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It is a shame that Sembene is confined to a footnote of most university film courses and international distribution of his films remains dire. It would really take a giant like Criterion to be able to lift him from relative obscurity though I'd love to see MoC have a crack at a box if they could afford it. It's only 13 years til his centenary, maybe something will happen then

Our interest is very strong but it boils down to finding materials and glorious new HD scans being created -- which is incredibly costly. <---- this applies to thousands of other films as well. So it's very frustrating really. So much needs doing.

I've been meaning to ask for some time, Nick, if Eureka would consider hiring more staff for MoC and perhaps even invest into restoration tools the likes of Criterion own so that MoC could carry out their own work rather than having to rely on the Murnau stiftung etc to produce the masters? I imagine that having at least more staff would make it easier for you to put out more titles. It's astonishing how much you are able to put out with the tiny number of staff you have at hand but it's tempting to think what if MoC were able to expand further still?

^or exactly how many more MOC's do I need to buy so you can accomplish that?

^and where should I send my c.v.?

It's not really the time to be expanding. We're lucky that our sales are flat, when everyone else's seem to be down.

We're currently running at full capacity in a difficult market. We often initiate the creation of an HD master where there's no appetite to do so and this almost always takes place in the country where the master materials are held. It's more cost-effective for us to partner with the licensor in such instances.

If we did absolutely everything ourselves we'd manage about 2 titles a year with our current fulltime MoC staff of 3 - if we were lucky - which in turn would render the whole thing unworkable.

We really need to leverage more sales to be able to do anything else. I think we're capable of selling three times what we currently do.

Sort of further to this, and I'd understand if Nick didn't want to comment one way or the other, but I'd love to know how the City Girl Blu-only experiment turned out from MoC's perspective, if it's not too soon to tell. I'm assuming the release met expectations, since there doesn't seem to have been any panicky about-face.

It's selling the amount we were expecting. We know we could have shifted some DVDs too, but we spent time making other things instead of making a DVD edition, so we think that time was better spent and it avoids all this transitional bollocks/confusion of making two formats of the same edition or creating dual format editions, which is pretty much the same amount of work.

We've had a number of pretty knuckle-headed emails from people who don't understand the technology, but we expected them. We've had more emails expressing a massive love for Blu-ray and what we're doing. A surprising number of people don't like the waste involved with dual format editions.

I hate dual-formats too, triple-formats with a digital copy are even worse.

peerpee wrote:A surprising number of people don't like the waste involved with dual format editions.

Haven't I told you in the BFI Ozu thread?!? :-k

Still keeping fingers crossed for Antonioni's LE AMICHE from MoC in the new resto, Blu even!...

ellipsis7 wrote:Still keeping fingers crossed for Antonioni's LE AMICHE from MoC in the new resto, Blu even!...

Would be a blind pre-order for me.

So there's no chance of a city girl SD coming from MOC at all?

and no chance of a VHS edition either!

What about spreading the film out over a set of 1350 Floppies?

This should actually belong in the Eureka thread but how about releasing the Lone Wolf set in 1080p? I'd buy it all over again. And belated congratulations on the City Girl Blu - my lovely other half and I got our modified Sony BR player last night and sampled a few discs: while Days of Heaven and Monsters Inc looked stunning in their own right, the City Girl disc looked so unbeliveably good for the film's age that I was literally speechless.

We need City Girl on VCD ffs...

domino harvey wrote:What about spreading the film out over a set of 1350 Floppies?

Best post of the week.

Mr Finch wrote:This should actually belong in the Eureka thread but how about releasing the Lone Wolf set in 1080p? I'd buy it all over again. And belated congratulations on the City Girl Blu - my lovely other half and I got our modified Sony BR player last night and sampled a few discs: while Days of Heaven and Monsters Inc looked stunning in their own right, the City Girl disc looked so unbeliveably good for the film's age that I was literally speechless.

Toho won't allow the release of anything on Blu-ray unless they have already, and six months have passed. We've mentioned this to them numerous times over the last few years but it seems that 'corporate policy' is not something to reason with. It's unfortunate.

NilbogSavant wrote:

Debaser wrote:Hey,
Slightly random, but I was wondering if there was a chance of any Frederick Wiseman docs being released by MoC? Or is it impossible to obtain the rights? They don't seem to be available anywhere.

http://www.zipporah.com/films" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I noticed quite a few of the Wiseman DVDs at BFI shop yesterday.

At 25£ a pop they are quite expensive, don't you think?

Some are £22, but yes it does seem a tad expensive. Imports are always slightly overpriced at the BFI. I noticed quite a few of the PWA DVDs there, they were all £20 and up, I got all mine for under £10.

The wiseman discs do have quite expensive overseas postage though, so it kind of evens out.

In one of the DVDs I received from the Eureka sale today there was an old Masters of Cinema catalogue from 2006/2007. In it there are listings for Die Nibelungen, which we know is still ongoing and has been delayed due to the restoration, and The Blue Angel with an expected release date of 2007. My question is what happened or is happening to The Blue Angel release? Waiting for the old Eureka release to sell out? Waiting for a Blu-ray suitable transfer? Or just don't have any interest in releasing it in the MoC series anymore?

It was going to be brought into the MoC line (as a DVD) in 2007 after DER LETZTE MANN also made the transition but we got busy with more demanding projects that weren't just simple ports. Then Blu-ray happened. We'd love to bring this out on Blu-ray but nothing's on the cards right now. Hence the impasse.

peerpee wrote:It was going to be brought into the MoC line (as a DVD) in 2007 after DER LETZTE MANN also made the transition but we got busy with more demanding projects that weren't just simple ports. Then Blu-ray happened. We'd love to bring this out on Blu-ray but nothing's on the cards right now. Hence the impasse.

Cool. I'd love to see it on Blu eventually. Thanks for the response.