A Brand New Set Of Films With Sag Harbor Cinema@Home

Sag Harbor Cinema brings audiences a new selection of films — which includes a recently opened feature by New York filmmaker Abel Ferrara; a fascinating documentary about artist Hilma af Klint; and the important restoration of a previously lost classic of Afro-American cinema.

Starting June 26, the films will be accessible 24/7 through the website (sagharborcinema.org). A portion of the proceeds from virtual cinema tickets sales goes to support the Sag Harbor Cinema. Ticket prices may slightly vary according to each distributor’s policy.

“Tommaso,” directed by Abel Ferrara (Italy 2019; 115 mins. in English and Italian with English subtitles)

“Tommaso,” Abel Ferrara’s first dramatic feature since 2014’s “Pasolini” reunites the filmmaker and his frequent collaborator Willem Dafoe. The film tells the story of Tommaso, an American filmmaker living in Rome with his young European wife Nikki (Christina Chiriac) and their 3-year old daughter Dee Dee (Anna Ferrara). A work concerning imagination that is also based in Ferrara’s own reality, Tommaso is portrayed by Dafoe, in a performance that is both transformative and moving and that, in its depth, brings to mind the actor/director relationship between Antonio Banderas and Pedro Almodovar in last year’s “Pain and Glory.”

The couple’s relationship is in turmoil, and Tommaso must come to terms with his wife’s desire to change the rules of their marriage as he manages his artistic temper. There is the world and the world that exists in Tommaso’s imagination. He is a Buddhist with active visions of the passion of the Christ, an ex-addict and alcoholic in active recovery, and still a foreigner in Rome struggling with his ability to communicate. The drama builds from this idea of reality and imagination, and resolves in the discovery of what he and Nikki really want, need from and are capable of giving each other and their family.

“Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint,”directed by Halina Dyrschka (Germany and Austria 2019; 93 mins. in English, German, and Swedish with English Subtitles)

Hilma af Klint was an abstract artist before the term existed. She was a visionary, trailblazing figure who, inspired by spiritualism, modern science, and the riches of the natural world around her, began in 1906 to reel out a series of huge, colorful, sensual, strange works without precedent in painting.

The subject of a recent smash retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, af Klint was for years an all-but-forgotten figure in art historical discourse, before her long-delayed rediscovery. Director Halina Dryschka’s dazzling, course-correcting documentary describes not only the life and craft of af Klint, but also tracks her lost status in the history of abstract art.

“Cane River,” directed by Horace B. Jenkins (USA 1982; 104 mins. in English)

Written, produced, and directed by Emmy Award-winning documentarian, Horace B. Jenkins, and crafted by an entirely African American cast and crew, “Cane River” is a racially-charged love story in Natchitoches Parish, a “free community of color” in Louisiana. A budding, forbidden romance lays bare the tensions between two black communities, both descended from slaves but of disparate opportunity — the light-skinned, property-owning Creoles and the darker-skinned, more disenfranchised families of the area.

This lyrical, visionary film disappeared for decades after Jenkins died suddenly following the film’s completion, robbing generations of a talented, vibrant new voice in African American cinema. Available now for the first time in forty years in a brand-new, state-of-the-art 4k restoration created by IndieCollect in association with the archive of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.