With social distancing a top priority in order to slow the spread of COVID-19, movie theaters have closed their doors nationwide. Albuquerque is no exception. But that doesn’t mean you can’t support your local theaters and catch some cool films anyway. Even as we speak, distributors are coming up with ingenious new ideas for getting films in front of appreciative eyeballs.Albuquerque’s locally owned arthouse theater Guild Cinema has hooked up with a number of distributors who are now providing “theatrical at home” screenings. You stream the film in the privacy and safety of your own home on your computer/TV/iPad/etc. and the theater of your choice gets a portion of the rental fee. A total win-win! Writer-director Gary Lundgren’s genial indie comedy Phoenix, Oregon was supposed to open at Guild Cinema on March 20. Now, thanks to distributor Joma Films, it’s opening online and sharing part of its profits with the theater. The indie comedy tells the story of two middle-aged pals who quit their jobs to live out their dreams of restoring an old bowling alley and serving “the world’s greatest pizza.” The film costs a mere $6.50 to watch at home and can be accessed for 48 hours. (Be sure to click “Guild Cinema” on the “Choose Theater to Support” tab—that ensures that a portion of the profits flows back to Albuquerque.)Film Movement is also teaming up with Guild (and various other arthouse theaters across America) to offer a slate of watch-at-home options. There’s the Polish drama Corpus Christi, about a young criminal who experiences a spiritual transformation in jail. Although his record prevents him from applying to the seminary, he has no intention of giving up his dream of becoming a small-town minister. Bertrand Bonello’s atmospheric fantasy Zombi Child spins a split narrative: A man is brought back from the dead to work at a sugar cane plantation in Haiti, and 55 years later, a Haitian teenager at a boarding school in France spills a dangerous family secret to her friends. Yi’nan Diao’s The Wild Goose Lake is a Chinese crime drama about a gangster on the run who sacrifices everything for his family and a woman he meets while on the lam. Film Movement is offering a couple foreign classics as well: Luchino Visconti’s 1976 cynical romance L’Innocente (about an aristocrat with a mistress who becomes enamored with his wife again when he suspects she has been unfaithful) and Bruno Barreto’s 1976 sex comedy Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (in which a Brazilian woman remarries only to find herself pursued by the amorous ghost of her dead husband). These films are all $12 for a three-day streaming rental. To check out any of these films, simply go to the Guild Cinema website (guildcinema.com) and click on the links.
Reel World: Poster Child Poster Child
With the curtains of the Guild Cinema closed and the projector dark, the theater has found its movie poster boxes somewhat underused. Owner Keif Henley has come up with a novel way to fill those empty display cases at 3405 Central Ave. NE—he’s offering them up to any “local graphic artists, weirdo picture makers, wack imagesters and the like.” If you’ve got something you’d like to contribute for temporary display, Henley will be rotating local art in his three outdoor movie poster frames until the theater reopens. All artwork needs to be between 24” wide x 35” tall and 27” wide x 40” tall. The suggested “theme” of the artwork should be “intermission, downtime, back in a few, etc.” Contact the theater at info@guildcinema for more info.
