Chris Smith’s critically acclaimed and incendiary documentary COLLAPSE will reach audiences a record two months after debuting without a distributor at the 2009 Toronto Intern ational Film Festival (TIFF). A unique deal with FilmBuff and Vitagraph Films was announced today. Vitagraph Films, LLC will handle the film’s theatrical release and FilmBuff will launch the film on VOD simultaneously to its theatrical run. Vitagraph will open the film at New York ’s Angelika Theater and FilmBuff will premiere the film on cable providers nationwide on November 6th. The film will also rollout theatrically into other markets while also being available on FilmBuff. The VOD/theatrical release of the film has also been endorsed by Landmark theatres, who have agreed to play the film day and date on December 4th, in both the Bay Area (San Francisco and Berkeley ) and in San Diego .This is the first time a film will be released this soon after it premiered at a festival without distribution.
Smith has shown an affinity for outsiders in films like American Movie and The Yes Men. In COLLAPSE, Smith departs stylistically from his past documentaries by interviewing his subject Michael Ruppert in a format that recalls the work of Errol Morris and Spalding Gray. Ruppert, a former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter, predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter at a time when most Wall Street and Washington analysts were still in denial. A character study of the apocalyptic imagination, COLLAPSE is a portrait of a man who believes with total conviction that industrial civilization is on the verge of collapse.
COLLAPSE elicited a powerful response from press at TIFF including: Time Out NY (“Riveting!”), Hammer to Nail (“Terrifying!”), Variety (“An intellectual horror that ranks as an essential work.”), The Onion (“Grade: A! I for one left the theatre shaken.”), Entertainment Weekly (“You may want to dispute him, but more than that you’ll want to hear him, because what he says – right or wrong, prophecy or paranoia – takes up residence in your mind.”), Movie City News (“The most important film I saw at Toronto this year.”), and Hollywood Elsewhere (““A pulverizing film. Everyone needs to see it.”).
