“looks for ways to restore magic to the moviegoing experience.”
- Wall Street Journal

Ray Privett (imdb) is Founder and President of Cinema Purgatorio / RCP Media.  He once thought he would be a film critic or academic.  But gradually he realized most editors and academics weren’t interested in the films he wanted to write about, or how he wanted to write about them.  So he started showing, distributing, and writing about films within alternative forums that he either found or created.  Over a decade, he worked as a projectionist, shipping clerk, video label manager, translator, film festival programmer, movie theater programmer and manager, and theatrical booker.  All this work prepared him for his company Cinema Purgatorio, est. 2007, which brings good movies to good theaters, on disc, and on demand.

Cinema Purgatorio’s clients and collaborators have included Björk, the Flaming Lips, Sigur Rós, Lorber Films, Kino International, Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix, Lech Majewski, Victor Varnado, and Daniel Kraus.  The company has set up and / or closed deals with some of the largest film companies and institutions in the world, a few television stations, dozens of libraries, and hundreds of movie theaters, as well as thousands of individuals at events the company set up and staffed and via e-commerce activities.

Before Cinema Purgatorio, Privett worked for several years as Distribution Coordinator of Facets Video in Chicago.  In his era Facets’ exclusive import and distribution output increased exponentially.  At Facets, Privett established and maintained Facets’ ongoing DVD import line with ARTE France (Europe’s leading public television channel and a major source of funding for European audiovisual production).  He also worked on the release of many breakthrough Iranian films from directors Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf (including the first edition of Close Up); several titles from underground filmmaker James Fotopoulos of Chicago; Medea, from director Lars von Trier (after a script by Carl-Th. Dreyer); several projects with Amos Gitai of Israel and France; the first U.S. releases of films directed by Frantisek Vlacil, Otar Iosseliani, Marco Bellocchio, and numerous other independent American, Canadian, European, Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Latin American projects, including from such widely acclaimed European filmmakers as Miklos Jancso, Bela Tarr, Jean-Luc Godard, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Andrei Ujica, Bertrand Tavernier, Victor Erice, Michelangelo Antonioni, Dusan Makavejev, and many many more.

Privett left Facets in mid-2004, when he was hired as Programmer and General Manager of the Pioneer Theater in New York City.  At the Pioneer, he oversaw that theater’s period of most success and influence.  He was a nearly constant presence at the Pioneer, making sure several thousand shows, configured into hundreds of distinct programs, actually went on and then were accounted for, from mid 2004 to early 2008.  In his era, thousands of articles about screenings appeared in the New York Times, Post, Press, Magazine, and Sun, and also the Village Voice, Time Out New York, Gothamist, the Reeler, on Fox News International, and in many, many other outlets.  Dozens of these films were subsequently acquired by such companies as Lionsgate, Kino, Image Entertainment, Koch Lorber, New Yorker, Blue Underground, First Run / Icarus, Magnolia, IFC, the Sundance Channel, Benten Films, and many other companies.  Filmmakers and intellectuals who appeared at the Pioneer in that era included, among hundreds of others, Angelo Badalamenti, Kurt Vonnegut, Michale Boganim, Douglas Buck, Larry Cohen, Larry Fessenden, Lena Dunham, Luis Guzman, Hal Hartley, Aaron Katz, Ti West, John Landis, Ken Vandermark, Malcolm MacDowell, Lech Majewski, Reverend Jen Miller, Bill Plympton, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Andrew W.K., S.T. VanAirsdale, and internet visionaries including Lawrence Lessig, the founders of Blip.tv and Rocketboom.com, and future developers of Kickstarter.com

Privett founded Cinema Purgatorio LLC in late 2007.  In early 2008, he chose to leave the Pioneer, because he thought he could be more effective in film world activity as his own boss under Cinema Purgatorio, and to work on other performing arts related endeavors.  To facilitate some of that work, Cinema Purgatorio installed a collapsible high-definition, 5.1 surround sound cinema that functions as an extension to a stage theater within a former speakeasy and Ukrainian-American Socialist Social club.  Cinema Purgatorio’s first major project was the distribution of the Flaming Lips’ movie Christmas on Mars to hundreds of cities around the world in customized distribution methods.  The company has since worked with Bjork, R.E.M., Larry Fessenden, Darko Lungulov, Cyndi Lauper, and many others, on acquisition, retainer, and revenue-share deals.

Privett is author of Amos Gitai: Exile and Atonement, published in English by Cinema Purgatorio and in French by Editions Cinemaction / Le Septieme Art.  He has published in popular and scholarly journals including Millennium Film Journal, Cineaste, Senses of Cinema, KinoEye / Central Europe Review, The Reeler, International Documentary, Visual Anthropology Review, TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies, DOX: The Magazine of the European Documentary Network, and elsewhere.

Privett has been quoted or cited in outlets including the New York Times, the Guardian, Wired, the Reeler, the Chicago Reader, the Village Voice, AM New York, the New York Post, Variety, the Jewish Week, The Religion and Film Reader (Routledge, 2007), Fangoria, Trafic, the New York Sun, Novoye Russkoye Slovo, Dziennik Zwiazkowy, Nowy Dziennik, Moviemaker Magazine, New City Chicago, the Bergen Record, Twitchfilm.net, Washington Square News, Columbia Spectator, Video Business, indieWIRE, Video Store, and Salon.com.

Quotes about Cinema Purgatorio:

“Cinema Purgatorio has taken Christmas on Mars to places we never thought possible! And we dream big! Thanks for everything!”
– Scott Booker, Manager, the Flaming Lips

“[a] left-field distribution house.”
- Wired Magazine

“Ray is a great, hard worker. He has helped us on a lot of movies, and it’s time for us to team up in public instead of him just slaving away in the dark.”
- Larry Fessenden, Producer and Director, Head of Glass Eye Pix Studio