Kino Lorber’s Kino Marquee initiative, which looks to help arthouses at a time when they’ve been shuttered in the coronavirus climate, has mushroomed from 12 theaters last week to 150 including Alamo Drafthouse and Laemmle Theaters.
For the price of $12, Kino Marquee is streaming last year’s Cannes Grand Jury Prize winner, Bacurau, on arthouses’ regional cinema websites. Those who pay to watch the Sonia Braga movie, say on the Laemmle site, the profits are then split between the theater and Kino Lorber. The Kino Marquee was launched to enable movie audiences to continue to support their local theaters by paying to view pics digitally during the nationwide shutdown of theaters.
Each rental of Bacurau lasts fives days, and there’s a virtual Q&A with filmmakers and cast hosted by BAM which will be available for all to watch on Wednesday, April 1 at 8pm ET. Kino Lorber also plans to offer top films from other independent distributors via Kino Marquee.
Here’s an example of what the Kino Marquee looks like on LA’s Laemmle site. Kino Lorber is helping each chain build out their virtual streaming web pages. Each theater will then promote to their moviegoing memberships via their newsletters about upcoming Kino and sister Zeitgeist label movies.
Specific movie theaters wills stream Bacurau during specific dates and you can find that rollout schedule here which is constantly updating.
Kino Lorber President and CEO Richard Lorber said, “We’ve all been thrust into a brave new cinema world. Kino Marquee offers film lovers and the theaters a way to mutually support each other – audiences can keep going to newly released movies and theaters can keep selling tickets to great cinematic experiences online. We offer Kino Marquee as a lifeline to help keep art house cinemas in business and keep the work of top independent filmmakers under the halo of first release virtual screens.”
“We’re grateful for our partners at Kino Lorber, who are leading the charge in Virtual Cinema screenings that support theaters like Alamo Drafthouse,” said Tim League, Alamo Drafthouse founder and CEO. “We’re happy to be able to share Bacurau with our audience and continue celebrating our shared film culture.”
Museum of Fine Arts Curator of Film & Video Marian Luntz added, “The nimble initiative of Kino Lorber to launch Kino Marquee is a fantastic response to the serious and totally unexpected situation we are all sharing. Our devoted filmgoers, along with others across the U.S., can watch spring releases everyone planned to see in our theaters, keeping them engaged with our programming and contemporary world cinema. We hope everyone will remain safe and healthy while taking advantage of Bacurau and other films we plan to offer.” The MFAH launched their virtual theater today to screen the film.
Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles and starring Braga and Udo Kier, Bacurau is set in a near-future Brazil, and follows a succession of sinister events that mobilizes all the residents of a village.