FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 23, 2021

CINEMA GUILD ACQUIRES ERNST KAREL AND VERONIKA KUSUMARYATI'S EXPEDITION CONTENT

NEW YORK, NY (March 23, 2021) - Cinema Guild announced today the acquisition of North American distribution rights to Expedition Content by Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati, which premiered in the Forum section at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival and made its U.S. premiere as part of Film at Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real. Cinema Guild will open the film theatrically later this year.

An immersive marvel of sonic ethnography, Expedition Content draws on audio recordings made by recent college graduate and Standard Oil heir Michael Rockefeller as part of the so-called Harvard-Peabody Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea in 1961 to study the indigenous Hubula (also known as Dani) people.

In their nearly imageless film, Karel and Kusumaryati document the strange encounter between the expedition and the Hubula people. The work explores and upends the power dynamics between anthropologist and subject, between image and sound, and calls into question the whole ethnographic project.

“With this film, Ernst and Veronika have created a movie-going experience unlike any other,” said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly. “We’re excited for audiences to engage with the audiovisual medium in a way they never have before.”

The deal was negotiated by Peter Kelly of Cinema Guild with the film’s producers.

Cinema Guild has previously distributed several films for which Karel sculpted the sound, including Leviathan (2012), Manakamana (2013) and Milford Graves Full Mantis (2018), as well as Single Stream (2014), a short film he directed.

Cinema Guild is a premier distributor of world cinema, independent films and documentaries, whose upcoming releases include Jia Zhangke's Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, Hong Sangsoo's The Woman Who Ran and Rodrigo Reyes' 499. Recent releases include Éric Baudelaire's Un Film Dramatique, Lynne Sachs' Film About a Father Who and RaMell Ross's Academy Award-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening.

For press inquiries, please contact us at:

(212) 685-6242 or press at cinemaguild dot com

###