Films This Week 8/13/21
by Gary Palmucci | 13th August 2021 | Gary's Corner
Hello everyone. With this week’s beastly heat wave, even the subject (and the trailer) of our latest documentary addition to Virtual Cinema promises a cooling effect.
In ‘Usedom: A Clear View of the Sea,’ filmmaker Heinz Brinkmann chronicles the history of the Baltic island of Usedom – where he was born — from an early 20th century luxury destination for Berliners, with grand villas and Europe’s longest beach promenade, to the expulsion of Jewish citizens by the Nazis and the island’s being split into an East German and Polish half after World War II.
Many decades and socio-political transitions later, a diverse population continues to relish the island, from tacky developers to relaxed nudists and cheery organic farmers. The NY Times’ Jeannette Catsoulis writes today, “Shaping personal and geographical history into sun-drenched dollops, director Brinkmann fashions a charmingly quirky guide to his island home….”
I’d also like to recommend another new documentary opening today downtown- ‘Searching for Mr Rugoff,’ long time film distribution exec and historian Ira Deutchman’s portrait of the mercurial Don Rugoff, whose now-legendary Cinema 5 theatre chain (Cinema I & II, the Paris, Beekman, Sutton etc) set the standard for art house exhibition as we now know it. Full of colorful anecdotes and personal histories by many New York cinema pros including Lincoln Plaza’s Dan Talbot (I myself was interviewed but wound up on the cutting room floor), this is an indispensable piece of Manhattan movie history which New Plaza hopes to offer here later this season.
Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema