In a world where ordinary film-lovers are stuck at home for indefinite amounts of time, one organization teams up with distributors to bring you the very best in virtual cinema. When the temperatures drop and the dark days of winter look bleak, cozy up on the couch with the latest new releases in independent and foreign films — or Netflix — and chill to some of the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center’s weekly suggestions.
When you rent one of these films, half the rental fee goes to the WHBPAC.
“Blizzard of Souls,” a Latvian film directed by Dzintars Dreibergs, pays stark witness to the horrors and brutality of World War I as seen through the eyes of an innocent 17-year-old farm boy turned soldier. Though he is underage, and his dad, a former marksman, is overage for the army, they are both conscripted into one of Latvia’s first national battalions. The thrill of training is soon followed by reality, as shells burst around them in the endless mud. The boy grows up on the battlefield, fighting at the side of his father and brother, their lives constantly in jeopardy.
Adapted from the book by Aleksandrs Grins, which was banned in the U.S.S.R., the story was based on Grins’s own war experiences in a Latvian battalion, and the film is the biggest box office success in Latvia in the past 30 years.
Rent “Blizzard of Souls” or buy a pass for the discounted price of $30, which will allow access to four international films (“Blizzard of Souls,” “My Little Sister,” “You Will Die at Twenty” and “True Mothers”). Also available to rent beginning January 15 is “Some Kind of Heaven” and “My Little Sister.”
“Some Kind of Heaven” is a Lance Oppenheim’s documentary that cracks open the manicured façade of The Villages — a massive, self-contained retirement community located in Central Florida. Behind the gates of this utopia lie a small group of Villages residents and one interloper who are unable to find happiness within the community’s prepackaged paradise.
In Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond’s film “My Little Sister,” Switzerland’s official submission to the Academy Awards, Lisa gives up her ambitions as a playwright in Berlin and moves to Switzerland with her husband. When her twin brother, a star actor at Berlin’s Schaubühne theater, falls ill with cancer, Lisa returns to the German capital.
Viewers will receive a reminder email when titles become available. Upcoming titles are: “Some Kind of Heaven” and “My Little Sister” on January 15; “You Will Die at Twenty” and “Atlantis” on January 22; “True Mothers” and “Two of Us” on January 29.
Visit whbpac.org to access films.