ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL
Inside the (art) house: Santa Fe International Film Festival teams up with Violet Crown for monthly cinema series
The Santa Fe International Film Festival features some of the best independent film from around the world.
The festival screens plenty of movies that come out in the months after the initial festival in October.
SFiFF officials wanted to keep giving film lovers opportunities to see the screened films as they get worldwide release.
The festival has teamed up with Violet Crown Cinema in the Santa Fe Railyards to host a monthly Art House Cinema Series.
Mads Mikkelsen in a scene from “The Promised Land.” The film will open at Violet Crown Cinema in Santa Fe on Feb. 1.
“It was a great opportunity to be promotional with the festival year round,” says Jacques Paisner, SFiFF artistic director. “Our plan is to screen films that have a local interest as well.”
The new series kicked off on Jan. 5, with a sold-out screening of “Anselm” directed by Wim Wenders
Paisner says during the festival, “Anselm” had three sold-out screenings.
The second film in the Art House Cinema Series will be another of SFiFF’s audience favorites: “The Promised Land” directed by Nikolaj Arcel, from Magnolia Pictures.
Nikolaj Arcel, director of “The Promised Land.”
Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
In 18th century Denmark, Captain Ludvig Kahlen, played by Mads Mikkelsen, a proud, ambitious, but impoverished war hero sets out to tame a vast, uninhabitable land on which seemingly nothing can grow.
He seeks to start farming crops, build a colony in the name of the King, and gain a noble title for himself. This beautiful but forbidding area also happens to be under the rule of the merciless Frederik de Schinkel, a preening nobleman who realizes the threat Kahlen represents to his power.
Struggling against the elements and local brigands, Kahlen is joined by a couple who have fled the clutches of the rapacious de Schinkel. As this group of misfits begins to build a small community in this inhospitable place, de Schinkel swears vengeance, and the confrontation between him and Kahlen promises to be as violent and intense as these two men.
The film earned SFiFF’s Audience Choice award for Best Narrative Special Presentation Feature and was the Closing Night Film at the 2023 festival.
The historical drama will open on Feb. 1, at Violet Crown.
“We recently sold our other Violet Crown locations, which has enabled us to focus all our attention on Santa Fe and on doing what we enjoy most, which is seeking out the best art films from around the world to bring to our community,” says Bill Banowsky, owner of Violet Crown, “This new Arthouse Cinema Series is a perfect fit for Violet Crown, and we look forward to working with our friends at SFiFF in bringing even more great independent, documentary, and foreign language films to Santa Fe. We are pleased to get back to our arthouse roots.”
Tickets will be available at santafe.violetcrown.com.
By Adrian Gomez