Directed by Treva Wurmfeld

What does it take to maintain a friendship over a lifetime?

Shepard & Dark is an intimate look into the lives of two friends who live completely opposite lifestyles, but who nevertheless have sustained a meaningful relationship across over forty years. Winner of the Best Documentary Feature Award at The Woodstock Film Festival and officially selected for the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, Treva Wurmfeld’s Shepard & Dark now opens

March 8, 2013 at The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, Toronto
March 8, 2013 at Pacific Cinematheque, Vancouver
March 15, 2013 at Cinema du Parc, Montreal

Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark met in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and, despite leading very different lives, they remained close friends ever since. Shepard became a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright (Buried Child) and an Academy Award-nominated actor (The Right Stuff), while Dark remained a homebody with a penchant for letter writing, photography, and supporting himself with odd jobs, from dog-catcher to deli worker. Through the decades, they stayed bonded and maintained their friendship by writing to each other. Over the years, they amassed hundreds of letters. Treva Wurmfeld’s film is an intimate exploration of their unusual relationship.

Shepard & Dark offers meditations on friendship, personal growth, and the subtle nuances that create deep connections between people.
We would love for to you to review the film.

Download Press Kit & High-Resolution Images

A review screener of Shepard & Dark can be sent to you upon request.

Additionally, director Treva Wurmfeld is available for interviews.

For further information, please contact:

Jasmine Pauk
Publicist
Films We Like



SHEPARD & DARK (Trailer) from filmswelike on Vimeo.

Tags: Press Release, Bloor Cinema, Pacific Cineamtheque, Cinema du Parc

Are you on another planet? Not yet...

LUNARCY! Teaser #1 from Citizen Jones on Vimeo.

Films We Like is proud to present LUNARCY!, which delighted and astounded critics when it premiered last September at the Toronto International Film Festival. LUNARCY! by young, upcoming Canadian director Simon Ennis has since travelled to film festivals across the universe. This incredible doc rocketed to fame and now lands in Toronto, where it will have its first public theatrical opening on February 8th, 2013 at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema.

Films We Like invites you to review LUNARCY! and encounter a cast of unusual characters you wouldn’t have believed were out there...

Meet former NASA special agent (read: Moon Rock Detective) Joe Gutheinz, noted astrophysicist Dr. Jaymie Matthews, author Matthew Goodman, as well as Moon Society president Peter Kokh, and former Apollo Astronaut Alan Bean. With wry humor and affection, LUNARCY! follows a group of disparate individuals who share one thing in common; they’ve all devoted their lives to the Moon. From the former ventriloquist who has made millions selling Moon lots to the young man who has resolved to depart for Luna (permanently), LUNARCY! is a touching and comic portrait of passion, obsession, and quixotic dreams.

Download Press Kit and High Rez Images!


*Director Simon Ennis is available for interviews.

For additional information, to set up an interview with Simon Ennis, or to request a copy of LUNARCY!, please contact:
Jasmine Pauk
Films We Like 416-971-9131

Tags: Simon Ennis, Press Release, Bloor Cinema

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters Trailer from Benjamin Shapiro on Vimeo.

Films We Like, in proud partnership with the Reel Artists Film Festival, invites you to review the new, visually arresting tribute to celebrated American photographer Gregory Crewdson. A New York Times Critics’ Pick, Ben Shapiro’s Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters will leave you in awe of this artist’s imagination and his ability to capture the underlying drama in everyday American life. The film opens at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema on December 21, 2012.

An acclaimed photographer with the eye of a filmmaker, Gregory Crewdson has created some of the most gorgeously haunting pictures in the history of the medium. His meticulously composed, large-scale images are stunning narratives of small-town American life—moviescapes crystallized into a single frame. While the photographs are staged with crews that rival many feature film productions, Crewdson takes inspiration as much from his own dreams and fantasies as the worlds of Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Edward Hopper and Diane Arbus. Crewdson’s imagery has also infiltrated the pop culture landscape—including his inimitable Six Feet Under ads and Yo La Tengo album art. Shot over a decade with unprecedented access, Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters beautifully bares the artist’s process—and it’s as mesmerizing and riveting as the images themselves.

Download Press Kit & High-Resolution Images

Director Ben Shapiro is available for phone interviews.

Tickets are currently available to December and January screenings of Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema and can be purchased online on via the theatre’s website

Tickets will also be obtainable at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema box office.

For further information or to request the link to Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, please contact:
Jasmine Pauk
Films We Like 416-971-9131

Tags: Bloor Cinema, Press Release, Ben Shapiro

Exploring filmmaking in the Philippines during the Marcos era, when miniature James Bonds, karatekicking soul sisters, snake-loving babes, anorexic Rambos and gun-toting nuns were the rage.

"MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED! might just be the funniest, fastest, most shocking film you'll see all year." -FANTASICFEST

MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED!
MARCH 4-10 @ THE BLOOR

EXTRA ADDED ATTRACTION,
courtesy of THE RIO, Toronto's late great home of 3-BIG-HITS, VINTAGE EXPLOITATION MOVIE POSTER EXHIBIT now on display inside SONIC BOOM, just w/ of The Bloor.


Interviews available with OZ DIRECTOR MARK HARTLEY and interviewees ALLAN ARKUSH, CELESTE YARNALL, MARRIE LEE, ROSANNE KATON (see below).

Contact Gary Topp for Interview Requests!


Director Mark Hartley, wowed audiences in 2008 with NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF OZPLOITATION!,

ALLAN ARKUSH is an Emmy-winning television director who began his career in the New World trailer department editing cheap and cheerful B-movies for an appreciative drive-in audience. Allan worked his way up through the New World ranks to co-direct HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD with Joe Dante and achieved cult immortality when he directed the Ramones in ROCK' N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL. He is currently producing the American cheerleading comedy-drama TV series, HELLCATS.

Boasting a CV full of ultra cool cult TV credits (including THE WILD, WILD WEST, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. and STAR TREK) as well as roles in BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE and LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE, CELESTE YARNALL went from being wooed by both Elvis Presley and Captain Kirk to being terrorised by a paper-mâché-faced monster in BEAST OF BLOOD (1971). Celeste didn't think of this as a career hiccup until she discovered her dressing room in the Philippines was a cave that also doubled as the men's latrine!

Marrie Lee's career began at age 17 when she answered an advert in the paper asking, "Are you smart, sexy and seductive?". She auditioned in a miniskirt and won the title role in Bobby A. Suarez's THEY CALL HER CLEOPATRA WONG. Marrie braved all manner of injuries as she reprised the role in two sequels of decreasing quality and safety conditions (DYNAMITE JOHNSON and THE DEVIL'S ANGELS) before hanging up her karate kicking Go-go boots for good.

Playboy playmate turned exploitation Queen, ROSANNE KATON journeyed to the Philippines to karate kick her way to freedom in a couple of Cirio Santiago adventures, EBONY, IVORY & JADE and THE MUTHERS. Her other genre credits include MOTEL HELL, THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS, and ZAPPED!

From the early-'70s to the mid-'80s, The Philipines was in the grip of a brutal dictatorship and under martial law. Fighting back was forbidden. Chaos was contained. Indecency was punished. There was no sign of revolution. EXCEPT IN THEIR MOVIES!

And during the classic grindhouse era of that same period, independent producers began turning out more and more exploitation features for less and less money. As the cycle wore on, there was a demand from audiences for more variety in settings and situations, and a demand from producers for lower budgets. Since it already had an infrastructure conducive to the making of inexpensive films, the Philippines fit the bill to a T. Labor was cheap, there were skilled technicians and equipment and, possibly best of all, the military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos looked upon the enterprise favorably, contributing everything from tactical assistance to military firepower. One interviewee refers to the Philippines at this time as the "wild east", and that assessment certainly seems apt as we hear story after story of gunfights in hotel lobbies, rats the size of poodles and the most insane, irresponsible stunts imaginable. As shocking and lurid as many of the women-in-prison, jungle action, mad scientist and martial arts movies made in the Philippines were, the back stories may actually surpass the films in their shocking details. But when the films being discussed and shown in Hartley’s trademark montage style are as wildly entertaining as FOR YOUR HEIGHT ONLY, MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND, THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE, THE BIG DOLL HOUSE and TNT JACKSON, it may be a tie.

Tags: Bloor Cinema