Arthouse Films Takes Fiennes’ Doc “Grass Will Grow” For USA
Arthouse Films and New Video have announced that they have acquired all US rights to Sophie Fiennes’ feature length documentary film “Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow.” Focusing about German artist Anselm Kiefer, the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.
“Sophie Fiennes has made a beautiful and poetic film about Anselm Kiefer’s complex work,” David Koh of Arthouse Films stated. “We are excited and proud to work with her on the release of her beautiful film.”
“It was my privilege to make a film of the extraordinary world Anselm Kiefer has created,” stated Fiennes. “Arthouse is the perfect home for the film in the USA.”
The deal was negotiated Arthouse’s Koh and Rosa Bosch on behalf of the Producers. An Amoeba Film, Kasander Film, and Sciapode Film Production, the film was produced by Fiennes, Kees Kasander and Emilie Blezat.
The film as described by Arthouse:
“A visual spectacle in and of itself and shot in Cinemascope, ‘Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow’ bears witness to German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer’s alchemical creative processes and renders as a film journey the personal universe he has built at his hill studio estate at La Ribaute in the South of France, a derelict silk factory near Barjac. The film enters into direct contact with the raw materials Kiefer employs to build his paintings and sculptures — lead, concrete, ash, acid, earth, glass and gold and implicitly explores his meditation on the themes of history, including the Holocaust, the process of creation and destruction, concepts of Kabbalah, and the influence of the poems of Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. From 2000 Kiefer began working on a vast series of elaborate installations over 35 hectares of land composed of old industrial buildings and working studios that link to a network of underground tunnels dug out by Kiefer. These run underneath pavilions built to house paintings and installations. There are also caves, woods, an open landscape of concrete towers and a tubular iron tunnel embedded within a crypt which backs onto a 20 meter tiered concrete amphitheatre.”
Arthouse Films plans a Theatrical release early next year followed by a DVD/VOD/Digital Release on its imprint through its first look and output deal with New Video.
