Balkan music camp hidden deep in the California woods. Once there she reconnects with a former friend, Isolde (played by Korean-American puppeteer Isolde Chae-Lawrence) and does some hilariously foul-mouthed female bonding – until she finds herself growing attracted to a hunky male camper, Steph (Charlie Hewson). Gradually her already-frayed grip on reality starts to unravel, as cinematographer Ashley Connor’s superb, disorienting camerawork and the swirling Balkan music become darker and more disorienting. Her personality finally shatters in a moment of transcendent violence that causes us to question whether we too have become lost in the deep, impenetrable forest of fear and desire.

Part Bergman’s PERSONA, part early David Lynch, BUTTER ON THE LATCH is a tour-de-force of intensely visceral filmmaking intercut with moments of serene, startling poetry.

#10 Best Movie of 2014 by The New Yorker

“the kind of feature debut the film industry simply doesn’t support, but would do well to encourage: a visually poetic, virtually free-form groove in which emotion, rather than narrative, guides viewers through a young woman’s visit to a Balkan folk music camp”
Peter Debruge – Variety

“I was putty in Decker’s hands…”
Mark Lukenbill – Hammer to Nail

“Elegant and elliptical, Josephine Decker’s psychodrama is a blurring of the line between waking and dream states.”
Michael Nordine – The Village Voice

“an utter exhilaration of cinematic imagination, a pure high of invention”
Richard Brody – The New Yorker

“a sexy, wild romp you have to see to believe”
Eric Kohn – Indiewire

“Butter on the Latch thrives on its casually true snapshots of confusion and connection.”
Nicolas Rapold – The New York Times

“a fascinating and truly original work of art”
Christopher Bourne – TwitchFilm

IN THEATERS AND ON DEMAND NOVEMBER 14TH

Oct 23-26, 2014	Flyway Film Festival	Lake Pepin, WI	get ’em
Nov 14, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 15, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 16, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 17, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 18, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 19, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 20, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Jan 31, 2016	3S Artspace	Portsmouth, NH	get ’em

VIEW TRAILER

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THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY

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THOU WAST MILD & LOVELY

2014 | dir: Josephine Decker | 76 min

IN THEATERS ON DEMAND

Director Josephine Decker’s highly-acclaimed second feature unfolds with the lyricism and inexorable sense of tragedy of an ancient Appalachian murder ballad. Indie icon Joe Swanberg (director of HAPPY CHRISTMAS and DRINKING BUDDIES) delivers a beautifully understated performance as Akin, a soft-spoken farmworker who takes a summer job working for the belligerent, domineering Jeremiah (Robert Longstreet), who lives in incestuous isolation with his daughter. Sophie Traub’s performance as the daughter, Sarah, has the sun-dappled quality of one of Andrew Wyeth’s Helga paintings: hers is a completely innocent and destructive sexuality, overripe to the point of bursting.

Decker’s vision of Paradise Lost – dew clinging to a spider’s web, the insistent hum of insects, a young girl writhing on the grass – is unforgettably poetic and erotic, and seems to echo down from ages past.

“I finally felt the deep liberation of putting something into the world that represented my darkest self” – Josephine Decker.

#2 Best Movie of 2014 by The New Yorker
#10 Top 17 Films of 2014 Hammer To Nail Awards

“The unholy marriage of Ingmar Bergman and David Lynch”
Eric Kohn – Indiewire

“Like most classic stories, this one is simple, but its realisation is so surprising in its details, so original in its visual invention, as to make most other movies seem shot by the numbers.”
Richard Brody – The New Yorker

“This is not the laid-back life on the farm John Denver was singing about in ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy.'”
David Rooney – The Hollywood Reporter

“The cow POV shots aren’t the only great thing in Thou Wast Mild & Lovely.”
Michael Nordine – The Village Voice

“A truly original, refreshing voice kicking in from the margins, small and human, but as real and revelatory and potentially disorienting as life itself.”
Dustin Krcatovich – Tiny Mix Tapes

IN THEATERS AND ON DEMAND NOVEMBER 14TH

Sept 13, 2014	SoAL Film Festival	Mobile, AL	get ’em
Sept 27, 2014	Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival	Saskatoon, CAN	get ’em
Oct 10, 2014	Dallas Video Fest	Dallas, TX	get ’em
Oct 23-26, 2014	Flyway Film Festival	Lake Pepin, WI	get ’em
Oct 31, 2014	Indie Memphis Film Festival	Memphis, TN	get ’em
Nov 7 & Nov 9, 2014	AFI FEST	Los Angeles, CA	get ’em
Nov 12-23, 2014	Starz Denver Film Festival	Denver, CO	get ’em
Nov 13, 2014	Cucalorus Film Festival	Wilmington, NC	get ’em
Nov 14-20, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 15, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 15, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 16, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 17, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 18, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 19, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em
Nov 20, 2014	MINY Media Center by IFP – US THEATRICAL PREMIERE	Brooklyn, NY	get ’em

VIEW THEATRICAL TRAILER

VIEW BERLIN TEASER

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