criterionforum.org

A new restoration of Jacinto “Paul Naschy” Molina’s 2nd film The Frenchman’s Garden (El Huerto del Francés) is screening (streaming?) at Sitges in October. Hopefully this’ll lead to some sort of physical release somewhere english friendly.

New restoration of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923):
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30580 (scroll down for video with Rodney Sauer, The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra; video includes a film excerpt, compressed for Internet)

Fred Holywell wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2020 8:39 pm I wonder if it's Children of the Ritz, based on Woolrich's second jazz age novel. In the clip, Muller says it was "a missing film for years, and years, and years." According to Wikipedia, the 1929 Vitaphone film is considered lost.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive catalog record lists "2 of 7 sound discs" and no other holdings for Children of the Ritz. That suggests to me that some Vitaphone sound discs but no picture elements survive. If that turns out to be the film, it would be wonderful news, indeed!

Alain Tanner´s *"Dans la ville blanche", "Charles Mort ou Vif" and "Retour d´Afrique" restored in 4K, French theatrical release upcoming:
https://lesfilmsducamelia.com/alain-tan ... ospective/

La fille à la valise (Zurlini) restored in 4K, French theatrical release Nov. 14, 2020:
https://lesfilmsducamelia.com/la-fille-a-la-valise/

Via Margutta (Castellani) restored in 4K, French theatrical release upcoming:
https://lesfilmsducamelia.com/via-margutta/

A Bigger Splash (1974) restored in 4K, French theatrical release upcoming:
https://lesfilmsducamelia.com/a-bigger-splash/

Franco Rosso´s Babylon restored in 2K, French theatrical release Oct. 14, 2020:
https://lesfilmsducamelia.com/babylon/

Quelle joie de vivre (Clément) restored in 2K, French theatrical release Aug. 5, 2020:
https://lesfilmsducamelia.com/quelle-joie-de-vivre/

An interesting 2019 article about Ray´s Kanchenjungha and other restored Indian films:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ent ... 083741.cms
According to the article, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences "worked with the only copy of the master negative film and several months of hard work gave the result one day, they were able to restore whatever they could of the film."

Kanchenjungha is not (at least not yet) listed here:
https://www.oscars.org/academy-film-arc ... ection=All

Update: Links above are broken.

First news from Giornate del Cinema Muto 2020:
http://www.giornatedelcinemamuto.it/en/calendario-2020/
Includes Pabst´s Abwege, DeMille´s A Romance of the Redwoods newly restored, 68mm Biograph films, Guo Feng (China, 1935) and The Apaches of Athens (Greece, 1930), re-found in Paris.

Program for the 2020 Festival Lumière, Lyon, France:
http://www.festival-lumiere.org/en/prog ... films.html

Lumière Classics
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry by Robert Siodmak (1945, 1h21)
Difficult Years by Luigi Zampa (Anni difficili, 1948, 1h53)
Les Enfants terribles by Jean-Pierre Melville (1950, 1h45)
People Will Talk by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1951, 1h50)
Fanfan la Tulipe by Christian-Jaque (1952, 1h42)
An Actor’s Revenge by Kon Ichikawa (Yukinojô henge, 1963, 1h53)
Joy House by René Clément (Les Félins, 1964, 1h38)
Crime on a Summer Morning by Jacques Deray (Par un beau matin d'été, 1965, 1h49)
The Amusement Park by George A. Romero (1973, 53min)
The Wicker Man by Robin Hardy (1973, 1h34)
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Peter Weir (1975, 1h47)
The Brood by David Cronenberg (1979, 1h32)
All the King's Men by King Hu (Tian xia di yi, 1983, 1h49) - a new resto announced by Spectrum, a French DVD/Blu label, according to a post by Tenia on Aug. 3 here:
https://www.dvdclassik.com/forum/viewto ... 0&start=15
La Cérémonie by Claude Chabrol (1995, 1h51)

Treasures & curiosities
Portugal (Cinemateca Portuguesa)
The Movement of Things by Manuela Serra (O movimento das coisas, 1985, 1h29)
Senegal (Studiocanal)
The Money Order by Ousmane Sembène (Mandabi, 1968, 1h30)
Hungary (Hungarian Film Archive)
Sodrásban/Current by István Gaál (Sodrásban, 1964, 1h21)
Russia (Mosfilm)
Letter Never Sent by Mikhaïl Kalatozov (Neotpravlennoe pismo, 1960, 1h36)
Czech Republic (Malavida)
Cutting it Short/Shortcuts by Jiří Menzel (Postřižiny, 1980, 1h38)
Netherlands (Eye Film Institute)
The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe by Frank Roumen (1897-1902, 52min)
Slovakia (Slovak Film Institute)
Night Riders by Martin Hollý (Noční jazdci, 1981, 1h31)
Czech Republic (Národní filmový archiv)
Pearls of the Deep de Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, Evald Schorm, Věra Chytilová and Jaromil Jireš (Perličky na dně, 1965, 1h47)
Switzerland (Cinémathèque Suisse)
Derborence by Francis Reusser (1985, 1h34)
Spain (Filmoteca de Catalunya)
Swan Lake, 3D by Francesc Rovira Beleta (El lago de los cisnes, 1953, 12min)

Lumière welcomes Cannes Classics
In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai (2000, 1h38)
The Story of a Three-Day Pass by Melvin Van Peebles (La Permission, 1968, 1h27)
Hester Street by Joan Micklin Silver (1975, 1h30)
Neige by Juliet Berto and Jean-Henri Roger (1981, 1h30)
He, She or It/The Doll by Jacques Baratier (La Poupée, 1962, 1h34)
America as Seen by a Frenchman by François Reichenbach (L’Amérique insolite, 1959, 1h30)
Accattone by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1961, 1h57)
The Chess Game of the Wind by Mohammad Reza Aslani (Shatranj-e baad, 1976, 1h33)
La strada by Federico Fellini (1954, 1h48)
Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard (À bout de souffle, 1960, 1h29)
L'avventura by Michelangelo Antonioni (1960, 2h20)
Documentaries
Fellini degli spiriti by Anselma dell’Olio (2020, 1h40)
Wim Wenders, Desperado by Eric Friedler and Andreas Frege (2020, 2h)
Charlie Chaplin, le génie de la liberté (Parts 1 & 2) by François Aymé and Yves Jeuland (2020, 2h25)
Be Water by Bao Nguyen (2020, 1h44)

I'm keeping an eye on the festival's website since the individual pages with the tech details aren't up yet.

Note that there'll also be humpteen premieres, mostly (20) from the cancelled 2020 Cannes line-up, which is a shame because in the meantime, barely half of the Cannes Classics line-up will be shown (and many movies with only 1 screening).

This being written, the following movies will most certainly be sourced from the existing new restorations already released on BD :
An Actor’s Revenge (4K / OCN / Kadokawa - BFI & Criterion)
The Wicker Man (4K / ? / ? - Studio Canal)
Par un beau matin d'été (4K / most likely OCN / Ritrovata - Pathé)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (HD / 35mm IP / Deluxe Melbourne - Criterion & Second Sight)
The Brood (2K / IP / Vision Globale Montréal - Criterion)
All the King's Men (2K / ? / ? - Spectrum France)
La Cérémonie will get a BD release from Carlotta this december

The Cannes Classics movies tech details are available here.

There will also be several movies around Michel Audiard, 4 movies around Joan Micklin Silver, Outrage (Ida Lupino), Ostatni etap (Wanda Jakubowska), I basilischi (Lina Wertmüller), an hommage to Melina Mercouri, a new restoration of Born on the 4th of July (in presence of Stone), 2 live concerts on silent movies (Flesh and the Devil and La Femme et le pantin), and several B&W movies already widely available.

I was extremely interested by The Brilliant Biograph, but sadly, there's only 1 screening of it and it just doesn't fit my agenda.

I’d be curious to see this adaptation of the source novel behind von Sternberg’s The Devil is a Woman and Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire beyond the brief excerpt included in Criterion’s OOP DVD release of the Buñuel.

The Woman and the Puppet by Jacques de Baroncelli (La Femme et le pantin, 1928, 1h55)

Except if there is a last-minute epidemic issue preventing me to cover the festival, I'm planning on attending both live concerts and should then be able to report about this one. I however haven't seen the Sternberg nor the Bunuel (despite owning both on BD...) so I might not be the best to feed back on it...

DeprongMori wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:15 pm I’d be curious to see this adaptation of the source novel behind von Sternberg’s The Devil is a Woman and Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire beyond the brief excerpt included in Criterion’s OOP DVD release of the Buñuel.

The Woman and the Puppet by Jacques de Baroncelli (La Femme et le pantin, 1928, 1h55)

Baroncelli´s film was restored "in 2020 by Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé in collaboration with Cinematheque francaise at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory" and shown, with English subs, at the 2020 Cinema Ritrovato festival. Hopefully there will be a DVD release.
https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/e ... -pantin-2/

Tony Rayns reports about "Ying Yunwei’s Eight Hundred Heroes (Ba Bai Zhuangshi, 1938), recently rediscovered and preserved by the Hong Kong Film Archive, is a morale-boosting masterpiece starring the great Yuan Muzhi as Xie Jinyuan, shot silent in extremely primitive conditions but arranged for live musical and vocal accompaniment."
Source: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/ ... ationalism

Lyon Film Festival is now providing tech details for most of their programmed movies (they can be found on each film's individual page).
No big surprises from what I read so far, except that The Great Illusion is from a new 4K resto (Ritrovata - Studio Canal) and Picnic at Hanging Rock also seems to be new (4K scan of the OCN at Deluxe Melbourne, restoration supervised by Russel Boyd, graded by Gosia Grzyb (Fixafilm, LA). Restoration produced by Second Sight Films in collaboration with Ingrid and Peter Weir).

Stefan Andersson wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 12:24 pm Tony Rayns reports about "Ying Yunwei’s Eight Hundred Heroes (Ba Bai Zhuangshi, 1938), recently rediscovered and preserved by the Hong Kong Film Archive, is a morale-boosting masterpiece starring the great Yuan Muzhi as Xie Jinyuan, shot silent in extremely primitive conditions but arranged for live musical and vocal accompaniment."
Source: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/ ... ationalism

I don't know what Rayns considers "recent," but the HKFA has a DVD of this (not available to the public, unfortunately) that they screened in 2014 and 2016, and at the China Film Archive in 2013, 2015, and 2018. There's also a copy circulating online that somebody managed to surreptitiously record at the 1995 Hong Kong International Film Festival. With the interest generated by the new retelling, I hope it gets a legitimate release at last. Perhaps Rayns is confusing the silent film with the other version from 1938, a Cantonese talkie made in Hong Kong—but that version has been lost for ages and its rediscovery would be big news.

The 1975 version has a recent restoration that's available with English subtitles on iTunes Taiwan, though I don't know the practicalities of renting or buying it without a Taiwanese payment mechanism. They also have the restoration of Hu's All the King's Men that will be showing at the Lumière Festival next month, but without English subs.

I'll (normally) also see All The King's Men at Lyon next month, and will report about it.

For the record -- an interesting forum discussion about Mosfilm restorations:
https://forum.fanres.com/thread-1916.html

Some quotes from the thread:
On Ivan The Terrible Part Two (2017, on the print on Mosfilm´s Youtube channel:
"I noticed a very disturbing, Lucas-like change in "Ivan the Terrible Part 2". The opening narration has been redubbed with changes to the text. The new narrator also pronounces names differently to the original in a way that really clashes with the rest of the film. And even worse, at the final sequence, a shot that was in color is rendered in B&W."

May 2020:
"Work on the film “The Forty-First” by Grigori Chukhrai is nearing completion.
Since the work of the workshops in the studio is suspended, work is being done remotely.
The unfinished play for a mechanical piano by Nikita Mikhalkov has already been restored."

There is also a 2019 note about a 4K resto of Waterloo (1970); the German label Explosive Media has shown interest in it. Maybe that´s the master on the Imprint Blu?
Also a discussion about Mosfilm´s Dersu Uzala resto, with links to screenshots from a 70mm print, shown at a 2009 70mm festival in Germany.

Trailer for the Spain July, 2020 digital re-release of restored Dersu Uzala thru A Contracorriente Films:
https://noescinetodoloquereluce.com/202 ... urada.html
http://www.acontracorrientefilms.com/pe ... l-cazador/

A wartime film produced by the Crown Film Unit in 1944, Western Approaches was the first Technicolor film produced by the Unit, and the first from cinematographer Jack Cardiff.

The Imperial War Museum had issued the film on a now-OOP DVD. Inquiring about the status of the film, since it is not currently available for streaming on their IWM Film Collection website, they stated that the film is currently being restored. I don’t have information on schedule.

[/quote]
There is also a 2019 note about a 4K resto of Waterloo (1970); the German label Explosive Media has shown interest in it. Maybe that´s the master on the Imprint Blu?
Also a discussion about Mosfilm´s Dersu Uzala resto, with links to screenshots from a 70mm print, shown at a 2009 70mm festival in Germany.

Trailer for the Spain July, 2020 digital re-release of restored Dersu Uzala thru A Contracorriente Films:
https://noescinetodoloquereluce.com/202 ... urada.html
http://www.acontracorrientefilms.com/pe ... l-cazador/
[/quote]

Do we think or know that this means a blu ray release may be forthcoming? I'm trying to decide whether or not to buy the existing Italian import on blu. Since it doesn't have English subs I'd rather wait--especially if something better is coming from a 4K restoration.

That trailer looks incredible. I’d wait. A Criterion release will probably come sooner than later.

FrauBlucher wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 9:50 pm That trailer looks incredible. I’d wait. A Criterion release will probably come sooner than later.

I appreciate the advice. I'll heed it.

Tokyo Film Festival's World Premiere restos:

Yasmin Ahmad, Mukhsin [4K Digital Restoration]
Sadao Yamanaka, Priest of Darkness [4K Digital Restoration]
Sadao Yamanaka, Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo [4K Digital Restoration and longest version]
Sadao Yamanaka, Humanity and Paper Balloons [4K Digital Restoration]
Hiroshi Inagaki, The Rickshaw Man [4K Digital Restoration]

yoshimori wrote: Wed Sep 30, 2020 6:48 am Tokyo Film Festival's World Premiere restos:

Yasmin Ahmad, Mukhsin [4K Digital Restoration]
Sadao Yamanaka, Priest of Darkness [4K Digital Restoration]
Sadao Yamanaka, Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo [4K Digital Restoration and longest version]
Sadao Yamanaka, Humanity and Paper Balloons [4K Digital Restoration]
Hiroshi Inagaki, The Rickshaw Man [4K Digital Restoration]

The Yamanaka films being restored is really exciting. The Million Ryo Pot is one I adore--am curious to see if and how this version differs from what was on the MoC DVD.

Not sure this is the right place, but a question to those who know more about modern film restoration than me. I'm currently working my way through the Curzon Artificial Eye Louis Malle box set. I'm up to Black Moon and every color film has that green/yellow tinge which I see so much in modern restorations. It looks obviously wrong and I don't claim to be an expert. Not long ago I watched many of the recent Fassbinder restorations and all of them look too yellow and this goes for many other restorations of classic or vintage films. While I read a lot of complaints about this online, does anybody have a theory as to why this is so common ? To what extend is this driven by budgets or are these primarily aesthetic decisions ?

The Curious Sofa wrote: Wed Sep 30, 2020 7:19 am Not sure this is the right place, but a question to those who know more about modern film restoration than me. I'm currently working my way through the Curzon Artificial Eye Louis Malle box set. I'm up to Black Moon and very color film has that green/yellow tinge which I see so much in modern restorations. It looks obviously wrong and I don't claim to be an expert. Not long ago I watched many of the recent Fassbinder restorations and all of them look too yellow and this goes for many other restorations of classic or vintage films and of course there is the . While I read a lot of complaining about this online, does anybody have a theory as to why this is so common ? To what extend is this driven by budgets or are these primarily aesthetic decisions ?

This is a great question, and I wish I could give you a comprehensive response. My initial concern is that, in transferring a film to a home
video format, technicians aren't engaging in the requisite amount of research regarding the way a film is supposed to look. Are they utilizing
vintage still photos? Can they project celluloid copies for reference purposes?

The Curious Sofa wrote: Wed Sep 30, 2020 7:19 am Not sure this is the right place, but a question to those who know more about modern film restoration than me. I'm currently working my way through the Curzon Artificial Eye Louis Malle box set. I'm up to Black Moon and very color film has that green/yellow tinge which I see so much in modern restorations. It looks obviously wrong and I don't claim to be an expert. Not long ago I watched many of the recent Fassbinder restorations and all of them look too yellow and this goes for many other restorations of classic or vintage films and of course there is the . While I read a lot of complaining about this online, does anybody have a theory as to why this is so common ? To what extend is this driven by budgets or are these primarily aesthetic decisions ?

There are several factors.

Is there an archival print in good condition that was approved by DP/Director as to colour to be used as reference?

If the scan is 4K and from O-Neg/fine grain masters, it is likely to reveal things that were never seen before in Older HD transfers inc. colour differences.

Modern day colour-correction has come a long way, film transfers used to be coloured on very good but still small 25-30” monitors, now it’s 55” minimum, so things are more visible to the colourist that just weren’t before.

Playback technology has improved but varies widely, with a range of picture adjustments that can make an amazing 4K image look awful. Unless your TV is on an ISF setting, or been calibrated, you have no way of knowing whether it’s correct or not. This is why people argue endlessly about x disc looking great/poor.

The other option is the restorers had no colour reference, the filmmakers unavailable and they guessed or didn’t care!

M