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"Motherland” documents the emotional and physical journey of six women who lost sons, daughters or siblings, and are sent on a 17-day mission to South Africa to care for disadvantaged. This is about people who are nearly guaranteed to never recover from their tragedies, but are given an unusual chance to offer motherly love for others when their own loved ones are taken from them.

Jennifer Steinman’s documentary has a built-in emotional pull — having a child die is that most feared of personal tragedies for parents, and all the women in "Motherland” detail the stories that have defined and shaped every day afterward. Three died in traffic accidents, two were murdered and one committed suicide, and their mothers and siblings were all emotionally incapacitated by their losses.

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Moving Documentary Chronicles Humanitarian Mission of Women Bonded by Grief

Mary Helena, Anne, Kathy, Debbi, Barbara and Lauren have little in common other than having each experienced the sudden, unexpected death of a family member. Anne's teenaged daughter Grace slit her own wrists on New Year's Day during their vacation in Florida. Debbi, Barbara and Kathy's young adult sons all died in automobile accidents, while Mary Helena's son and Lauren's brother, both black, were shot in the head.

Mary Helena's grief was compounded by the fact that her boy Aaron had predicted at the age of 13 that he would be dead within two years because living was so dangerous for him as a black male in America. She was subsequently so devastated by the loss that she suffered a stroke less than a year later that left her almost mute and walking with a limp.

What brought these six females from such different backgrounds together was an opportunity to heal afforded by a humanitarian mission to minister to unfortunate folks mired in extreme poverty. So, they travel from the U.S. to the remote City of Oudtshoorn, South Africa to do volunteer work for 17 days with a charity headed by Cheryl Nortje, who is herself a bereaved mom.

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Were it shaped differently, Motherland could have been a story of minor schadenfreude, or even cliché, in which those who’ve lost loved ones suddenly find comfort in what fortunate lives they’ve got remaining, next to those who’ve lost loved ones and have little in the way of material comfort. Instead, it finds unexpected love in the period after loss, but acknowledges that grief never completely disappears.

The subjects include six American women, mostly based in California, who’ve all lost a child (or, in the case of Oakland’s Lauren, a brother) aged into the teens or twenties. Some were lost to car accidents, others to bullets fired; perhaps the most difficult image is that described by San Francisco mother (and Motherland co-producer) Anne Magill, who’d found her daughter, Grace, face-down in bed after slitting her wrists and stabbing her own neck after a New Year’s Eve party.

When these women wind up in Oudtshoorn, South Africa, hosted by a mother who’d lost her own daughter and raised her granddaughter as her own, they are given the task of helping impoverished children get through their own grief over parents suffering from or lost to HIV and AIDS. In turn, the shifted focus is to help them discuss their own children and assist them in their own grieving process.

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In an early scene of “Bliss,” the glowering stepmother of Meryem, a teenage rape victim in eastern Anatolia, gives the girl a rope with which to hang herself for bringing dishonor to her family, and you prepare to endure a Turkish variation of “The Stoning of Soraya M.” That recent harrowing film, based on a true incident, depicted the public execution of a young Iranian woman falsely accused of adultery, with the graphic ferocity of B-movie torture porn.

“Bliss,” fortunately, is not a one-note exposé created to shock, although its vision of a misogynistic patriarchy is almost as repellent. Adapted from Zulfu Livaneli’s 2002 novel, it observes the collision of two cultures, one ancient, the other modern, in contemporary Turkey. Directed and produced by Abdullah Oguz, “Bliss” has ravishing cinematography by Mirsad Herovic and a mystical score by Mr. Livaneli that match the novel’s feverish, poetic language. The natural beauty of the waters around Istanbul is breathtaking. And once the story moves from the Anatolian village where Meryem’s unconscious, brutalized body is discovered by a shepherd, the movie’s initially monochromatic palette bursts into brilliant color.

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It is a legal alternative to bootlegging for indie-film lovers -- a cinematic pay site that streams first-run movies that are still in the theaters.

The name: Gigantic Digital Cinema. The innovator: Mark Lipsky of New York City, a former head of distribution and marketing for Miramax, and one of the minds behind the Sarasota Film Festival and the Sarasota French Film Festival.

For those seeking a high-quality, commercial-free experience of watching streaming video of selectively screened films, Lipsky's brainchild may be the perfect ticket.

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Gigantic Digital Cinema is pleased to have been chosen by First Run Features to present the first-run digital premiere of “Bliss,” adapted from the novel by internationally acclaimed author Zülfü Livaneli.

"Bliss"
The most acclaimed Turkish film of the decade – and one of the first narrative films to tackle the highly charged subject of honor killings – is finally coming to the U.S. When 17-year-old Meryem is found disheveled and unconscious by the side of a lake in the Turkish countryside, her family believes the worst - that her chastity has been lost. They turn to the ancient principle of “tore,” a strict moral code that condemns Meryem to death. When she refuses to take her own life, the duty of upholding the family's honor falls upon a distant cousin, Cemal, who has just completed a brutal tour in the military. Cemal reluctantly agrees to take Meryem away – and kill her.

Directed and produced by Abdullah Oguz and set against the backdrop of Turkey's natural wonders, "Bliss" is an unconventional road movie that pits tradition against modernity, urban against rural and East against West, all the while refusing to settle for easy answers.

"Bliss" is a First Run Features release.

To find out where "Bliss" is playing in theaters, look here:

http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/bliss_playdates.html

Fresh from an announcement earlier this year that they would be entering the first-run digital market, Gigantic Digital Cinema has developed a deal with distributor First Run Features to release their award-winning feature “Bliss” online simultaneous with the New York release. The August 7th digital release will initially only be available for those outside the New York metropolitan area and other areas where the film is booked theatrically, to provide exclusivity for the theaters. This block will continue on until at least two weeks after the film’s theatrical run.

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More than anything, this back-and-forth shows what a nasty piece of work Bruce Davis is. How the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences keeps his job as executive director is one of Hollywood's great mysteries. Here's the update to Does AMPAS Screw Indies With Rule 12? with the AMPAS response to Gigantic Releasing's Mark Lipsky (edited to remove address), followed by Lipsky's rejoinder:

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Gigantic Digital Cinema, the new online platform announced last week by New York-based Gigantic Group, has signed a deal with First Run Features for US streaming of its feature Bliss.

The digital release nationwide will be in tandem with First Run’s theatrical opening of Bliss on August 7 at New York’s Cinema Village. Online streaming will be blocked in New York for two weeks after the theatrical run; and other anticipated theatrical markets can also be blocked online. Gigantic will stream films in high quality, commercial free for a ticket price of $2.99.

Abdullah Oguz’s Bliss (Mutluluk) is an unconventional road movie, set in Turkey, tackling the subject of honor killings.

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Indie studio Gigantic Group is launching an online service, Gigantic Digital, bringing first-run independent films to broadband households, starting with the documentary "Motherland" on Aug. 26.

The streaming service -- priced at $2.99 for three days of unlimited viewing -- is aimed at offering indie filmmakers a means of reaching the potential audience for their pics amid limited opportunities to find an adequate theatrical release. It plans to release at least four more titles by the end of the year.

"As things stand now, financial and market pressures on bricks and mortar exhibitors have largely eliminated the possibility of a truly independent film finding its audience or building word of mouth," said Gigantic prexy Mark Lipsky. "Even with rave reviews, films can be off screens so quickly that the audience has no time to find them. Not only can we keep a film on screen indefinitely, but we can dramatically extend their reach into the marketplace and grow the audience in areas of the country that have never been exposed to indie films."

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