Curated Streaming Site Le Cinéma Club Announces Robust Relaunch, Anchored by Rare Claire Denis Film
Highly curated, relentlessly knowledgeable, and totally free streaming site Le Cinéma Club is preparing for a robust new relaunch next month, bolstered by its release of Claire Denis’ ultra-rare “Keep It for Yourself.” The platform will relaunch on June 14, with a redesigned site and expanded editorial content, thanks to support from CHANEL.
“It has been exciting and immensely gratifying to see Le Cinéma Club grow, and to work with so many talented filmmakers,” said founder Marie-Louise Khondji in an official statement. “With Le Cinéma Club my wish has always been to create a distinctive, dynamic and contemporary space for cinema online, and to address the need for new avenues of film distribution and promotion in a rapidly shifting media landscape. We’re delighted to bring Le Cinéma Club 2.0 to our global audience, and we couldn’t be more honored or grateful for CHANEL’s support.”
Founded in 2015, Le Cinéma Club aims to “celebrate new talent, rare gems, and important discoveries by providing one film every week for free, and offering a dynamic online cinema space for diverse and original voices.”
Denis’ “long unseen” early film “Keep It for Yourself” will lead off the new programming picks. The film follows “a lovestruck young French woman adrift in New York (the only film Denis ever made in the U.S.), with appearances by Vincent Gallo and Sara Driver, a score by John Lurie, and luminous black and white cinematography courtesy of Agnès Godard.” Le Cinéma Club found the long-thought-lost film and digitized it with the support of Denis, exclusively for the site.
The site has also announced a slew of other streaming premieres and offerings in the following weeks, including a restoration of Chris Marker’s “The Koumiko Mystery,” a new restoration of Yasujiro Ozu’s early “A Straightforward Boy,” Adepero Oduye’s “To Be Free,” and cinematographer Shabier Kirchner’s short “Dadli.”
The new site will also offer a “revamped” editorial section, that will include exclusive photo galleries (starting with archival images from legendary photographer Brigitte Lacombe’s on-set work from Alan J. Pakula’s iconic “All the President’s Men”), selections from the notebooks of late master cinematographer Harris Savides, and interviews with the next generation of filmmakers.
Le Cinéma Club’s curated lists of recommended films will also return, with Denis and Chloë Sevigny joining past contributors including Wes Anderson, Luca Guadagnino, Isabelle Huppert, Bong Joon-ho, Lynne Ramsay, and many others. And that’s not all! The platform is also building a “more robust physical presence,” with theatrical screenings and exciting collaborations planned with some of the world’s most revered venues, including a month-long takeover of the site by the Cinémathèque Française in the fall.
