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drdoros wrote: Fri Jan 05, 2024 4:33 pm January 2024 Newsletter:

January 12: World theatrical premiere of Nancy Savoca's HOUSEHOLD SAINTS at IFC CENTER, NYC
January 18: World premiere of Martina Savoca Guay's THE MANY MIRACLES OF HOUSEHOLD SAINTS at IFC Center, NYC

I just watched The Many Miracles of Household Saints on TCM, and it's one of the more fascinating behind-the-scenes/making-of documentaries I've seen in a while. It's full of wide-ranging, interesting, and honest interviews about the production and the restoration plus cool little tidbits like screen tests, plus little stories about Savoca's pregnancy during the making of the film (with, I think, the daughter who made this documentary), the importation of regular people from the Bronx to North Carolina to work as extras, the importance of the way scenes of food preparation were shot, and more. It's totally endearing and is going to be a really worthwhile supplement on the eventual disc release (through Milestone's partnership with Criterion, I assume).

EDIT: oops

Household Saints was released on Blu-ray last year by Milestone in partnership with Kino Lorber, at basically the same time KL released her debut True Love and Criterion released Dogfight. The disc includes the documentary.

Would be great if someone would release Nancy Savoca's striking and disturbing If These Walls Could Talk (1996) on Blu Ray. Whilst she only directed the first two segments of the anthology of the film (Cher directed and started in the third) it remains impressive as anything else she has done and sadly even more relevant today than when it was made.

Milestone LOVES Nancy Savoca so the idea was to coordinate all three films to be released at once. Nancy was pregnant with Martina Savoca-Guay during the making of the film. When we saw all the outtakes, interviews, and home movies that were being stored in the archive, we immediately thought of a feature documentary. Nancy and Rich (her husband and producer) suggested Martina. and we produced it. It was a fabulous experience.

As for IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK and her other features, this is why Nancy and Rich started Missing Movies with all of us. They were shocked to find that many of their films were unavailable, and even their materials' location was questionable. (This is all in The Many Miracles of Househould Saints). We did get TCM to screen that film through their connections with HBO, but there are quite a number of others still unavailable, especially their wonderful Spanish-language film DIRT which is being held hostage by Showtime.

PfR73 wrote:Household Saints was released on Blu-ray last year by Milestone in partnership with Kino Lorber, at basically the same time KL released her debut True Love and Criterion released Dogfight. The disc includes the documentary.

The releases all felt coordinated, especially since the interviews found on Dogfight and Household Saints appear to have come from the same session.

When Milestone acquired HOUSEHOLD SAINTS, our friend at Criterion said they were disappointed, but that they really loved Dogfight — so we agreed that would be perfect for them. (Milestone does not work with studios, nor do they seem to want to work with us.) Then we got Kino Lorber to add True Love to their deal with MGM/UA, and it all fit together nicely. And yes, we asked Criterion to "borrow" their set and cameraman for Rich Guay to ask his questions to Nancy and Lili after they were done with their Dogfight interview. It was very nice of them to agree!

Coming to Blu-ray in June from @MilestoneFilms

Made in New Jersey: 14 Films From Fort Lee (1909-1939)

Fort Lee was already a favorite location for New York filmmakers when Mark Dintenfass arrived in 1910 and established Champion as the first of many studios in that sleepy town. Biograph, Éclair, Kalem, Fox and Universal soon followed making Fort Lee and New Jersey the birthplace of the American motion picture industry. Curated by Richard Koszarski, author of Fort Lee, The Film Town and the enclosed 20-page booklet, this special edition 2-disc Blu-ray set gathers 14 wonderful and historically significant films and 2 documentaries from archives around the world. Featuring two restored Biograph chase films by D.W. Griffith (The Curtain Pole and The Cord of Life), the legendary The Vampire (1913), which popularized the character of the “vamp” or “femme fatale,” the earliest surviving film version of Robin Hood, and a new 4K restoration of Edgar G. Ulmer’s Ukrainian operetta Cossacks in Exile (1939) famously shot at Little Flower Monastery in Newton, Made in New Jersey: Films From Fort Lee is a landmark release for cinema history and simply a joy to watch.

Extras
Booklet with essay and film notes by Richard Koszarski

DISC 1: BEFORE HOLLYWOOD
The Curtain Pole (Biograph, 1909)*
The Cord of Life (Biograph, 1909)*
Robin Hood (Éclair, 1912)**
The Indian Land Grab (Champion Studios, 1910)***
A Daughter of Dixie (Champion Studios, 1911)***
Not Like Other Girls (Universal Victor, 1912)***
Flo’s Discipline (Universal Victor, 1912)***
Marked Cards (Universal Champion, 1913)***
The Vampire (Kalem, 1913)****
A Girl of the West (Vitagraph, 1912)***
A Grocery Clerk’s Romance (Keystone, 1912)**
There She Goes (Pathé, 1913)**
The Champion (Documentary about Fort Lee, 2015)

DISC 2 : AFTER HOLLYWOOD
The Danger Game (Goldwyn, 1918)*
Cossacks in Exile (Edgar Ulmer, 1939)
Ghost Town: The Story of Fort Lee (1935)***

*Music Composed and Performed by Donald Sosin
**Music by Rodney Sauer and Performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
***Music Composed and Performed by Ben Model

drdoros wrote: Wed Mar 26, 2025 3:06 pm When Milestone acquired HOUSEHOLD SAINTS, our friend at Criterion said they were disappointed, but that they really loved Dogfight — so we agreed that would be perfect for them. (Milestone does not work with studios, nor do they seem to want to work with us.) Then we got Kino Lorber to add True Love to their deal with MGM/UA, and it all fit together nicely. And yes, we asked Criterion to "borrow" their set and cameraman for Rich Guay to ask his questions to Nancy and Lili after they were done with their Dogfight interview. It was very nice of them to agree!

Apparently just a one-year deal on the Kino as they've already added True Love to their While Supplies Last sale. So head's up for those looking for that.

Looking foward to the Fort Lee flicks.

The Annihilation of Fish BD dated for June 17

NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM
NEW Audio Commentary by Director Charles Burnett moderated by Film Scholar Maya Cade
The Final Insult (1997, directed by Charles Burnett, 55 minutes)
Q&A with Director Charles Burnett moderated by Film Scholar Racquel Gates
Re-Release Trailer
Optional English subtitles for the main feature

Finch wrote: Tue Apr 15, 2025 2:09 pm The Annihilation of Fish BD dated for June 17

NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM
NEW Audio Commentary by Director Charles Burnett moderated by Film Scholar Maya Cade
The Final Insult (1997, directed by Charles Burnett, 55 minutes)
Q&A with Director Charles Burnett moderated by Film Scholar Racquel Gates
Re-Release Trailer
Optional English subtitles for the main feature

I am completely biased, but Charles keeps mentioning THE FINAL INSULT during his discussions of THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH so I naturally added it as a bonus feature. But finding a much better digital version (it was shot on video) of THE FINAL INSULT from Germany and watching it properly gave me such a thrill. It is an amazing discovery.

Great work, I look forward to picking this one up and finally seeing these

Will be curious about your thoughts on The Annihilation of Fish, saw this restoration theatrically a couple months ago and it’s incredibly charming

I've heard pretty mixed things about the film, but James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave sound like a divine pairing.

My thoughts on The Annihilation of Fish are deeply slanted since it took me 19 years to chase the rights (detailed in our press kit), another six months to force the lab to move the materials to UCLA, and then another two years to help restore (with Charles, Film Foundation, UCLA and Hobson/Lucas Foundation) the film. (Our previous record for search to release was 15 years.) Amy and I had seen it only on a bad VHS at home. When we premiered it at the Wexner Center in Ohio, we were amazed how much laughter there was and the huge applause when Poinsettia and Fish finally kissed. It's really an audience film -- we never had one like this before. I'd say 70% of the people who didn't find the film as good, saw it at home on Kanopy. We were convinced in 2002 that the film had real merit and talent, held on to that belief all this time, and thrilled other people have found it as meaningful as we do. Most importantly, Charles is happy, and that counts most to us.

He really is one of the greatest living film artists, I'm so glad he seems to be having a bit of a (second?) renaissance.

To change the subject:

“You’re Either a Storyteller
or a Liar”: Charles
Burnett, in Conversation
With Barry Jenkins
By Barry Jenkins
April 17, 2025

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/ ... VKFnuuwsLg

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/movi ... =url-share

At Milestone Films, Passing the Torch, but Keeping the Flame Alive
The distributor’s owners, Amy Heller and Dennis Doros, made the unusual choice to give it away. Their successor is Maya Cade of the Black Film Archive.
The New York Times
Derrick Bryson Taylor
By Derrick Bryson Taylor
May 6, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
Milestone Films is a small but mighty distribution company dedicated to discovering works that have been lost to history, restoring them and reintroducing them to anyone willing to watch. It has been run out of the New Jersey home of Amy Heller and Dennis Doros for the last 25 years, but now both are preparing to retire.
“One of the things we’ve come to realize is that we are not immortal,” Heller said. As the company’s sole workers, “we are it. It’s the two of us and we want it to continue.”
How to keep it going after they step down is something they’ve been discussing for a decade, and now they’ve hit on a novel solution. They’re giving the company away, to Maya Cade, the noted programmer behind the Black Film Archive.
Heller and Doros said that last summer they had discussed with Cade, who volunteered herself, the idea of simply handing over their company.
“When we met Maya, we just thought, ‘Oh, well, we found her,’” Heller said. “We found the person who we really love and trust and can enthusiastically make this move.”
Heller and Doros started Milestone Films in 1990 in their one-bedroom New York apartment shortly after marrying. Since then, it has grown into an internationally recognized distributor that helps bring lost or little-seen films back to prominence. For the last 18 years, the company has been focused on work by and about directors who are Black, Native Americans, L.G.B.T.Q. or women — artists from segments of the population that are underrepresented in the canon.
Milestone’s best-known titles include the Charles Brunett masterpiece “Killer of Sheep” (1978), a portrait of a working-class Black family in Los Angeles that was rereleased last month in a restored version; Kathleen Collins’s “Losing Ground” (1982), which the Times critic Manohla Dargis praised as a radical rom-com; and Bridgett Davis’s “Naked Acts” (1996), a dramedy about an actress with a dark past who struggles with committing to a nude scene in a film.
“Naked Acts” was brought to Milestone in 2022 by Cade, a former Criterion Collection employee who also works as a film programmer and consultant on Black movies for distribution. Cade started the digital archive, which adds contextual language to Black cinema history, in 2021, following nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd. Her work soon caught the attention of Doros. They began talking weekly, forming a friendship, then a working relationship.
Speaking from her home in Los Angeles last month, Cade, 31 said that this moment of transition had found her in a state of peace.
“When you walk in your purpose, things align,” she said. “I feel very happy that I feel that I’m walking in my purpose and that I am entrusted with the legacy of Black filmmakers and people who are committed to filmmaking as truth. It’s an honor.”
The company Cade will inherit has been profitable almost consistently for the last eight years, Heller and Doros said. But its ownership transition comes amid steady changes in how movies are watched and discussions about canons — what should be included and who makes those choices. Milestone Films, under Cade’s direction, will join a short list of Black-run distributors including Ava DuVernay’s Array Releasing and Mypheduh Films, started by Halie Gerima, Shirikiana Aina and Selome Gerima.
The weight of the moment is not lost on Cade, who sees the changing of the guard at Milestone as an opportunity to make inroads with often overlooked communities and to help filmmakers reach their goals.
“I feel like Black Film Archive raised awareness of filmmakers and Milestone Films gives me the ability to not just have awareness of these filmmakers but protect, preserve, acquire, insure funds are in the hands of filmmakers,” she said.
The transition will take time. There are details to iron out and materials to transfer. Heller and Doros estimate it will take roughly a year to fully hand over the company to Cade, who has been mulling over how to tap into a community-driven distribution model. Studying the success of Tyler Perry, the Hollywood impresario and studio owner whose works once thrived on the secondary market as bootlegs, might be the key, Cade said.
“What does it mean to have aunties and people excited about home video distribution?” she asked. “In modern context, the home video is the closest you can have to owning a film in a specific format. What does it mean to get Black people very excited about that? And what are some ways that Milestone can reach them?”
Around this time in 2026, Cade will be running two companies simultaneously. She knows there will be challenges but is optimistic. In her first year at the helm of Milestone, she plans to release one or two films as she finds her footing.
She will lead with what she describes as “care work,” establishing relationships with Black filmmakers and reinforcing the connections that made Milestone a success.
“Knowing that this is the home of Charles Burnett, Kathleen Collins, that isn’t something that you can simply rebuild,” she said.
Heller and Doros say their work at Milestone has been personal and political. “Working with Maya and seeing her carry this forward, that aligns with our belief system,” Heller said.
They plan to stick around as long as Cade needs them. “With a little luck, we’ll stay on the planet and be available when she has questions,” Heller said. “We hope to be able to have that deep knowledge when she needs it.”
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.

Wow. Sorry to see you both go, but delighted your company will be in great hands!

Thank you for all your work, Dennis, and introducing me to Killer of Sheep and I Am Cuba. Wishing you and Amy all the best for the future!

Dennis and Amy, thank you both for your lifetime of good work!

Having heard Maya Cade speak several times at AMIA, on the Black Film Archive and “Missing Movies”, I couldn’t be happier for your decision.

Coincidentally, I’ll be heading down to LA this weekend to hear Hirokazu Kore-eda speak. He is another filmmaker you enriched my life with by bringing his debut film, Mabarosi, to the US.

Wow, real end to an era. I think I’m understating if anything when I say Milestone has proven one of the most essential homes for cinema opening doors that often seem locked.

Glad to see Milestone will still be going on !
When I started my interest in cinema I learned fast to seek out Milestone titles at my local video store. In addition to the titles mentioned above it's also one of the finest collection of silent films. The silent film canon feel frozen solid sometimes, it's always the same titles discussed. But Miletsone releases shook things up, and I feel some titles are part of the discussion now because of their release.

Thanks for a lifetime of invaluable work and dedication, Dennis and Amy. Wonderful that Milestone will continue on in great hands as well. Enjoy your well-deserved retirement!

So nice to know there are still good people doing good things.