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For anyone in the DC region, the AFI Silver theater in Silver Spring, MD will be showing Marketa Lazarova this coming Saturday and Sunday (4/30 and 5/1).

It's part of series of 12 Vlacil films being shown there between now and the end of June. The second and final showing of White Dove is tomorrow (Weds. 4/27) and The Devil's Trap is Thursday (4/28). After that, it is essentially one film each weekend until the end of June.

Great news - the digital restoration of Marketa Lazarová is getting its world premiere at this year's Karlovy Vary festival. Presumably a Blu-ray release is on the cards, even if it's only in the Czech Republic?

Now we know that a Blu-Ray release is planned in the Czech Republic for this autumn is there any plans for Second Run to make the jump and upgrade this title? I'm sure we'd all like to know before we import in droves

Actually, for December 2011 in the Czech Rep.

This is inform and review (in Czech lang.) of a new digital transfer of Marketa Lazarová with screenshots in HD
http://www.nostalghia.cz/webs/vlacil/cl ... gimarketa/

Czech BD/DVD in December 2001 (realised by National Film Archive)

Well, damn. That solves the contrast issue...

Good things come to those who wait!

Already discussed last week.

I almost jumped on this, but I must say that for a film of such importance & with such a dramatic history itself, the supplements are disappointing. For starters I would have liked to see Zdenek Liska's complete score...possibly as the soundtrack to a slideshow of stills from the making of and promotion of the film. Since Liska's wife prevented a separate release for the soundtrack, releasing the score with the movie would have been the perfect way to finally make it available. Second, as there is still no English translation of the original book, I would have liked to see an entire feature/short on the book itself & its translation to the screen. And there has to be a making of doc about the extreme to which Vlacil went to film this. No interviews with Vlacil either? I know there's at least one hour long documentary on Zdenek Liska, and the music is so central to the movie that neglecting him in the extras also seems to be short-sighted. Hopefully Criterion will be putting together a 2xdisc blu ray set.

SamLowry wrote:No interviews with Vlacil either?

It does have a Vláčil interview, recorded in 1989. And as you've already mentioned, the rights situation with Zdeněk Liška's music is something of a minefield - so I'd be wary of using pejorative terms like "short sighted": it may simply have been contractually impossible to do anything with the music outside its original context.

I'm a bit late, but does anyone know if there's a reasonably priced bluray out there. The cheapest I could find was about 34 euros incl. p&p.

j99 wrote:I'm a bit late, but does anyone know if there's a reasonably priced bluray out there. The cheapest I could find was about 34 euros incl. p&p.

The Czech Blu-ray is the only Blu-ray edition that I'm aware of. My copy cost considerably less than 34 euros, but admittedly that's because I ordered lots more Czech DVDs/BDs in the same order to keep the postage per item down.

MichaelB wrote:

j99 wrote:I'm a bit late, but does anyone know if there's a reasonably priced bluray out there. The cheapest I could find was about 34 euros incl. p&p.

The Czech Blu-ray is the only Blu-ray edition that I'm aware of. My copy cost considerably less than 34 euros, but admittedly that's because I ordered lots more Czech DVDs/BDs in the same order to keep the postage per item down.

Does it has English subs?

denti alligator wrote:

MichaelB wrote:

j99 wrote:I'm a bit late, but does anyone know if there's a reasonably priced bluray out there. The cheapest I could find was about 34 euros incl. p&p.

The Czech Blu-ray is the only Blu-ray edition that I'm aware of. My copy cost considerably less than 34 euros, but admittedly that's because I ordered lots more Czech DVDs/BDs in the same order to keep the postage per item down.

Does it has English subs?

Yes, both the film and the extras have special features. The booklet is bilingual (Czech + English)

Finally was able to see this, what a movie! Stunning imagery, perfect editing, music that brought you that much closer to the action as if it were guiding you alone on this journey. Must own this music. I could probably go on for another ten or twenty hyperbolic paragraphs about this film, making comparisons to Andre Rublev, talking about how you can almost feel Kozlik's spit and the like but, to be brief my take away from this film was that our lives in this world have no salvation for the innocent. We have choices to be made in deciding how to get by along this journey but, they all in one way or another call for a sacrifice, a compromise. If you don't give in to the demands of the world we live in, someone will inevitably make a choice, usually the harshest, for you.

The Riverside Studios closes its doors in August 2014. To commemorate this great London bastion of independent cinema and the arts, Second Run DVD and Czech Centre London present a very special screening of the great Czech filmmaker František Vláčil’s acknowledged masterpiece - MARKETA LAZAROVÁ. Presented for the first time in the UK from a stunning new 4k restoration of the film, created and supplied by the Czech National Film Archive.

Full details here

Showing Saturday 2 May at 1300 at the Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne.

I wonder if I'm alone in actually preferring the Second Run DVD to the Criterion? it does show more damage at points but to me the very strong contrast just suits the film better than Criterion's more subtle shades of grey for me.

If Bikey is around, I wonder if Second Run has any plans to release the blu ray? Thanks.

I believe SR has said repeatedly that as it would need to be censored due to BBFC cuts they don’t see a reason to do a release on BD when the uncensored Criterion has been on the market for years and years.

Yes, that is indeed the official position. It's legally impossible to release it uncut in the UK without a repeal of the 1937 Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act, and since that clearly isn't going to happen they recommend that you either get hold of the Criterion (Region A) or Czech National Film Archive (region-free) BDs - both are 100% English-friendly, and both are based on the same 4K restoration that they'd have used themselves.

For similar reasons, it's unlikely that we'll get a UK release of Knights of the Teutonic Order, even though there's a restoration available and Polish rightsholders have become more reasonable.

it's best that Second Run put their resources towards the other titles like Holubice or Valley of the Bees that Criterion wouldn't release

ryannichols7 wrote:it's best that Second Run put their resources towards the other titles like Holubice or Valley of the Bees that Criterion wouldn't release

There's also all of his post-Adelheid films that they haven't tackled at all yet, even in the DVD era. Hopefully they're in the pipeline.

Calvin wrote: Mon Jan 02, 2023 11:55 am

ryannichols7 wrote:it's best that Second Run put their resources towards the other titles like Holubice or Valley of the Bees that Criterion wouldn't release

There's also all of his post-Adelheid films that they haven't tackled at all yet, even in the DVD era. Hopefully they're in the pipeline.

Indeed they should. Holubice (The White Dove) is one of them, though. But yes, hopefully, eventually they will release those titles, and The Devil's Trap, too. There are already HDTV versions (that don't look like upscales) of all his sixties films floating around on the web.