A few of the Cinema Epoch's have turned up in China, with 2 films per disc, so they are super-cheap. I know I picked up a couple but haven't looked at them.kevyip1 wrote:The Cinema Epoch releases have been discussed here. But only 12 titles have been released so far. Some of us are on the lookout for more from other publishers.
Btw, IVL has released a DVD set of the 6-hour, 8-part documentary on Chinese film history called A Century of Light and Shadow. I'm watching it right now...
There are now 3 series of older Chinese films floating around China.
The one with the crappy subtitles, which contains a lot of silent films.
Another is called A Century of Chinese Films, which have no English on the covers except for the series title. I've checked a few out in shops, and seems half have English subs. When there, the English seems decent, although too formal and with the occasional spelling mistake.
The films I saw were form the mid-50's -- late-60's. Which means mostly war films about glorious comrades banding together to defeat various oppressors. Picture quality is okay, but certainly not restored in any noticable way.
The two films I previewed were Eternal Wave (Yong Bu Xiao Shide Dianbo, 1958) and Naval Battle of 1884 (Jia Wu Feng Yun, 1962), the latter of which had burned in English subs and questionable production values.
The other series -- 100 Years of Chinese Classic Movies -- is rather similar in scope and quality, but I only checked out one film, Go Down Zhang Mountain. Again, the English subs were easily intelligible but translated a bit stiffly and with some random spelling mistakes
Without English on the covers, it's a hassle to find out what is what, as I have to preview the discs just to find out the English titles, which sometimes are translated variously in different editions. (often there are different English titles for Hong Kong and Mainland versions, or Taiwan and Mainland, or just competing Mainland translations).
If I can spot any of these series within The Great Firewall, I'll post links.