I-Cinema Bits Newsletter issue 2 summer 2006

Welcome to the Summer 2006 edition of i-Cinema Bits, Emerging Pictures’ quarterly newsletter.

Emerging Pictures has dramatically increased its size and scope in just the first six months of 2006. Sixteen cinemas are now online, establishing Emerging Cinemas as the largest strictly digital art house network in the United States. More venues and broader support by distribution companies has solidified Emerging’s leadership role. Our overall mission remains consistent: to use new digital technologies to bring a wide range of quality specialty cinema to communities all across America − innovative American independents, festival-winning international films and thought provoking documentary features.

To date, we’ve screened over 120 films digitally (see page 7 for complete list). Emerging’s network now delivers film files directly to member venues via dedicated digital tie lines. We no longer send physical media (digital film “prints” housed on hard drives), thereby eliminating shipping costs while expanding our offerings. This networked approach has increased programming flexibility while also improving technical support. From our control room in New York we can assist the venue’s staff through a shared web-based interface.

Film festivals and special events remain a highlight of the Emerging schedule. The 2006 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival was, once again, a tremendous success.

Emerging Expands Indie Digital Opportunities

The Market Ar-cade Film & Arts

Center in Buffalo, NY, is the nation’s only publicly-owned eight-screen theater, as well as Emerg-ing Cinemas’ new-est full-time venue. Beginning February 1st, MAFAC dedi-cated one screen to Emerging’s digital cinema calendar while continuing with first-run com-mercial features on the others. Open seven days a week, MAFAC takes full advantage of the digital network’s flex-ibility to program multiple films on the Emerging screen, in effect “multiplex-ing” on a single screen. Emerging’s diverse content, high quality and ease of operation were key selling points for MAFAC to join the digital network.

Emerging Cinemas Venue Spotlight: MAFAC

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival ● ● ● 2indieWIRE: Undiscovered Gems ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 3Emerging Cinemas Network ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 4Panasonic Spotlight ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 5New Releases ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 6Feature Presentations ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 7

Table Of Contents

the city... “MAFAC is very pleased to be the ex-clusive western NY venue for Emerging Cinemas. Its offering is technologically advanced, culturally rich and unique.” - Anthony J. Colucci III, Chairman of MAFAC

the theater management company...“This new digital projection system will allow more documentaries, indepen-dents, and other art house films to be shown in Buffalo at the same time as they’re being seen in the top five mar-kets.” - Michael Clement, President, Dipson Theaters

the Manager of Buffalo Place...“Having Emerging Cinemas’ titles as part of the mix at MAFAC has added a new dimension to our programming, en-abling us to serve an audience of film enthusiasts who would otherwise have had to read about these films in nation-al publications without ever having the chance to see them on the big screen.” - W. Morgan Smith, Manager, Buffalo Place

...and the local media“As Emerging Cinemas spreads across the country, theaters everywhere will have the opportunity to avoid the high costs of transportation and have un-precedented access to international and independent films.” -The Spectrum, Buffalo

Issue #2 Summer 2006

Our new “Affiliate Venue” program has added to our rapid expansion. By link-ing independent art houses, commer-cial multiplexes and cultural centers to the Emerging Cinemas network, a wid-er range of venues gains access to the specialty films they want to bring to their communities in a timely and cost effective way (see page 4 for our updated venue partner list). If you know of a venue that might be interested in joining the net-work, contact us at our New York office.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 2006 LatinBeat celebration of new Latin American cinema returns in September. We’re midway through the monthly In-dieWIRE: Undiscovered Gems series, sponsored by the New York Times and the Sundance Channel. New PBS events for the fall will once again team Emerg-ing with leading public broadcasters and prestigious cultural centers to present previews of upcoming broadcasts in high definition on the big screen.

America’s fascination with theatrically pre-sented documentary film continues unabated. The diversity of stories, characters, and loca-tions is limitless. Such acclaimed nonfiction features as Why We Fight, Sketches of Frank Gehry and Who Killed the Electric Car? were all made available, digitally, by Emerging Cin-emas to communities that otherwise would have missed the opportunity to see them on a big screen.

To best access the next wave of hot docu-mentary films, Emerging partnered for the third consecutive year with the internation-ally renowned Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. During the same time frame that the flagship festival took place in Durham, NC, 11 U.S. cities, each with an Emerging Cinemas venue, presented their own schedule of films drawn from the competitive feature section of the festival.

And when it was all over, The Refugee All-Stars, a highly acclaimed, music driven film about the plight of African refugees dream-ing of a pop music career while living in re-settlement camps, was awarded The Full Frame-Emerging Pictures Special Audience Award. California-based filmmakers Zach Niles and Banker White received a new JVC GY-HD100U HDV camcorder, graciously pro-vided by JVC America. We look forward to seeing their next film in the coming year.

Documentaries provide more than just onscreen entertainment. Emerging encourages and supports its venues to use such screenings to engage local community interest in the films’ subject matter and its effects upon their lives. By way of example, during this year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Emerging worked with media activist consultants Active Voice to arrange and host post-screening conversations about Anne Makepeace’s award-winning Rain in a Dry Land, a moving portrait of Somali refugees who have been resettled across America. Venues in Buffalo, NY, Lincoln, NE, and Tucson, AZ, each with large Somali refugee communities, hosted post-screening conversations that included members of the refugee community and local support groups.

WINNER of the Full Frame/Emerging Pictures Audience Award, Refugee All-Stars, a film by Zach Niles & Banker White

Community Outreach

Refugee All-Stars filmmakers, Zach Niles, Banker White and Chris Velan with Liberian refugees in Guinea

Rain In a Dry Land director, Anne Makepeace, with Somali refugees after a post-screening discussion at the 2006 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

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Docs Across America

China Blue,a film by Micha Peled

El Inmigrante (The Immigrant),a film by John Sheedy, David Eckenrode and John Eckenrode

Page 2 Summer 2006

Docs Across America

“indieWIRE: Undiscovered Gems” is an eight-month series of films based on indieWIRE’s annual list of the top 15 films from major festivals around the world that have yet to find a theatrical distributor. Emerging Pictures and The New York Times are presenting the series across the country in association with the California Film Institute, where the idea for such a program originated.

The series kicked off in late April with Jem Cohen’s acclaimed feature Chain, followed in May by The Puffy Chair, a film directed by brothers Jay and Mark Duplass that was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards. The June film was Four Eyed Monsters, recipient of the Special Audience Award at 2005’s SXSW Film Festival, written, directed, produced and acted in by Arin Crumley and Susan Buice. Upcoming titles include Georgia Lee’s Tribeca Film Festival award winner, Red Doors, and Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation.

The series will conclude in December, with the presentation of the Sundance Channel Audience Award, which will have been voted on by audiences in all the participating venues across the country. The prize is $50,000 toward a theatrical release in 2007 through Emerging, and an additional $50,000 license fee for broadcast on the Sundance Channel. The award will be announced at ceremonies taking place simultaneously in New York City and at the California Film Institute’s Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, California.

Four Eyed Monsters filmmakers Arin Crumley and Susan Buice at their sold out New York premiere.

The Search for Undiscovered Gems continues...Emerging Teams Up with indieWIRE,

The New York Times and Sundance Channel

Four Eyed Monsters, a film by Arin Crumley & Susan Buice

The Puffy Chair,a film by Jay & Mark Duplass

Red Doors,a film by Georgia Lee

Chain, a film by Jem Cohen

Prospective venues are being considered for the 2007 edition of Full Frame and indieWIRE: Undiscovered Gems. If you would like to participate in this upcoming festival, contact us at [email protected]

“Having national exposure to our film through the indieWIRE showcase was awesome...it’s a sneak peak into the future at how films will be curated and presented to audiences using digital delivery and simultaneously being in multiple cities. And our percentage of the box office was the most money we’ve made to date.” -Arin Crumley & Susan Buice

Monsters in the Village

Page 3Summer 2006

Page 4

Digital cinema systems have three main components- projectors, digital cinema servers, and a specifically designed Theater Management Software (TMS) program. Screens and audio are basically the same as in traditional cinemas.

Emerging prefers 3-chip DLP-based projectors. They provide, hands down, the best price/performance value of any projector we’ve tested, combining a beautiful theatrical quality picture with tremendous dependability.

Emerging’s servers and its TMS, called KinoCast, are supplied by Emerging’s joint venture with Brazil’s RAIN Networks, one of the world’s leading builders and operators

of digital cinema networks. The joint venture, RAIN U.S., led by Glen DaSilva and Josh Banton, is based at Emerging’s New York offices. Digital tie lines connect each venue to the network, allowing for file delivery and technical support via a simple web-based interface.

Glen DaSilva manages operations and marketing efforts for Rain U.S. in New York. He coordinates theatre installations and connectivity to the digital cinema network. A Drexel Uni-versity graduate, Glen spent 10 years in various roles at major technology companies and internet start-ups. He joined Rain in January 2006.

Josh Banton is the Technical Coor-dinator for Rain U.S., handling the encoding of the films and playback integrity. With a film and video post-production background, he joined Rain in September 2005. Glen and Josh also are available to evaluate the existing equipment in venues in order to assess how appro-priate it is for the Emerging Cinemas network. When a venue joins the net-work, they arrange for the connectiv-ity to our HQ, handle all installation is-sues, train the staff in its use and are available to maximize the value and usage of the system.

RAIN U.S. Combines Technology with Expertise Meet the RAINmakers

Current locations:Avalon Theatre, Washington DCCinema Village, New York NYCinema Paradiso, Fort Lauderdale FLCircle Cinema, Tulsa OKEndless Mountains Theatre, Scranton PAGalaxy Cinema, Cary NCImperial Theatre, Augusta GAIsland Theatre, Martha’s Vineyard MA

Loft Cinema, Tucson AZMarket Arcade Film & Arts Centre, Buffalo NYMary Riepma Ross Media Center, Lincoln NEMemphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis TNNoble Theatre, Oklahoma City OKSan Rafael Film Center, San Rafael CAStage West at the Duncan Theatre, Lake Worth FLTheatre N at Nemours, Wilmington DE

Nationwide Emerging Cinemas Network

Above: Full projector and digital cinema server set-upBelow: KinoCast interface

Summer 2006

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Page 5

Meet the RAINmakers

Summer 2006

New and Upcoming Releases

Disproving the old adage that documentaries only play to the art film crowd, Emerging’s release of the action-packed film, Bullrider, has started its march across the middle of the country. The film is the story of a full season of the PBR

(Professional Bull Riders)—competing in what is arguably the most dangerous sport on earth. Di-rected by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Josh Aronson, Bullrider takes you deep into this remarkable world as it tells the story of three top bull riders vying for the 2004 World Champion-ship and a million-dollar prize. The film has been booked into theaters to coincide with various ap-pearances of the PBR in cities throughout the country, starting in Denver and Alberquerque and coming to Chicago and other cities in August.

Emerging Launches On-line DVD Store

Theatrical Venues Can Earn Commissions

In a move to maxi-mize revenues for filmmakers and ex-hibitors, Emerging Pictures launched its new on-line DVD store in May. The site is designed to take advantage of the growing data-base that Emerg-ing has assembled of fans of indepen-dent and international films from all over the country, and to reach out directly to the same constituencies that attended the films in their theatrical runs. One unique aspect of the site is an affiliate engine that creates a special link code to participating organiza-tions, enabling them to earn commissions on all the sales they generate. The first film to be launched on the site was Music From the Inside Out, a film that became a sleeper hit when it was released in theaters last year. Among the affiliates who have signed up to help market the DVD are the Philadelphia Orchestra, The Henry Mancini Institute, Detroit Public Television and the Ambler County and Bryn Mawr theaters, which were among many theaters around the country that played the film in its theatri-cal release.

After playing in such prestigious film festivals as Berlin, Toronto and Los Angeles in the last year, Emerging Pic-tures plans to release Shonali Bose’s critically acclaimed film Amu in the first quarter of 2007. Filmed entirely in India, Amu is the story of Kaju, a twenty-one-year-old In-dian-American woman who returns to India to visit her family. Like an approaching thunderstorm, the film gath-ers a potent political charge as Kaju begins to question

her past and realizes how her own privileged life in America was born out of communal violence in India. As she uncovers more and more of the secrets and lies that her family has kept from her, everything about her life is called into question. Amu is Bose’s first feature. Check with your Emerging Pictures reps for availability in your area.

The world premiere of Michael Skolnik and Rebecca Chai-klin’s provocative and emotional documentary, Lockdown, USA, was one of the hits of this year’s Tribeca Film Fes-tival. After several sold-out screenings, additional show times had to be added to accommodate the demand. The film’s high profile was partially due to the newsworthiness of its central figure—the hip hop impresario, Russell Sim-mons. The film tells the story of Simmons’ mobilization of the hip hop community to fight New York State’s draco-nian drug laws, the harshest drug control measures ever passed in a democratic nation. With amazing access, Simmons forces high level politicians to face the facts on camera, with surprising results. The theatrical release of the film will be coming up later this year.

Lockdown becomes Tribeca hit

Bullrider wows them in regional release

Amu to hit theaters early next yearafter successful festival run

William Cheeseman, producer of Bullrider, Michael Gaffney, 1997 PBR World Champion, and RAIN’s Glen DaSilva at the Albuquerque premiere

Other Emerging Pictures releases that are available on the site:

• This Old Cub • Yellow Brick Road • A Tale of Two Pizzas

Page 6 Summer 2006

Page 7Summer 2006

2006 Digital Cinema Presentations

2005 Undiscovered Gems Festival Awful Normal Dear Pillow Hotel House of the Tiger King Liberia: An Uncivil War No Rest for the Brave Speedo

2005 Full Frame Festival Beauty Academy of Kabul Color of Love Education of Shelby Knox Gray Matter How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It) Last Cowboy Life and Times of Frida Kahlo Mana – Beyond Belief Mary Pickford Self-Made Man Yellow Brick Road

2005 Latin Beat Festival Bombón, the Dog The Heart of Jesus Moon of Avellaneda My Best Enemy Odd People Out What Sebastian Dreamt The Immortal

49 Up12 and HoldingAmerican GunBallets RussesBeauty RemainsBridesmaid BubbleCaché (Hidden)CleanCoastlinesCowboy Del AmorC.S.A.: The Confederate States of AmericaDevil’s MinerDown to the BoneElectric ShadowsGo For Zucker!Guys and BallsI Am a Sex AddictIron IslandIsn’t This a TimeLa MoustacheLand of Plenty

Ballad of Jack and Rose Balzac and the Little Chinese SeamstressThe BaxterThe Beat that My Heart Skipped Born Into Brothels Brothers Caterina in the Big CityDarwin’s Nightmare Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room Emmanuel’s GiftForty Shades of BlueFunny Ha HaGoing Shopping Head-On Home of the Brave Ladies in Lavender Lipstick & DynamiteLe Grand Role

La Petite JerusalemL’EnfantLook Both WaysManderlayMarjoeMongolian Ping PongMrs. Palfrey at the ClaremontOur Brand is CrisisRussian DollsSketches of Frank GehrySorry, HatersStolenThe Devil & Daniel JohnstonThe PassengerThe Untold Story of Emmett Louis TillThree TimesTouch the SoundThe War TapesWho Killed the Electric Car?Why We Fight

2006 Undiscovered Gems Festival Chain Four Eyed Monsters Mutual Appreciation Puffy Chair Red Doors Room Romantico 2006 Full Frame Festival Asparagus! (A Stalk-umentary) Beyond Beats and Rhymes Boy in the Bubble China Blue The Immigrant Filthy Gorgeous Rain in a Dry Land Refugee All-Stars SAZ Sacco and Vanzetti Songbirds Sweet Dreams

2005 Digital Cinema PresentationsA League of Ordinary GentlemenMad Hot Ballroom Me & You & Everyone We KnowMondovinoMusic From the Inside OutNine Lives No Direction Home: Bob DylanThe Perfect CrimeSaraband A State of Mind The Search For Wrong-Eyed JesusA Tale of Two Pizzas Torremolinos 73Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise & Fall of Jack Johnson Up for Grabs The War Within Watermarks Wild Parrots of Telegraph HillThe 12 Dogs of Christmas

¡Viva Pedro!

Emerging Pictures has arranged to exhibit Sony Pictures Classics’ festival of films by the Spanish master Pedro Almodovar in its digital cinemas. The festival, entitled “¡Viva Pedro!,” will kick off in September with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and also includes Law of Desire, Flower of My Secret, Live Flesh, All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Bad Education and the rarely seen Matador. The high cost of 35mm prints with English subtitles would normally mean that only a handful of major cities would be able to participate in such a festival. But the collaboration between Sony Classics and Emerging means that smaller cities will have the chance to participate. Sony Pictures Classics has been a regular supplier to Emerging Cinemas since its inception. As one of the most prolific distributors of acclaimed cinema from around the world, Sony is always looking out for new ways to reach audiences in a cost effective way. Other Sony films that will be playing at Emerging Cinemas include Quinceanera and House of Sand.