criterionforum.org

Crap, I guess I was forgotten in the diffusion list, then !

Is there anything that I might be getting with the 2-disc standalone release of Fanny and Alexander
https://shop.bfi.org.uk/fanny-and-alexa ... u-ray.html
that I am not getting with the discs contained in the Ingmar Bergman Volume 4 set?
https://shop.bfi.org.uk/ingmar-bergman- ... x-set.html
Doesn't seem like it to me at first glance, besides a potentially new essay in the booklet, but wanted to double check thoughts here...

mhofmann wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:20 am Is there anything that I might be getting with the 2-disc standalone release of Fanny and Alexander
https://shop.bfi.org.uk/fanny-and-alexa ... u-ray.html
that I am not getting with the discs contained in the Ingmar Bergman Volume 4 set?
https://shop.bfi.org.uk/ingmar-bergman- ... x-set.html
Doesn't seem like it to me at first glance, besides a potentially new essay in the booklet, but wanted to double check thoughts here...

The only on-disc extra is a trailer for the theatrical cut, which I presume is the same disc in this release.

The BFI discs have been encoded by David Mackenzie and unsurprisingly it looks better than the Criterion but I'll hold on to the latter for the extras.

Has anyone ever had any luck getting in touch with the BFI Shop via their email address?
I had a parcel go missing en route and haven’t gotten a response from them in 2 weeks.

Yes, only once many years ago. They were unresponsive for about a month, but then said they were sorry it was lost and would send another copy. It took some time (maybe another month), but I then received a total of three copies of the disc (surely by accident, and likely including the confirmed “missing” parcel) across a period of a week or two. They remained unresponsive again when I informed them about the mistake and offered to return the extra copies

Ok, thanks. Guess I’ll keep waiting with fingers crossed.

Advance apologies if I've missed this here but the BFI are releasing the Lorenza Marretti Collection in September. Brave but very welcome release from the BFI. She was part of the Free Cinema movement and I had 'Together' from the boxset on my 1950's list. My complete technophobia prevents from providing a link.

alacal2 wrote: Mon Jul 10, 2023 8:17 am My complete technophobia prevents from providing a link.

May I? Lorenza Mazzetti Collection

As the BFI recently had an Ousmane Sembene season, is there any chance I wonder that they (or someone else) will release versions of his films - Emitai, Ceddo, Camp de Thiaroye, Guelwaar, etc. Black Girl, Mandabi, Xala and Moolaade have been reasonably easily available, but some of his films are hard to find.

Others can correct me here but I’m not sure if a Sembene season means anything. After all, BFI didn’t release Mandabi as they don’t have the rights so it depends who owns the rights to the other films and if they were all screened with digital restorations or not. BFI Southbank hold amazing seasons all the time but it doesn’t mean they have the home video rights, decent digital files or the money to release the films.

I hope I’m wrong in this case though truly!

Since Criterion released their own disc of Black Girl in the UK, it wouldn't surprise me if they also have the UK rights to most of Sembene's other films.

Janus is the only company besides Film Forum to be listed as a partner for the BFI tour, so I would imagine that the U.K. rights are with them.

Thanks this would be some box set - I hope someone's on the case somewhere.

I’ve always hoped that the BFI could somehow release Soursweet (1988), which remains one of the only films about the Chinese-British experience. Does anyone know who holds the rights, or if an HD master even exists?

Soursweet would be Film4 wouldn't it?

Ping Pong was recently shown on the Film4 channel.

Wages of Fear 4k coming Feb 5th 2024.

Extras

4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
Audio commentary by film critic Adrian Martin (2017)
Interview with assistant director Michel Romanoff (2005,23 mins)
Interview with Clouzot biographer Marc Godin (2005, 10 mins)
Interview with Professor Lucy Mazdon (2017, 35 mins): an in-depth interview about Henri-Georges Clouzot and The Wages of Fear
The Guardian Lecture: Yves Montand in conversation with Don Allen (1989, 99 mins, audio only): the star discusses his distinguished career
Original theatrical trailer
Other extras TBC
**FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Illustrated booklet featuring writing on the film, original reviews and an appreciation of Clouzot by Paul Ryan

BFI are currently running a sale. Many titles £8 and many boxsets reduced in price. Available for sure at Fopp/HMV, Amazon and perhaps other places.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/london-film-fest ... estoration

Is this likely to get a physical release?

It'd be nice if we could get a UK alternative to the Cohen restorations with more extras and good box art.

Big announcements for April/May!

Naruse's Floating Clouds
Denis' Chocolat
Ozu's I Was Born, But... and There Was a Father
Poliakoff's Hidden City
CFF Bumber Box Vol. 5 (DVD)
...and Billy Connolly's Big Banana Feet

Definitely in for those first three, and the Connolly eventually! Great stuff. Excited for some Naruse finally, and wonder if more Toho will be on the way. The Denis is a huge surprise, didn't think BFI would be interested (love the artwork too). More Ozu is always welcome, but I may not order 'til I've got through their first set (I imagine this is it for now).

rapta wrote: Thu Feb 01, 2024 5:16 pm Big announcements for April/May!

Naruse's Floating Clouds

My god I never thought I’d see the day. I am overjoyed.

I'll recommend Poliakoff's Hidden City as a really interesting curiosity. I saw it on Channel 4 (?) about 30 years ago and liked it a lot, but it's been difficult to see again since - I'm wondering if it might now turn up on Film Four.

Missed from previous posts, but the BFI are also releasing the very good film version of Beautiful Thing soon. I have a soft spot for it since the original play was a trigger for a good friend of mine to realise he was gay and subsequently come out.

Very much seconded on the Poliakoff, and I'm glad that I can finally retire my VHS recording from the last time it was shown on UK television, in 1995! Hidden City is a wonderful and very neglected film (there does not seem to be any trailer for it on YouTube!), but being neglected is rather appropriate for its subject matter about an investigation into a mysterious piece of footage found spliced into government films. It is almost Antonioni-esque in its quest to discover who the person fleetingly seen in the back of a car window is, in the sense that this is the driver for the plot but it is all overwhelmed by the nebulous aesthetics of investigation, and fascination with historical events which have faded into obscurity. Which all combines with the Cold War spy/governmental corruption paranoia that rather characterised UK cinema of the early to mid 1980s (I'm thinking of things like Defence of the Realm or Edge of Darkness), where its easy (and more fun!) to believe that you have uncovered a giant conspiracy rather than find out its all rather mundane, or inexplicable. But just the act of theorising can be its own unique creative process too, that revivifies and revitalises the past and makes it live again in the fabric of the present.

As someone who always wanted to be a librarian or work in some kind of musty archive or giant room filled with arcane knowledge (but have had to content myself with mashing up ideas together on the forum to get my fix instead!), I have always particularly liked Hidden City and Poliakoff's later mini-series Shooting The Past, because those feel the most 'archival' of all! The other big Poliakoff themes would seem to be of impermanence and (like Olivier Assayas) the idea of generations of people that defines a historical period and how inevitably "this too shall pass". But in Poliakoff's case it is about the whispy traces that are left: the fragments of footage; the half-remembered 'feel' of a day with a person, from which nothing will ever feel the same again; taking family hearsay or snippets of reporting about a person and trying to extrapolate their entire lives in a genealogical manner that is always doomed to never re-create the exact person, but instead says more about what the investigator/researcher themselves need to get out of the process. That is also why I think Shooting The Past is key, because in its story about a doomed photographic library and the staff within it weaving tales that may be true or false to the new American buyer uninterested in history and wishing to break up the collection, it beautifully makes that the entire focus of the drama.

And of course inevitably the big shadow hanging around Poliakoff's filmmaking is the Holocaust, but unless I'm missing something major is a subject he has never entirely tackled entirely head on (although this was the closest, from the climax of Shooting the Past). But I would argue perhaps he has never needed to, since despite the historical hangover, his work is often very contemporary, even anti-nostalgic, in attitude. And deals with more intimate disasters, often within family relationships. It wants to take the past and make something new out of it, rather than wallow in nostalgia for nostalgia's sake, if that makes any sense.

From Ben Stoddart on FB:

**Deletion/Sale Notice** The following titles will be deleted later this year so are currently on sale at the BFI Shop (please note that the shop are waiting on more stock of Room at the Top to arrive but they will have it in the next week)

A Kid for Two Farthings - £7.99 http://tinyurl.com/3632w53x
Moulin Rouge - £7.99 http://tinyurl.com/ycykkfv3
Cosh Boy - £7.99 http://tinyurl.com/44bdbx4c
Room at the Top £9.99 http://tinyurl.com/47k4aj35