On June 26, local time, the famous independent filmmaker Ben Barenholtz died of illness in Prague, Czech Republic, at the age of 83. In his early years as a cinema, he pioneered the midnight screening model; later, as a film distributor and producer, he excavated David Lynch, the Coen brothers and other directors who are now important in the world film industry with his unique taste and keen sense of smell for masterpieces, and can be called a witness to the development and growth of Independent Cinema in New York.
Photo of Ben Barenholtz in his later years
Ben Barenholz was born on October 5, 1935, in a small village called Kupichiv in the Volinian region of Ukraine. With the outbreak of World War II, this small, originally Czech, Pole and Ukrainian mixed places was inevitably embroiled in a big-day strife: through the Nazi purge of Jews, Ukrainian nationalists carried out massacres of foreign races throughout the Volinian region (see the 2016 Polish film Warren for this history), and the last words that Ben Barenholtz's father left to him at the age of seven were "Run". That night, only a dozen of the more than a thousand Jews living in Kupichiv survived, including Ben Barenholtz and his brother. They hid deep in the dense forests on the border between Ukraine and Poland for two years. In 1947, the war ended and the two brothers came to New York as refugees.
In the United States, Ben Barenholtz first attended university, then worked as a worker, also joined the army, and served in West Germany. In 1959, he returned from the army and became an assistant manager at the Raiden Cinema in brooklyn's Bolshevik community. Nine years later, he became the manager of the Elgin Cinema on Manhattan's Ninth Avenue (now known as Joyce Cinema) and transformed it from a first-round theater that only showed new films to an independent theater dedicated to art films and classic old films, showing works by new New York directors such as Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demi, as well as classic works by early film masters such as Buster Keaton and d.w. Griffiths, as well as from Andy Warhol, Kenneth Douglas, and other early film masters. Ange and Jonas Meccas, among others, are inaccessible to commercial theaters.
On December 17, 1970, Barenholtz boldly innovated and arranged a six-month midnight screening of the second feature film el topo for Chilean ghost director Alejandro Jodorowsky, el topo. In this regard, the midnight scene was officially born in the history of cinema. Years later, BarronHoltz recalled: "At that time, industry experts asked me, who would watch a movie in the middle of the night? You must be crazy. But just two years later, midnight movies have taken root in all of America's major cities. ”
Because of Barenholtz's bold innovations, Chilean ghost director Jodorowski's Mole became the first work in history to be screened in a midnight show
The midnight screening of "The Mole" attracted a large number of young New Yorkers to visit the Elgin Cinema, including John Lennon, who had just moved to New York at the time. He is said to have watched "The Mole" three times in a row, and finally persuaded the Beatles' manager, Allen Klein, to buy the rights to the film and let it go through the regular screening channels for more audiences. Barenholtz immediately picked up newcomer director Peter Bogdanovich's debut film Targets to take over and continue the midnight screening at elgin Cinema.
In the years that followed, Barenholtz also screened the controversial American director John Waters' controversial "Pink Flamingos" and the Jamaican reggae film "The Harder They Come" at midnight. These two films either couldn't find a venue to show at the time, or had already been released for a round, but they didn't get the audience's approval. It was at the Elgin Cinema that they gained a new lease of life, establishing the status of today's cult film classics.
Rubberhead poster
At the same time, Barenholtz's film ambitions were no longer limited to running theaters, and in 1972 he established the Libra Film Distribution Company, which introduced works by French directors such as Jean Cocteau, Jean-Pierre Melville, Claude Chabrol, Bertrand Tavernier, etc., and on the other hand, he devoted himself to identifying potential newcomers and distributing works to them. Among them are David Lynch's debut novel eraserhead, the Coen brothers' debut blood simple, and John Sayles' debut novel Return of the Secaucus seven. It can be said that for them, Ben Barenholtz had the grace of knowing.
Blood Labyrinth poster
In 2010, the Hamptons film festival in New York hosted a tribute dinner for Barenholtz, and a number of filmmakers who had been greatly promoted by him came to congratulate him. David Lynch said: "It was Ben who saved my film's life. In order to make me a better finish, he let me live in his house; he saw that I only ate McDonald's, drank only coffee, and gave me money to eat something decent. And Joel Cohen, one of the Cohen brothers, said gratefully: "You are our guide, you have taught us to take our work seriously, so that we can have fun with it." ”
Barton Fink poster
Back in the early 1980s, Barenholtz resold the distribution company and transformed himself into a filmmaker. Among the most famous of his productions are raising arizona and barton fink by the Coen brothers, and Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a dream.
Poster of Requiem for Dreams
In the last years of his life, the old man of Barenholtz was overwhelmed and strong. He completed the transformation again and became a director. In 2007, his debut film, the documentary Music Inn, was released at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
BarronHoltz's directorial debut, Music Inn, looks back at the history of the legendary hard pop band Modern Jazz Quartet
The film took five years to complete and looks back at the history of the modern jazz quartet, a legendary band of hard pop. Wakaliwood: the documentary (2012) is his second directorial work, and this time he travels to the slums of Uganda in Africa to document the efforts of a group of low-end action filmmakers pursuing their cinematic dreams. In 2017, at the age of 80, Barenholtz completed his first feature film, Alina.
Poster for Wakalewood: Ugandan Kung Fu Movie Dreams
In his later years, Barenholtz lived in Prague. He is never married and childless, and in his will, the estate is donated to the local Children's Charitable Foundation.