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I was a hair away from ordering the new Blu of Maborosi from Japan, but very, very happy to see it here. Will 100% buy this edition instead.

Thanks! I'm not sure they'll have it on the bonus features, but we have a lovely documentary of Makiko Esumi coming back to the village where they shot the second half of Maborosi. And our subtitles are very much improved from our original version.

I had already ordered the Japanese set, so I may have to double dip...

Me, too. May double dip for Maborosi.

Nice covers for both Rocco and Maborosi. Just wondering, will the subtitles be optional on these two releases?

Yes, they are optional

Wonderful. Thank you.

Maborosi looks quite gorgeous in the new Japanese set. I presume Milestone's release will have the same transfer. The only extra on the Japanese disc is Makiko Esumi's return to Wajima (10 years after) -- which is NOT subtitled. Somehow it seems impossible for me to process that this film came out 23 years ago....

> Maborosi looks quite gorgeous in the new Japanese set.

Yes! And the other three discs I received yesterday -- After Life, Distance (my favorite), Nobody Knows -- look spectacular too, at least in relation to the previously released Japanese DVDs. I was a bit surprised, though, how dark After Life seemed on first look. Lots of detail, for sure. And it's been a long while since I've seen it in a theater, but ...

In any case, very happy to have them.

Watch After Life -- and agree it also looks splendid (and the movie is just as perfect as ever -- just like Maborosi).

Maborosi Blu-Ray now available from Milestone (on sale) for $31.96.

Yes! and we ship them out by the next morning.

Very exciting! I just placed my order. I actually just saw a 35mm print of it a few months ago at the UCLA Film and Television Archive (a sold-out screening with Kore-eda in person) and I'm very excited to be able to see it again.

All three volumes of Masterpieces of Polish Cinema are back in stock in VERY limited quantities.

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3

Coupon code MASTERPIECES will save you $50 off the price if you buy all 3.

Edit: Nevermind, seems they've sold out of the first volume again anyway.

STRANGE VICTORY
Directed by Leo Hurwitz Produced by Barney Rosset
World DVD and Blu-ray premiere on August 14, 2018!


“One of the best documentaries of all time. Extraordinary.
Far more radical and harrowing than anything Hollywood could produce.”
— Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“The ideas of the loser is still active in the land of the winner.”

The year was 2017. Charlottesville was just the beginning. Racist attacks against Hispanics, Muslims, Jews and African Americans have increased exponentially since the election of Donald Trump. Americans celebrate the idea of building walls while ICE tears families apart.

The year was 1945. The free world rejoices over the defeat of fascism. But the peace soon chilled, and in the Cold War that followed the United States entered a period of national paranoia and political repression. In response, film producer Barney Rosset and director Leo Hurwitz joined forces to create Strange Victory.
This rarely seen, stylistically bold documentary equals the visual, poetic brilliance of Battleship Potemkin and I am Cuba while delivering an extraordinary cry from the heart to make a better place for our children. Skillfully combining documentary footage of World War II battles, postwar refugees, and the Nuremberg trials with powerful dramatic re-enactments, Hurwitz wove an extraordinary cinematic portrait of postwar American Fascism. How could it be, the film asked, that servicemen returned home from defeating a racist and genocidal enemy found the United States plagued by racism, Jim Crow, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, and xenophobia?

Strange Victory — a cry for equality and justice — was promptly branded “procommunist” and a financial flop. Hurwitz was blacklisted from film and television for more than a decade and Virgil Richardson (a former Tuskegee Airman), who portrayed a black vet in the film, chose to emigrate to Mexico to escape to US racism.

“One of the best documentaries of all time.... The setup of this extraordinary documentary essay (featuring journalistic research, archival footage, and fictional reconstructions) is that of a film noir, but Hurwitz, with his audacious editing and blunt commentary, infuses it with a substance far more radical and harrowing than anything Hollywood could produce. The horrors of a world in which concentration camps functioned untouched are shown to have a pathological parallel in American prejudice—anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, and especially racism in all its forms, from job and housing discrimination to lynching, the victims of which Hurwitz calls ‘the casualties of a war.’ Tracking Hitler’s rise to power, Hurwitz is shocked to find ‘the ideas of the loser still active in the land of the winner.’ The film acts as a kind of collective psychoanalysis; its findings are yet to be worked through.”
— Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Bonus Features:

• 2K restoration of Strange Victory from the original 35mm nitrate fine grain master.
• Leo Hurwitz’s stunning 1964 epilogue to Strange Victory celebrating Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement.
• Leo Hurwitz speaking about Strange Victory, courtesy of Ingela Romare, from her 1992 film, On Time, Art, Love, and Trees: A Meeting with Leo T. Hurwitz.
• Barney Rosset speaking about Strange Victory, courtesy of CUNY TV City Cinematheque and interviewer Jerry Carlson.
Six amazing films from Hurwitz’s years as a member of the Worker’s Film and Photo League and Nykino, Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC:
• National Hunger March 1931
• Bonus March 1932
• Hunger March 1932
• America Today
• World in Review
• Pie in the Sky (starring Elia Kazan)

Rocco and His Brothers @ Beaver. I understand this and Maboroshi are both region-free.

Maborosi DVDBeaver

And Blu-ray.com

Both sites are reporting Milestone's Maborosi release is preseneted as 1080i. I cannot figure out why the world they choose that format. The Bandai Visual release is perfectly 1080p, and there are instances of jagginess introduced in Milestone's transfer.

Why? Why? Why?

Strange Victory is available now direct from Milestone, well in advance of the August 14th release date.

andyli wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2018 2:09 am Both sites are reporting Milestone's Maborosi release is preseneted as 1080i. I cannot figure out why the world they choose that format. The Bandai Visual release is perfectly 1080p, and there are instances of jagginess introduced in Milestone's transfer.

Why? Why? Why?

And holy shit is it expensive.

Milestone is having a sale on their blu-ray titles (ending in September, apparently) that includes an incredible deal on the Shirley Clarke Magic Box for $24.99.

domino harvey wrote: Tue Aug 21, 2018 9:07 pm I Am Cuba has been restored in 4K

I still have the cigar box (and contents) from the DVD release.