New York-based distribution Kino Lorber has announced the launching a virtual theatrical exhibition initiative called Kino Marquee with the digital premiere of the Brazilian hit Bacurau directed by Kleber Mendonça FIlho and Juliano Dornelles.
Kino Lorber’s aims to enable movie theaters shuttered by the coronavirus outbreak to continue to serve their audiences and generate revenue in this difficult time. The initiative also lets movie audiences support their local theaters with their dollars and view the films digitally.
The first Kino Marquee screenings are with New York’s Film at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music and Jacob Burns Film Center. All will open with Bacurau, which would otherwise now be on screen in each venue. Starring Sônia Braga and Udo Kier, the film won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2019 and went on to play Toronto and New York Film Festivals to much acclaim. It was a New York Times Critics Pick by Manohla Dargis who called it “an exhilarating fusion of high and low,” and The New Yorker lauded the film as “ boldly inventive political fantasy.” The film has also been compared to Oscar-winning Parasite for its provocative themes of class disparity, with director Bong Joon-ho championing it at a recent screening.
The program is rapidly expanding with invitations going to all sixty theaters across the country who had already committed to book Bacurau. The current list of theaters on board at the time of publication are:
Film at Lincoln Center (New York, NY)
BAM (Brooklyn, NY)
Jacob Burns Film Center (Pleasantville, NY)
The Little Theatre (Rochester, NY)
Santa Barbara International Film Festival Riviera Theatre (Santa Barbara, CA)
The Frida Cinema (Santa Ana, CA)
Denver Film / Sie FilmCenter (Denver, CO)
Belcourt Theater (Nashville, TN)
Loft Cinema (Tucson, AZ)
Austin Film Society (Austin, TX)
Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, OH)
Aperture Cinema (Winston Salem, NC)
Kino Marquee has been designed to emulate the moviegoing experience as much as possible. Films will be booked from Fridays to Thursdays and presented on dedicated web pages headed by each theater’s branded marquee. Virtual “holdovers” will be determined by performance, and revenue will be split between distributor and exhibitor.
Film at Lincoln Center opened Bacurau on March 6 and posted excellent numbers until they elected to close on March 12 in an effort to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and prioritize the health of their community, and which unfortunately included cancelling a Q&A with the directors, here from Brazil, scheduled for that evening. BAM opened Bacurau on March 13 only to show it one day before being forced to shut down, and Jacob Burns had to cancel their March 13 opening that morning. The virtual screening rooms for all theaters will become operational over the next few days, effectively extending the film’s theatrical run on home screens.
