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September 01, 2005
Critical failure: Why for foreign-language pics it’s really hard to get a film to run for more than one week
David Ehrenstein in LA Weekly surveys why foreign-language films are suffering their own slump. Quoting Strand Releasing's Marcus Hu: "This year, I’ve really gone out on a limb to push [Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s] Tropical Malady— I can’t tell you how much I love that movie. It’s my passion in life.” But passion doesn’t always aid the bottom line... “Not on the Lips is something people have asked a lot about,” says Ryan Wernerof Wellspring... “The thing about it, and about Jacques Rivette’s The Story of Marie and Julien, is that there’s an audience for them, but it’s small. I couldn’t get a play date for Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn in [L.A.] except for a couple of days at the Aero theater right before it came out on DVD. None of Tsai’s films have done particularly well at the box office, but they’ve all done well on video. Not on the Lips is arguably more commercial. It’s got Audrey Tautou from Amélie and Lambert Wilson from The Matri. We made a print, and we’re trying to get it out to some theaters. It’s going to run at the Anthology Film Archives in New York in late August or early September. But we did the math, and it didn’t add up to a full theatrical release... The climate with exhibitors is that there are so many films opening that unless you can guarantee you’re going to get major coverage from The New York Times and the L.A. Times, it’s really hard to get a film to run for more than one week.”
Posted by pride at September 1, 2005 03:14 PM
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