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One of 12 Artists Taking the Lead commissions established by the UK Arts Councils for the Cultural Olympiad in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, internationally acclaimed artist filmmakers, The Quay Brothers, will bring their mysterious, darkly beautiful & ethereal ideas to some of Leeds’ most impressive public spaces.

OverWorlds & UnderWorlds will involve live performance and installations to create a large-scale public event involving music, dance, theatre, film and light. Rivalling the scale, complexity & ambition of a major feature film, it goes on location in the centre of Leeds from 18-20 May 2012 where the event will be staged for free, for one weekend only.

Lead artists working with The Quay Brothers to produce OverWorlds & UnderWorlds:

• Gavin Bryars: Musician & Composer

• Mic Pool: Sound Designer

• Daniel de Andrade: Choreographer

• Gary Clarke: Dancer & Choreographer

• Blake Morrison: Librettist, playwright & writer

• Charlotte Vincent: Dancer & Choreographer

• Douglas Thorpe: Choreographer

The weekend of free public performances and installations, which will be shrouded in secrecy until May 2012, begins on Briggate, a pedestrian street that runs through the heart of the city. It will also involve impressive landmarks and sites around the city centre including the subterranean Dark Arches, a complex of tunnels that spread beneath Leeds Train Station, and bridge the River Aire.

"Through the Weeping Glass: On the Consolations of Life Everlasting (Limbos & Afterbreezes in the Mütter Museum)" is a documentary on the collections of books, instruments, and medical anomalies at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Mütter Museum. This short film, commissioned by the College, is the first made by the internationally recognized Quay Brothers in the United States. The coupling of the Quay Brothers’ vision with the collections of the Mütter Museum and the College’s Historical Medical Library has produced a riveting experience of contemplative set pieces in which the Quays find poetry in the ill-fated, true-life stories of the “ossified man” Harry Eastlack and famed Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker. Adding to the film’s visual strength is a powerful musical score by composer Timothy Nelson and a resonant voice-over by Derek Jacobi.

DVD EDITION • 2012 • 31 minutes • black & white and color • Dolby sound • aspect ratio 16:9 The disc also includes the documentary “Behind the Scenes with the Quay Brothers” and the complete original music, from which the soundtrack was composed, as mp3 downloadable audio files.

NTSC Format.

Drawingoflamporstick wrote:I wish these guys would let someone know when they release new work. It's interesting that this short along with Maska have narration. I feel that the shift from the Brothers Quay to the Quay Brothers somehow reflects this.

MichaelB wrote:There's no shift - they've alternated throughout their career. For instance, Street of Crocodiles (1986) is credited to the Quay Brothers.

Narration isn't new either, but this has been muddied by the brothers' refusal to sanction most of their pre-1984 works being distributed.

MichaelB wrote:

Drawingoflamporstick wrote:I wish these guys would let someone know when they release new work. It's interesting that this short along with Maska have narration. I feel that the shift from the Brothers Quay to the Quay Brothers somehow reflects this.

There's no shift - they've alternated throughout their career. For instance, Street of Crocodiles (1986) is credited to the Quay Brothers.

Still love to see Ghelderode and Punch and Judy, which I've never seen...the really early stuff is apparently lost forever, AFAIR "a flood" destroyed Der Loop de Loop, Il Duetto and Palais en Flammes.

The really early stuff is indeed lost forever - it was on a single reel which fell victim to a basement flood. Ghelderode and Punch and Judy are still distributed by the Arts Council, as far as I'm aware - I've never seen them myself, and one of the Quays told me that he thought that Ghelderode was their worst film by far, but they should still be viewable with a bit of effort.

merzbau wrote:Second, does anyone know if Maska has home video distribution in any territory? I saw a brief mention of a R2 DVD on someone's blog a few months ago, but haven't been able to confirm this anywhere.

MichaelB wrote:For those who are Region B-locked, the Quays' regular producer Keith Griffiths has just confirmed that there'll be a BFI edition at some point in 2016. No surprise at all, of course - most of the contents of the Zeitgeist disc came from them - but it's good to know for sure.

MichaelB wrote:I would assume specs would be broadly similar to the Zeitgeist set, given that Zeitgeist drew heavily on the BFI's own materials. And they're more than welcome to use my updated Quay Brothers Dictionary - in fact, I might drop them a line to make sure that they're aware that it's been expanded from the original 2006 version.

MichaelB wrote:I'm very happy to confirm that the producer has a copy of the longest version of the Quay Brothers Dictionary, very substantially expanded from the original 2006 version in 2010 and 2015, although the 2010 version was published exclusively in Polish and the 2015 version (accompanying the Zeitgeist release) was substantially cut to remove anything not deemed relevant to the contents of the disc - which, sadly, included some of the more eccentric (and Quay-suggested) entries.

I have no control over how much the BFI will reproduce, of course, but I understand they'll try their best to squeeze it all in.

This comprehensive two-disc set provides an overview of the Quays' career, containing twenty-four of their short films - three UK premieres and five world premieres - and also includes Christopher Nolan's new short documentary, Quay (2015), revealing the inner workings of the brothers studio.

The Films:

Nocturna Artificialia (1979)
The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer (1984)
This Unnameable Little Broom (1985)
Street of Crocodiles (1986)
Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1988)
Stille Nacht I: Dramolet (1988)
Ex-Voto (1989)
The Comb (1990)
Anamorphosis (1991)
The Calligrapher (Parts I, II, III) (1991)
Stille Nacht II: Are We Still Married? (1992)
Stille Nacht III: Tales from Vienna Woods (1993)
Stille Nacht IV: Can't Go Wrong Without You (1994)
In Absentia (2000)
The Phantom Museum (2003)
Songs for Dead Children (2003)
Eurydice, She So Beloved (2007)
Alice in Not so Wonderland (2007)
Kinoteka Ident (2008)
Inventorium of Traces (2009)
Wonderwood for Comme des Garçons (2010)
Maska (2010)
Through the Weeping Glass (2011)
Unmistaken Hands: Ex Voto F.H. (2013)

Special features

Newly remastered presentations
Introduction by the Quay Brothers (2006, 20 mins)
Quay (2015, 8 mins): a film by Christopher Nolan
Quay Brothers audio commentaries for This Unnameable Little Broom, Street of Crocodiles, Stille Nacht l, Stille Nacht ll, Stille Nacht lll and In Absentia
The Falls (excerpt) (1980, 5 mins)
BFI Distribution ident (1991, 30 secs)
The Summit (1995, 12 mins)
No Bones About It! Quay Brothers (2010, 12 mins)
Behind the Scenes with the Quay Brothers (2013, 31 mins)
Unmistaken Hands: Ex Voto F.H. trailer (2 mins)
Extensive booklet containing Michael Brooke's 'A Quays Dictionary' (updated) and the 2013 dialogue 'On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets'

UK | 1979-2013 | colour, and black and white | English language | 305 minutes | Various original aspect ratios | BD50 x 2 | 1080p | 24fps | PCM audio (48kHz/24-bit) | Cert 12 | Region B