criterionforum.org

Have you tried transferwise.com? I’ve had good luck with them so far, wiring from the USA to several European countries. I’ve just emailed Kinoteka na Makedonija myself - I’d love to check out that set.

It's a bit unfair for Criterion to win through the Olympic Films boxset. I'm unsure it's an impressive effort, but outside the outstandish amount of movies restored, the boxset specifically lacks the acclaimed "insertion in their respective historical contexts". I'm quite certain it wouldn't be hard to find a more thorough Criterion release that feels like it received a more lavish editorial treatment.

Generally speaking though, it's not the first time I find the shortlist and some winners surprising. Take the Potemkine set for instance. Sure, it's a nice set, with all the newest restorations in it and a bunch of extras. But it's 150€ because movies aside, it contains 2 books that add a lot on the price tag and only a little in content. Moreover, the extras are nice, but Criterion has already blown most out of the water. "the most comprehensive presentation of the master’s work" ? I like the set, but I doubt it. It's also very likely the longer Andrei Rublev cut will be rendered technically obsolete by the upcoming Criterion since it's presented in SD in the set but is announced (though the Criterion page doesn't specify it anymore) to be newly scanned in 2K for the Criterion release.

Carlotta and Pathé's selection also are weird. Carlotta isn't doing new stuff with their Lino Brocka set, which basically is a French port of the UK set. Their UCE collection provides way more specific editorial work from the label and would make for much better staples of what they can achieve. La fête à Henriette also feel like a random choice from Pathé, who are doing great stuff for some years but why select one of their lighter releases ?

Same goes for the format selections oddities. Why the Melville set was selected in DVD ? The BD set isn't 100% BD, but it exists, with Leon Morin freshly restored in 4K. Why single out the DVD version instead ?

Bear in mind that, much like the Best Foreign Film Oscar, the shortlist isn’t selected from every video release over the previous year - labels have to proactively put their titles forward for consideration, provide review copies for each juror, etc.

One of the jurors expressed surprise that no Indicator titles had been shortlisted, but that’s because they were never submitted for consideration in the first place - I suspect the team was just too busy with the present run of box sets.

It is indeed something I tend to forget about these more "technical" awards.

VIDA EN SOMBRAS (Spagna, 1948-1953) di Llorenç Llobet Gràcia – Filmoteca de Catalunya/Intermedio (dvd)

Glad to see this getting some love. I ordered it on a whim and it turned out to be a really nice discovery. It does have English subs and the booklet is trilingual. The basic plot of the main feature, Vida en Sombras, follows a guy who is born in a stall during one of the first cinema showings in Barcelona and later after seeing Hitchcock's Rebecca decides to devote his life to the cinema. It's not groundbreaking, but it has a lot of neat visual flourishes and the theme of "life is cinema" is really interesting here.

I ordered my copy from Amazon.es and their shipping was horrendous (the dvd basically came in a plastic bag, and looks pretty beat up, but the discs are at least fine). It was my first time ordering from them and probably the last. So I recommend getting it elsewhere if you can.

EL AUTOMÓVIL GRIS (Messico, 1919) di Enrique Rosas – Cineteca Nacional México (blu-ray)

Contacted Cineteca about this. Fingers crossed they’ll reply. [-o<

News about Ritrovato 2019:
https://notesoncinematograph.blogspot.com/
Scroll down for a two-part list of 100 titles screening in 2019.

I’m excited to leave next week, but I usually just go with the flow.

Thanks for the thread bump! I see that the festival is in the last week of june - in other words the week of my vacation where I haven't made any plans. Might as well book a flight to Bologna, and see if this festival is as exciting as it's reputation suggests.

Forrest Taft wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:18 pm Thanks for the thread bump! I see that the festival is in the last week of june - in other words the week of my vacation where I haven't made any plans. Might as well book a flight to Bologna, and see if this festival is as exciting as it's reputation suggests.

Go for it! It is a great festival. Have you had a look at the program?

Marwood wrote: Thu Jun 13, 2019 10:56 am

Forrest Taft wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:18 pm Thanks for the thread bump! I see that the festival is in the last week of june - in other words the week of my vacation where I haven't made any plans. Might as well book a flight to Bologna, and see if this festival is as exciting as it's reputation suggests.

Go for it! It is a great festival. Have you had a look at the program?

Tickets booked! I haven't found an overview of the entire program, but Stefan Andersson's link a few posts up was useful, as well as the mini-articles on the festival website. Those Felix E. Feist noirs look very exciting. But I guess The Camereman alone makes the entire trip worthwhile \:D/

A bit late but here are the 2019 DVD Awards winners.

JAP wrote: Sat Jul 06, 2019 4:18 pm A bit late but here are the 2019 DVD Awards winners.

I am the guy on the right of the photo
Our BD of Non contate su di noi (Don't Count on Us) won the Peter von Bagh Award.

L.A. wrote: Tue Apr 16, 2019 6:40 pm

EL AUTOMÓVIL GRIS (Messico, 1919) di Enrique Rosas – Cineteca Nacional México (blu-ray)

Contacted Cineteca about this. Fingers crossed they’ll reply. [-o<

Well, they never replied (surprise surprise). Fortunately a friend of mine found a copy for me at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival and this is limited to 700 copies.

Finalists for the DVD Awards 2021.

SELECTIONS OF THE CHINESE FIFTH GENERATION DIRECTOR’S WORKS (China, 1985-1987) by Huang Jianxin,
Tian Zhuangzhuang, Chen Kaige – Beijing Disk Kino Culture & Media Co. Ltd. (blu-ray)

Now what might this be? Was there a box set or something? :-k

I think they're referring to a collection of separate releases from Diskino of Red Sorghum, The Horse Thief, King of the Children, Swordsman in Double Flag Town and The Black Cannon Incident. I have them and they're quite nice. There's a Tony Rayns interview on each one.

That seems to be the case, but it's a bit odd since those were released in 2019, during the eligibility period for the 2020 awards. Diskino subsequently put out some cut-down reissues with simplified packaging but the same on-disc content, so I guess that's how they're justifying the nomination—but in that case, why are they excluding the reissue of Red Sorghum that came out alongside them? Swordsman in Double Flag Town isn't eligible since the awards are only given for pre-1990 films.

Anyway, I wrote about the Horse Thief and Black Cannon Incident discs here; I still haven't watched the King of the Children disc even though it's by far my favorite of the films in the series. I hope these restorations get more accessible releases elsewhere, but so far only Red Sorghum has surfaced outside of China, as part of a Korean set of four Zhang Yimou films (three of which don't have English subtitles).

Any idea who in the Anglophone world might pick up Alain Cavalier’s 1986 film Thérèse, which has just been restored and released by Tamasa in France, with no English subtitles? I saw this when it first came out, and I’ve been thinking about it over the years and hoping to see it again.

Here’s the Washington Post review at the time.

First news about the 2021 festival:
https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/en/sezioni/

Titles include Frenchman´s Creek, Kuhle Wampe, Loves of Carmen, Me and My Brother, Uski Roti (from the OCN), The 400 Blows (new resto), Hard Luck, Three Ages, Il Mulino del Po, Les Oliviers de la justice, The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short, sections on Herman Mankiewicz and Wolfgang Staudte and more.

david hare wrote:As usual, totally predictably in-house back slapping. The exclusion of mainstream labels like Warner, Universal, Kino- Lorber and Arrow for instance is now criminally negligent. Even allowing for the Bert Stern movie released by Kino, the restoration was done outside house and the source was the Library of Congress.

As I understand the situation, labels have to proactively put themselves up for consideration. Some labels do this every year, some only occasionally (I think Indicator’s only done it once), and some not at all.

Arrow Film had five candidates and one finalist. Kino Lorber had five candidates and three finalists as well as The Criterion. Other mainstream labels didn't have candidates. I notice a mistake for La classe opera(r)ia va in paradiso: Blu-ray was released by Cecchi Gori Entertainment not by Raro Video/Minerva Pictures.