The Price of Freedom – Director Judd Ehrlich

The Price of Freedom is an unflinching look at the gun violence epidemic in America and the role the National Rifle Association, with its outsized political and cultural influence, has played over time. The NRA believes the deaths of innocent Americans are a necessary price to pay for the freedom to own firearms without restrictions. By manipulating the narrative around guns and backing politicians who commit to upholding their agenda, the NRA has cost us far more than we realize. Featuring passionate pleas from President William J. Clinton, Representative Lucy McBath (D-GA) and Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT); NRA Board Member and former NRA President David Keene, and activists on all sides of the issue, The Price of Freedom presents a compelling case for those brave enough to take a stand against the NRA in defense of our communities and collective future. Director Judd Ehrlich joins us for a conversation on how the NRA has abandoned its founding principles of promoting safe and responsible gun ownership through locally-based training programs into a shameless shill for gun manufacturers and more recently into a pernicious, corrosive and ruthlessly divisive political force in American culture and governance.

 

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About the filmmaker – Judd Ehrlich – Grand Clio and Emmy Award-winning director and producer is the son of an architect and schoolteacher. He grew up in lower Manhattan and, at fourteen, was the youngest feature reporter at a New York newspaper. Ehrlich’s recent documentaries KEEPERS OF THE GAME and WE COULD BE KING, produced with Tribeca Studios and The Dick’s Sporting Goods Foundation, forged a new model for documentary production and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and on ABC television. KEEPERS was a New York Times Critics’ Pick and nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award and KING won an Emmy and Grand Clio Award. Both films are part of the US State Department’s American Film Showcase. Ehrlich was nominated for Emmy Awards for the Tribeca Premiere RUN FOR YOUR LIFE and the PBS broadcast MAYOR OF THE WEST SIDE. His award-winning MAGIC CAMP was optioned for narrative remake and NOTES FROM LIBERIA won several awards. Ehrlich directed two television series for ESPN and a series for The CW Network. He collaborated on the editing of Sundance-winner FAMILY NAME and Ric Burns’ Emmy-winning series, NEW YORK. Ehrlich was an editor and producer at CBS News and directed film programs at BAM, Brooklyn College, JCC Manhattan and the Brooklyn Museum, hosting notables like Darren Aronofsky, Steve Buscemi and Willem Dafoe. Ehrlich is represented by Saville Productions, joining a roster that includes Wim Wenders, Barry Levinson, Oliver Stone and Werner Herzog, and directs content for Bose, Tough Mudder, MLS, Van Cleef & Arpels, Barilla, Atlantic Philanthropies, US Cellular, and the Serena Williams Fund, to name a handful. Before film, Ehrlich was a caseworker in NYC for Project Renewal, Homes for the Homeless and YAI. He lives with his wife and two children in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where his family lived for five generations. Ehrlich is a Vassar College graduate and teaches filmmaking. For more go to: flatbushpictures.com

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100% on Rotten Tomatoes

“An absorbing, disturbing, and scrupulously well-researched documentary that lays out the nuts and bolts of the National Rifle Association’s history.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“What makes The Price of Freedom a film that should be on your must-see list is the way Ehrlich presents all of this.” – Sabina Dana Plasse, Film Threat

“An unflinching and powerful look at what the NRA means to American politics and how it has used manipulation and scare tactics.” – Nathaniel Muir, AIPT

“Clear-eyed, compassionate and compelling, the documentary “The Price of Freedom” efficiently unpacks and debunks the myths it posits the National Rifle Assn. of America has deployed to further its all-guns-all-the-time agenda and foster a culture war.” – Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

Sweet Thing – Director Alexandre Rockwell

SWEET THING, centers on Billie (Lana Rockwell, Little Feet), a 15-year-old girl who fantasizes Billie Holiday as a sort of fairy godmother. Billie has to navigate the evolving challenges of her life while she plays mother to her 11-year-old brother, Nico. They meet up with another adolescent, run away from home, and together roam the area  free from their parents’ watchful eye. They discover freedom and enchantment among New Bedford’s boats and railway tracks. They fantasize about a life of luxury when they break into a posh home, and are able to carry the taste of affluence into their adventures. SWEET THING celebrates their ability to make poetry and a joyful life out of hardship. The children come to represent a hope in our own resilience, as the film is an ode to that  trying age when young people prepare to take their first step into adulthood. The story is an intense but ultimately uplifting, poetic rendering of childhood that captures the essence of that time in life when a day can last forever. SWEET THING, stars Rockwell’s children Lana and Nico, Karyn Parsons and Will Patton, Director and writer Alexandre Rockwell (In the Soup, Louis & Frank, 13 Moons) joins us for a conversation on his working with a superb cast that includes Lana and Nico Rockwell, Karyn Parsons and Will Patton, re-discovering a love for instinctive filmmaking and his embrace of storytelling that celebrates fearless youth, friendships, and family.

 

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SWEET THING winner of the Berlinale Crystal Bear in the Generation K-plus section in 2020.

About the filmmaker – Rockwell managed to establish himself by the early 1980s. He already had several short films under his belt and his work was shown at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art and New York City’s Association of Independent Video and Film. This led to him landing his first feature film, Lenz which was shown at the 1982 Berlin Film Festival and enjoyed success. Rockwell followed up with the release of Hero, which won a Special Jury Prize at the 1984 Sundance Film Festival. In 1986, he married Yale graduate and Flashdance star Jennifer Beals. He didn’t make any films until Sons. Praise rained on Rockwell at The Sundance Film Festival when he released In the Soup. The movie featured Steve BuscemiSeymour Cassel and Jennifer Beals. Rockwell’s next film Somebody to Love was less successful, though the omnibus movie Four Rooms was popular, in which Rockwell directed the segment “The Wrong Man”. Rockwell’s marriage to Beals ended in 1996 but they remained close friends. Unfortunately, Rockwell’s next offering, Louis & Frank, reprising two minor characters from In The Soup, flopped with audiences. Rockwell hit his stride again with the release of the successful 13 Moons, a comedy which featured a strong ensemble cast including Steve Buscemi and Karyn Parsons. Rockwell later married Parsons (best known for her work as “Hilary Banks” on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) on Valentine’s Day, 2003. After Pete Smalls Is Dead, he made the critically acclaimed Little Feet, starring his two young children, son Nico and daughter Lana, which was entirely funded by a Kickstarter campaign. With this feature, Rockwell continued the form that made him an iconoclast of the independent New York film movement of the nineties. After a break of 7 years, he returned to filmmaking with Sweet Thing, starring his wife Karyn and their two kids, winning the Crystal Bear award at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival. 

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86% on Rotten Tomatoes

“A lively, bittersweet meditation on an impoverished childhood that is still rich in innocence and imagination…. With verve and vitality it pays a dreamy-eyed retrospective debt to films past, and largely due to the beguiling performance from Rockwell’s own daughter Lana, ultimately delivers a moving, tousled journey of discovery….” – Jessica Kiang, Variety

“Rockwell’s film about specific heartbreaking circumstances is accessibly potent in its portrayal of childhood and memory. He taps into the experience of complex emotions – fear mixed with hope, love entangled with heartbreak, and childhood prematurely ripped away – in ways that exemplify the unique potential of cinema.” – Mary-Catherine Harvey, The Upcoming

“Gorgeous… stunningly rendered….this is a film that deserves to be seen – Stephen Silver, Goomba Stomp

“The windswept, wild-maned ‘Sweet Thing’ boasts beautiful performances and a definite throwback charm.” – VARIETY

“The first paces of ‘Sweet Thing’ feel as they are taken from Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Kid’. By iris-in, iris-out, long shot cuts into close-ups, the director Alexander Rockwell conveys a really fresh and intimate nostalgia.” – FILMFESTIVALS

“Sweet Thing is also stunningly rendered. All three kid actors are incredibly talented, and the film makes very strong use of music, which includes multiple examples of Lana Rockwell’s fine singing.” – Goomba Stomp

MUBI podcast – Host Rico Gagliano

Global distributor and curated streaming service MUBI, has launched its first original podcast, MUBI Podcast.  MUBI Podcast will be hosted by arts and travel reporter Rico Gagliano (The Wall Street Journal, The Dinner Party Download). The documentary-style podcast will be available on all major podcast platforms and on MUBI’s online publication Notebook. New episodes of MUBI Podcast will be released weekly starting on June 3, with a total of six episodes in the first season. Season one, titled “Lost in Translation”, will focus on films that have great importance in their home country, but are lesser known by international audiences and critics. MUBI Podcast will cover nearly every continent with each episode exploring a different film and country, providing a window into cinema cultures around the world. The unique stories behind the films will be brought to life with movie clips, music, and original interviews with filmmakers, critics, academics, and historians. The pilot episode will look at Paul Verhoeven’s second feature Turkish Delight (1973). While one of Verhoeven’s lesser known films to international audiences, it remains the most well-attended domestic film in the history of the Netherlands and was named the greatest Dutch film of the 20th century by the Netherlands Film Festival. The episode will cover the film’s unique significance during the counterculture movement in 1970s Holland and features exclusive interviews with Paul Verhoeven, Monique van de Ven, and Jan de Bont, amongst others. Future episodes will cover film stories from around the globe, including the longest-running film in the history of Indian cinema, a Mexican film that became the biggest movie in the Soviet Union, and the micro-budget feature shot on video that sparked the modern Nigerian film industry. MUBI Podcast host Rico Gagliano joins us to talk about his remarkably diverse career, his love for storytelling and what inspires his passion  to spotlight obscure corners of the film, music and the wide variety the arts that continue to capture his attention. 

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About our guest – Rico Gagliano has taken his fascination for the arts, culture, history, travel and politics and his talent for storytelling and turned it into a 20 plus year journey, as a print and audio creator that continues to inform and entertain local, national, and international audiences.  After reporting around the world for the public radio business program “Marketplace,” He co-created, co-hosted, co-produced, and edited “The Dinner Party Download” The “The Dinner Party Download” began as a pioneering 15-minute arts-and-culture podcast, and grown into an hour-long broadcast/digital show heard on nearly 200 public radio stations and downloaded 30 million times. It was nominated for “Best Arts & Culture Show” at the 2018 Webby Awards, and was named “Best Food Podcast” by the Academy of Podcasters in 2016.  He co-wrote the show’s companion book, “Brunch Is Hell,” published by Little/Brown Inc. in December 2017. Gagliano went on to co-host “Safe For Work” for the podcast network Wondery, and co-hosted their narrative non-fiction series “One Plus One.” He has recently been Executive Producing and hosting an international film history podcast I created for the celebrated cinephile platform MUBI, debuting Q2 of 2021. And “Missing America — one of two limited series I co-wrote in 2020 — just won a “People’s Voice” Webby Award for “Best Documentary Podcast Episode.” (The other series, Wondery’s “Jacked,” was nominated for “Best Entertainment Podcast.”) He’s also the Senior Producer of Focus Features’ film history podcast “Zoom,” hosted by Variety critic Amy Nicholson. In his spare time Gagliano spends way too much on vinyl records and daydream about The Netherlands, which he has visited and/or reported from almost every year since 1999.

About MUBIMUBI is a global streaming service, production company and film distributor. A place to discover and watch beautiful, interesting, incredible films. A new hand-picked film arrives on MUBI, every single day. Cinema from across the world. From iconic directors, to emerging auteurs. All carefully chosen by MUBI’s curators. Notebook is MUBI’s daily film publication, exploring all sides of cinema culture. And with MUBI GO, members in select countries can get a hand-picked cinema ticket every single week, to see the best new films in real cinemas.MUBI also produces and distributes ambitious new films, which members can watch exclusively on the platform. Some recent and upcoming MUBI Releases include Sergei Loznitsa’s State Funeral, Magnus von Horn’s Sweat, Déa Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning, Cathy Yan’s feature debut Dead Pigs, Xavier Dolan’s Matthias & Maxime and Werner Herzog’s Family Romance LLC. MUBI’s co-productions include Ekwa Msangi’s Sundance prize-winner Farewell Amor, Danielle Lessovitz’s Port Authority, and Rachel Lang’s Our Men.MUBI is the biggest community of film lovers, available across 190 countries, with more than 10 million members around the world. Subscription plans are $10.99 a month or $83.88 for 12 months. MUBI is available on the web, Roku devices, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, LG and Samsung Smart TVs, as well as on mobile devices including iPad, iPhone and Android.  For more go to: mubi.com

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