CINELICIOUS PICS is a newly launched distribution company bringing handpicked cinema to U.S. audiences for the first time via theatrical release, VOD, Blu-Ray & DVD and television. The company was inspired by a unique partnership between entrepreneur and film restoration expert Paul Korver and former head of film programming for the American Cinematheque, Dennis Bartok.
Cinelicious Pics’ key ingredients include an eclectic mix of new U.S. independent and foreign features and docs plus restored art house and cult classics, lovingly brought to pristine viewing quality by sister post & digital restoration studio Cinelicious, founded by Paul Korver. Both companies are located in the heart of Hollywood.
“We’re huge film enthusiasts, first and foremost, and have a deep appreciation for how challenging it can be to bring a unique film to a wider audience,” says Dennis Bartok. “Our goal is to present work that is compelling, thought-provoking and wildly entertaining. It isn’t genre or era specific; it’s about quality and films we truly love.”
“The hope is that people share our curatorial taste and become excited for what’s next. Like a film club brought to audiences wherever they consume content, including the beauty of a dark theater,” adds Paul Korver.
The company will roll out its first releases theatrically in the Fall of 2014, starting with director Adam Rifkin’s wildly surreal and outrageous documentary portrait of a truly outsider artist, GIUSEPPE MAKES A MOVIE; Icelandic director Ragnar Bragason’s dark, intense drama of faith, loss and heavy metal music in the 1990s, METALHEAD; and the acclaimed documentary ELEKTRO MOSKVA from filmmakers Elena Tikhonova and Dominik Spritzendorfer, uncovering the secret history of Soviet Space Age Electronic Music and a new generation of indie rock musicians in Russia re-using these long-lost electronic synthesizers. Cinelicious Pics plans to release a dozen films annually.
"CINELICIOUS PICS is the perfect home for GIUSEPPE MAKES A MOVIE!” comments director Adam Rifkin. “Paul and Dennis know and love cinema with a passion rarely seen these days, and their commitment to film preservation is truly inspiring. They've also created a safe haven for new filmmakers: an auteur-friendly environment that not only offers up a new and exciting destination for directors, but also embraces everything our movie is about.”
A fortuitous meeting of Bartok and Korver, and their mutual desire to expose quality films to larger audiences, resulted in the development of Cinelicious Pics. Each brings deep experience in various facets of the film industry to the company, which aligns film restoration and preservation with the discovery of compelling and original new voices in cinema.
For 13 years, Dennis Bartok served as head of film programming for the American Cinematheque, a non-profit film group that restored and operates the historic Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. While there he organized landmark retrospectives on such filmmakers as Jean-Pierre Melville, Mario Bava, Kinji Fukasaku, Anthony Mann, Samuel Fuller, the Monty Python group and many others. Additionally, he produced & programmed the 3rd edition of the World 3-D Film Expo last September. Bartok is also a screenwriter and founder of Five Windows Productions, which released, through Lions Gate, the anthology horror film TRAPPED ASHES with episodes directed by Joe Dante, Ken Russell, Sean Cunningham, Monte Hellman, and John Gaeta. Dennis serves as EVP of Acquisitions and Distribution at Cinelicious Pics.
Paul Korver is a filmmaker and entrepreneur who, in 2008, founded Cinelicious, a creative studio that offers forward-thinking, talent-driven post in an inspired environment that caters to a new generation of filmmakers, ad agencies, studios and clients. Korver based Cinelicious on his notorious love of celluloid film, passion for cinematography and eye for creative talent. Cinelicious is a filmmaker’s playground that boasts a 4K pipeline with the latest 4K film scanning technology as well as a stunning 4K DI Theater, which allows for real-time 4K color grading review and mastering. The company has provided post services for Michael Tully’s PING PONG SUMMER, Richard Linklater's BOYHOOD, and Jeff Preiss’ LOW DOWN, David Gordon Green's PRINCE AVALANCHE, remastering for the television series DEATH VALLEY DAYS, the 4K remaster of Chris Nolan’s FOLLOWING put out by Criterion, the student films of animation masters in conjunction with the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, and many more. Korver is acting President and CEO of the new distribution shingle.
Rounding out the company’s leadership is their head of business affairs, entertainment lawyer Kristine Blumensaadt, Esq, and a support team of marketers, publicists, and restoration talent. For more on the company, please visit http://www.cineliciouspics.com/
Cinelicious Pics’ Films (scheduled for Theatrical Release in Fall 2014):
GIUSEPPE MAKES A MOVIE – Documentary, 82 min., USA. While the rest of America slept, DIY filmmaker/musician Giuseppe Andrews (a one-time teen actor in INDEPENDENCE DAY and DETROIT ROCK CITY) has made over 30 experimental features with titles like DOILY'S SUMMER OF FREAK OCCURRENCES, TRAILER TOWN and UTOPIA BLUES, set in some demented alternate universe (i.e. Ventura, California) populated by real-life alcoholics and drug addicts, trash-talking senior citizens and trailer park residents dressed in cow outfits and costume-shop wigs, acting out booze-fueled vignettes of severe psychosis filtered through Giuseppe's John Waters-meets-Harmony Korine-meets-Werner Herzog sensibility. Director Adam Rifkin (LOOK, THE DARK BACKWARD) creates a wildly surreal, outrageously funny and strangely touching portrait of a truly Outsider Artist inhabiting a world few of us even know exists, as he follows Giuseppe and his seriously impaired troupe on the production of his latest 2-day opus, GARBANZO GAS, starring Vietnam Ron as a Cow given a weekend reprieve from the slaughterhouse at the local motel. Beyond the sun-stroked Theater of the Absurd madness of Giuseppe’s vision, there is a remarkable and endearing sense of family among the director, his amiably bonkers dad Ed, patient girlfriend Mary, Sir Bigfoot George and the rest of his surreal Trailer Park rep company. As skate-punk Spit sagely observes about Giuseppe's movies: "They're just like, nothing really makes any sense, and I don't know, that's kinda how reality is, and nobody really cares to accept that." A selection of the Hot Docs Documentary Festival, the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Rooftop Film Series.
METALHEAD – Drama, 97 min., Iceland. Fueled by a remarkable breakout performance by actress Thora Bjorg Helga, director Ragnar Bragason’s intense drama of loss, faith, redemption, Megadeth and Judas Priest begins with a farming accident in the 1980’s that sends a young girl, Hera, and her parents into a tail-spin of grief over the death of her heavy metal music-obsessed older brother. A decade later and Hera is transformed into a sexy, surly headbanger and DIY musician, dressed in black leather and a Slayer t-shirt, clutching her dead brother’s electric guitar as she howls anthems of rage to a barn full of cows. Seemingly trapped in a haunted landscape of slaughterhouses and barren winter fields, making all the wrong choices in her life – including coming on to the local priest and sleeping with her platonic best friend – Hera slowly, painfully comes to terms with her family’s loss and the sound of her own true voice. Partly inspired by the Norwegian black metal church burnings in the early 1990’s, and featuring a soundtrack of 1980’s and 1990’s headbanging classics by Riot, Teaze, Savatage, Lizzy Borden and Megadeth, METALHEAD has been praised as “a powerful portrait of grief never dealt with … an impeccably crafted and beautifully performed film” (Todd Brown, Twitchfilm). Winner of 8 awards at the 2014 Icelandic Film Awards including Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor & Actress, and Original Score. In Icelandic with English subtitles. A selection of the Toronto Film Festival.
ELEKTRO MOSKVA — Documentary, 89 min., Austria. Welcome to a weird and definitely wired world of musicians, DIY circuit benders, vodka-swilling dealers and urban archaeologists/collectors, all fascinated with obsolete Soviet-era electronic synthesizers: primitive and ungainly beasts like the Polyvox, ESKO, Yunost and the fabulous ANS Photo-Electronic Synthesizer, a surreal device that translates abstract drawings into sound. This strange universe of “cosmic chill-out tunes,” Space Age dance music and electronic chirps & tweets has been rescued by directors Elena Tikhonova and Dominik Spritzendorfer in this fascinating & cheeky documentary incorporating rare archival footage including the last 1993 interview with famed inventor Leon Theremin. In a bizarre twist, many of these instruments were a by-product of the Soviet military, created in the off-hours by scientist/inventors cobbling together spare transistors and wires — including Theremin’s Rube Goldberg-esque “Rhythmicon” from 1932, the world’s first rhythm machine, described by a museum curator as “space wreckage.” A new generation of avant-garde and rock musicians has embraced the unpredictability and chaos of these instruments: as “Benzo” (aka Richardas Norvila) admiringly says, “On a Western device, you push a button and get a result … On a Soviet instrument, you push a button and get something.” Rooting through discarded storage units for cracked and yellowing keyboards, pulling apart cheap toys and re-wiring their inanely cheerful voice boards, these guerilla circuit benders are creating new cosmic sounds from these forgotten “instruments with expanded abilities.” In Russian and English, with English subtitles. A selection of the Rotterdam Film Festival.
