FOREIGN PARTS

Street date: August 7th

New York, NY – July 11, 2012 - Alive Mind Cinema is proud to announce the DVD release of Foreign Parts (2010), a documentary by Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki that explores the neighborhood of Willets Point in Queens, New York, home to scrap heaps and auto shops that are slated for demolition, which Keith Ulrich in Time Out New York called "Poignant and heartbreaking."

Foreign Parts is scheduled to become available to the general public on DVD on August 7th with a SRP of $29.95. Special features included on this DVD include extra interviews and footage, as well as a stills gallery. It is currently available for prebook.

Foreign Parts was the winner of the Best First Feature Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival, won the Best Film Ethno-Anthropological at Festival dei Popoli, won Best Film at DocsBarcelona, and was an official selection of the New York Film Festival. A.O. Scott in The New York Times praised it as "Rich… discovers a busy, complicated world within the space of a few unlovely city blocks." 

Anthropological in scope, sensuous in detail and emotionally resonant throughout,Foreign Parts is an exemplary social record of Willets Point, an industrial graveyard of scrap heaps and auto shops in Queens, New York, that is scheduled to be demolished and redeveloped. Filled with scrapyards and auto salvage shops, lacking sidewalks or sewage lines, the area seems ripe for urban development. 

But Foreign Parts discovers a strange community where wrecks, refuse and recycling form a thriving commerce. Cars are stripped, sorted and cataloged by brand and part, then resold to an endless parade of drive-thru customers. Joe, the last original resident, rages and rallies through the street like a lost King Lear, trying to contest his imminent eviction. Two lovers, Sara and Luis, struggle for food and safety through the winter while living in an abandoned van. Julia, the homeless queen of the junkyard, exalts in her beatific visions of daily life among the forgotten. 

The film observes and captures the struggle of a contested "eminent domain" neighborhood before its disappearance under the capitalization of New York's urban ecology.

Specializing in documentaries in the areas of enlightened consciousness, secular spirituality and culture, Alive Mind Cinema seeks to provide audiences with intellectually provocative films that deliver the "aha" response of a transformative experience.

Kino Lorber curates high quality, critically-acclaimed films for discerning audiences delivering the classics of yesterday and tomorrow.