BFI (British Film Institute)

[Cinetwist]

Why the hell can't British satellite TV get a version of Arte..... I want Arte!

[Tommaso]

I think a friend of mine was even able to get it in Ireland...

[ellipsis7]

MichaelB, just noticed your review of the BFI THE RIVER @ Moviemail...

So too is the overarching themes of birth, death and renewal, symbolised by the great river Ganges of the title and dramatised by the travails of an English family (headed by Nora Swinburne and Esmond Knight, with a young Adrienne Corri as their oldest daughter) as they deal with various life-changing events including the arrival of a handsome but wounded American pilot and a devastating bereavement.

Adrienne Cori actually plays Valerie the daughter of the jute plant owner and his wife, who we never see... She is of a slightly higher social drawer than the central family we are led to understand, owning a horse and studying at boarding school in England... She is indeed older than Harriet, the eldest daughter of the Father and the Mother - the Father works as the Manager of the jute factory, so is effectively an employee of Valerie's parents...

[Dr Amicus]

According to a poster at the Britmovie forum, the BFI are releasing Let's Go Crazy (a Goon short) and Penny Points to Paradise (not a Goon feature, but with Sellers, Secombe and Milligan) in August.

I've never seen them, but the few Goon radio shows I've heard have been fantastic so these should be worth a look...

[Awesome Welles]

Central Bazaar (Dwoskin, 1976) for pre-order at Amazon. Does anyone know anything about this film? IT sounds fascinating, on first google I found this review by Jonas Mekas.

We watch a Dwoskin film and we enact our own erotic fantasies, we follow them, we measure them. Ah, yes, there was this Japanese film too, what was its title, it was forbidden to be shown here a year ago: In the Realm of the Senses. There, too, we sat and watched and reenacted and measured. But what a difference! There was no Virgil - there was only Hell.

[foggy eyes]

Excellent! After the Jeff Keen set (which is potential DVD-of-the-year material for me so far), any more British experimental cinema of this ilk will be a must-buy. I've seen bits and pieces of Dwoskin's work, and (like Keen or Welsby) his style seems to be quite distinct from the more widely regarded preoccupations of the Le Grice/Gidal-led structuralist movement. I also like the fact that his 1975 book Film Is... reads "Film Is Stephen Dwoskin" on the spine - a bold assertion, if nothing else!

[ouatitw]

Central Bazaar (Dwoskin, 1976) for pre-order at Amazon. Does anyone know anything about this film? IT sounds fascinating, on first google I found this review by Jonas Mekas.

We watch a Dwoskin film and we enact our own erotic fantasies, we follow them, we measure them. Ah, yes, there was this Japanese film too, what was its title, it was forbidden to be shown here a year ago: In the Realm of the Senses. There, too, we sat and watched and reenacted and measured. But what a difference! There was no Virgil - there was only Hell.

I'm a huge Dwoskin fan so this has to already be the DVD release of the year for me (this is the unreleased Dwoskin I most want to see). I assume it will eclipse Treasures IV and Jeff Keen's set.

Apparently Re:Voir is going to release Mekas' film As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty also this year which I'm pretty excited about as well.

[Peacock]

bfi is on to an utterly amazing start this year, i'm keeping my fingers crossed for some George Kuchar though!!

[lazier than a toad]

Well the new documentary on the Kuchar brothers and one of George's films are screening at the lgbt London Film Festival this year. I didn't notice any of the films on the BFI's old VHS though. The film screening is The Devil's Cleavage.

[tojoed]

Bernardo Bertolucci's "Partner" now coming on June 8th. Up for pre-order at Amazon.

[antnield]

Also on the 8th of June: Schroder's 'La Vallée' and Kotting's 'This Filthy Earth' (previously issued by FilmFour). Both up for pre-order at MovieMai. No further details or cover art just yet.

[Dr Amicus]

And two weeks before, on the 25th May, are London in the Raw and Primitive London on DVD and Blu-Ray.

These appear to be Mondo style examinations of the sleazier side of 60s London - if this is case (and has anyone seen them to confirm?) then I'm pre-ordering now.

And considering MichaelB's hint that some long awaited British films are on their way - I notice Winstanley is having an extended reissue at the NFT...

[foggy eyes]

And considering MichaelB's hint that some long awaited British films are on their way - I notice Winstanley is having an extended reissue at the NFT...

Yes, it's being screened on digital in the Studio, so there must be a new HD master of the restoration just waiting be put on disc. I've heard nothing but great things about the film, and am very much looking forward to seeing it (at last) next week.

[MichaelB]

And two weeks before, on the 25th May, are London in the Raw and Primitive London on DVD and Blu-Ray.

These appear to be Mondo style examinations of the sleazier side of 60s London - if this is case (and has anyone seen them to confirm?) then I'm pre-ordering now.

I've only seen extracts, but that was more than enough to confirm that your capsule description is spot on.

[Dr Amicus]

And two weeks before, on the 25th May, are London in the Raw and Primitive London on DVD and Blu-Ray.

These appear to be Mondo style examinations of the sleazier side of 60s London - if this is case (and has anyone seen them to confirm?) then I'm pre-ordering now.

I've only seen extracts, but that was more than enough to confirm that your capsule description is spot on.

Sold!

(I hope you're on commission Michael - these are about to be pre-ordered)

[ellipsis7]

Interesting piece on PRIMITIVE LONDON...

Would be great also if the BFI ever got to put out a SE DVD & Blu of Antonioni's BLOW UP with extras and commentary focussing on the film's synthesis of mid 60's London, its culture and artforms in a very specific rather than general sense - look for instance to the recent (2007) paper by Professor David Alan Mellor, "'Fragments of an Unknowable Whole': Michelangelo Antonioni's Incorporation of Contemporary Visualities in London, 1966" (Visual Culture in Britain , Vol.8 Number 2, pp.45- 61) for great insights and information... BLOW UP is a Warner property, so I suppose such will remain an impossibility...

[The Glue Man]

Again shamelessly copy-and-pasted from http://www.cultmovieforums.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, here is the BFI schedule for the next bit of 2009

• 18 May 2009:
  
  Central Bazaar (Stephen Dwoskin, 1976): amazon.co.uk (DVD)
  Kenneth Anger's Magick Lantern Cycle: amazon.co.uk (DVD)
  Kenneth Anger's Magick Lantern Cycle: amazon.co.uk (Blu-ray)
  Parade (Jacques Tati, 1974): amazon.co.uk (DVD)
  
  25 May 2009 (Rare Brit Movie Month!):
  
  Bed Sitting Room, The (Richard Lester, 1969): amazon.co.uk (DVD) [ (always wanted to see this) ]
  Bed Sitting Room, The (Richard Lester, 1969): amazon.co.uk (Blu-ray)
  London in the Raw (Norman Cohen & Arnold L. Miller, 1964): amazon.co.uk (DVD)
  London in the Raw (Norman Cohen & Arnold L. Miller, 1964): amazon.co.uk (Blu-ray)
  Primitive London (Arnold Louis Miller, 1965): amazon.co.uk (DVD)
  Primitive London (Arnold Louis Miller, 1965): amazon.co.uk (Blu-ray)
  
  8 June 2009:
  
  General Post Office Film Unit Collection Vol.3 - If War Should Come: amazon.co.uk (DVD)
  Partner (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1968): amazon.co.uk (DVD)
  This Filthy Earth (Andrew Kotting, 2001): amazon.co.uk (DVD)
  Valée, La (Barbet Schroeder, 1972): amazon.co.uk (DVD)

BTW, anyone else notice that the Pasolini Trilogy of Life set now appears to be 3 separate releases...? Wonder if there will be a box as well?

I also wonder if we'll see the Tati reissues anytime soon, ie to tie in with Parade?

(On a separate note, can La Valée, which I've never seen, possibly live up to the soundtrack? Wot's...uh the deal with that...?)

[Dr Amicus]

Buried in this bfi members' article is confirmation that Winstanley is coming to Blu-Ray later this year.

Also, and equally no surprise, some cataloue titles will be issued on Blu. As HD masters (thanks to an agreement with Sky Arts) exist for Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Terence Davies Trilogy, Radio On and Borderline, these look strong candidates.

Oh - and there were several HD Jennings, including Fires Were Started. [-o< And also Young Soul Rebels - which I don't think ever got a DVD release.

The bfi is rapidly becoming the most interesting label for Blu-Ray aound - although I'm sure Nick and MoC will soon have something to say about that...

[lubitsch]

Oh - and there were several HD Jennings, including Fires Were Started. [-o<

After the 3 GPO sets there's no way that they won't release the output of the Crown Film unit from 1940 on and especially Fires were started. It would be (including the Land of Promise box) the finish to a masterful presentation of an important part of film history for which BFI is to applauded =D>.

[zedz]

Oh - and there were several HD Jennings, including Fires Were Started. [-o<

After the 3 GPO sets there's no way that they won't release the output of the Crown Film unit from 1940 on and especially Fires were started. It would be (including the Land of Promise box) the finish to a masterful presentation of an important part of film history for which BFI is to applauded =D>.

I'm just digesting the magnificent GPO sets now and agree wholeheartedly, though I'd go further in wishing for a pull-out-all-the-stops Jennings-dedicated set plus the inevitable Crown Film Unit set.

[kekid]

Since bfi started issuing most of its issues in Region B Blu Ray's, I have stopped buying any of their DVD's, in any form. I will wait for them to come to Region A or Region-free Blu Ray's. One man's protest may not make much diffference to a business, but I feel a need to protest a discriminatory policy that excludes audiences. I know this misguided system is not of bfi's design, but they have embraced it more consistently than anyone else. I applaud MoC for committing to issue Blu Rays in region-free format. It is one more indication of their customer-friendly orientation.

[MichaelB]

Since bfi started issuing most of its issues in Region B Blu Ray's, I have stopped buying any of their DVD's, in any form.

Logically, this means that you must also have stopped buying Criterion releases, since they seem to be releasing all of their Blu-ray catalogue in region-locked form, regardless of whether it's a contractual imposition. (In fact, I think they've been region-coding everything across the board for a good two or three years - I haven't come across a region-free Criterion DVD in ages, and I tend to notice these things as my laptop is locked to Region 2!)

I will wait for them to come to Region A or Region-free Blu Ray's. One man's protest may not make much diffference to a business,

It won't make any difference at all, unless you identify the relevant sales agents and send your protest to them: they certainly won't notice otherwise. But I suspect (or rather, I know for certain) that they in turn will tell you to lobby a distributor in your territory and get them to licence the titles in question - which is of course the reason they favour region-coding in the first place.

but I feel a need to protest a discriminatory policy that excludes audiences. I know this misguided system is not of bfi's design, but they have embraced it more consistently than anyone else.

This is completely untrue, as my example above illustrates. As far as I'm aware (and I can't tell you how much I'd love to be proved wrong!), Criterion's Blu-ray catalogue is entirely Region A - and it's likely that the region-free proportion of the BFI's catalogue will grow over the next few months, as it becomes more diverse. Most of the BFI's Blu-ray releases so far have been from the old United Artists catalogue, handled by the same sales agent.

(NB: It's "the BFI", not "bfi" - the latter is a distortion of a typographical affectation that ran from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, formally dropped about three years ago because instead of writing "the bfi", as intended, people were doing what you're doing.)

I applaud MoC for committing to issue Blu Rays in region-free format. It is one more indication of their customer-friendly orientation.

We've had this argument elsewhere, but Blu-ray distributors who don't own their own catalogues are essentially faced with three choices:

1) Region-free, but restricted range of titles available for licence (i.e. MoC);
2) Region-free where possible, but region-locked when contractually obliged to by the rightsholder (i.e. the BFI);
3) Region-locked across the board regardless of rightsholder requirements (i.e. Criterion).

So it seems to me that (2) is actually the most sensible and pragmatic option, as this both allows the release of the widest range of titles and permits universal access when contractually possible. In fact, to emphasise the latter point, I believe current BFI policy is to present all the material on their Blu-ray discs in HD, to eliminate PAL/NTSC compatibility issues that have caused problems with the extras on some nominally "region-free" releases from other distributors - which is hardly indicative of a discriminatory policy or a non-customer friendly orientation.

[kekid]

This is a well-argued response, and I cannot refute any of it.

My actions are based on where I am located. Criterion's decisions do not affect me. I would have been infuriated with them if I was a region B consumer. I remain unhappy about (most of) the BFI Blu Rays not being accessible to the Region 1 customers, and will not buy those in any form, regardless of whose decisions prompted that situation. Whether you do the same with the Criterions is your choice.

It is incomprehensible that in these times of low consumption resulting from global economic crisis the program owners limit sales through region-coding.

Regarding the inappropriate use of "the BFI" logo, I was obviously not well-informed, and just copied how I saw it used elsewhere. For this, I apologise.

[MichaelB]

My actions are based on where I am located. Criterion's decisions do not affect me. I would have been infuriated with them if I was a region B consumer. I remain unhappy about (most of) the BFI Blu Rays not being accessible to the Region 1 customers, and will not buy those in any form, regardless of whose decisions prompted that situation. Whether you do the same with the Criterions is your choice.

Well, I have three choices, as do you:

1) Buy a Region A (or B)-compatible Blu-ray player, which is probably the road I'll end up going down, once prices have fallen a bit;
2) Buy the alternative DVD version - and I believe Criterion and BFI DVD releases duplicate the Blu-rays feature for feature, with the single exception of HD encoding;
3) Refuse to buy it altogether.

But I think it's more than a little silly pushing (3) to extremes by saying that because certain releases are region-coded you're going to boycott every release from that company. First of all, in most cases this is almost certainly not the distributor's choice - why on earth would they deliberately cripple the size of their potential market? Secondly, what exactly is this one-man protest going to achieve, even if it catches on? It's certainly not going to persuade the BFI or Criterion not to region-code, because that would automatically shut off access to many titles that are traditionally their bread and butter - they licence far more stuff from the majors than most other independents, and it's those titles that subsidise the riskier material.

It is incomprehensible that in these times of low consumption resulting from global economic crisis the program owners limit sales through region-coding.

It's perfectly comprehensible if you look at the situation from a rightsholder's perspective, and even more so from that of the sales agent handling their catalogue. They want to licence their titles to as many territories as possible, as licensing fees per territory would far outstrip the relatively piddling additional income caused by people importing from abroad.

One thing that's worth noting is that Artificial Eye and MoC's Blu-ray titles are largely (or in MoC's case entirely) from the Far East. I'm guessing there that the vast majority of the market is domestic, and that international sales are relatively small by comparison, so it doesn't make a lot of difference whether they're region-coded or not. On the other hand, it does make a difference if a Blu-ray from a relatively small market (the UK) is imported into a much larger market (the US), if the potential US distributor then uses this as a bargaining counter to get the sales agent to knock the price down - since sales revenue from a US deal is much greater than one from a UK deal. So from the sales agent's perspective region coding makes perfect sense - and if Blu-ray region coding is working more effectively than DVD region coding (which it clearly is, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation), that strengthens their argument even more. And it's strengthened still further by the current economic climate, because sales agents will be under greater pressure to generate the same revenues, lest their business go under as a side-effect.

I feel your pain, believe me - I'm locked out of Criterion's Blu-ray releases myself! But I'm not about to boycott the company as a result, as I'm still perfectly capable of playing their DVDs - and if I'm desperate to watch one of their new releases, I have that option to fall back on. As do you with BFI titles, not to mention the DVD-only releases that are still the mainstay of both catalogues.

It seems to me that the real root of the problem is one articulated by someone from BFI DVD Publishing in a private email sent to me as a result of this discussion:

I believe the real gripe is with the current state of technology in which investment in multi-region BluRay equipment means a bigger investment than it did for SD DVD. That is really it, and there's absolutely nothing the BFI, nor any other label (aside from Sony I suppose), can do about that. But like anything else, expect these costs to come down eventually. If [Kekid] actually shelled out the funds for a multi-region setup, he wouldn't be saying one iota against the terms of rights and contracts.

This is entirely true (as your admission that you don't care about Criterion's Region A stance proves!), and it's not just distributors that are in the same boat, it's hardware manufacturers too. Remember when Oppo announced that its long-awaited first Blu-ray player, which everyone assumed would be the greatest all-in-one universally-compatible player ever invented, would be region-locked? Believe me, that's the last thing they themselves wanted to manufacture, but the terms of the contract which they signed in order to license the technology forbade them from doing anything else.

At the moment, it seems to me that Blu-ray is in the same position that DVD went through in 1996-99, when multi-region DVD was possible but expensive. I still remember when the first cheap (>£200) out-of-the-box multiregion player came out in Britain in early 1999, because I bought one the very day I found out about it. I have absolutely no doubt that the same will happen with Blu-ray eventually (I'd personally be delighted when it does) - but in the meantime it seems to me that the most sensible thing distributors can do is forget the region-coding issue (over which they ultimately have no control), and simply release as wide a range of titles as possible to ensure that what is still a very new format has some hope of market penetration over and above fans of very recent action blockbusters.

Which is exactly what the BFI is doing - I believe it already offers the most extensive Blu-ray catalogue of any British independent, and it's certainly taking considerably more risks with content: who else would issue a Jeff Keen retrospective on Blu-ray when the man is virtually unknown outside (tiny) British experimental film circles? In addition to the Pasolini, Antonioni, British New Wave and Ron Peck titles already either out or imminent, publicly confirmed releases over the next couple of months include The Bed-Sitting Room, Winstanley, Bill Douglas' entire output, two bizarre mid-1960s British mondo movies, Kenneth Anger's Magick Lantern Cycle, with Kevin Brownlow's Winstanley and Jane Arden and Jack Bond's previously unreleased Separation, The Other Side of the Underneath and Anti-Clock shortly afterwards - plus lots more that I can't reveal just yet.

This is a seriously adventurous line-up for a relatively new and expensive format, and if the price to be paid for this is a handful of region-locked but much higher-profile titles licensed from majors, what exactly is wrong with that? It's not as though MoC or anyone else was standing in second place in the queue, ready to release region-free alternatives if only the evil customer-hating BFI hadn't snapped them up first - they weren't, and they wouldn't have been able to: it's as simple as that.

[ellipsis7]

It's a hell of dilemma - I now have the BFI Blu-Ray of RED DESERT as well as the SDVD, and it was fine but not brilliant on the PS3, now to persuade me to invest in a dedicated Blu Ray player locked to Region B, which would give a better quality picture, I'd hope that other labels such as MoC would say put out similar classic Antonioni titles such as last year's LA NOTTE, or the forthcoming IL GRIDO out on Region B (or free) Blu Ray also, alongside the SDVD releases... It's Groundhog Day back to 1999 (as MichaelB notes) not just in terms of technology, cost, but also in the narrow size of catalogues in the new format... The BFI Blu Ray project is excellent, and certainly there are exciting Blu releases (especially those concentrating on classics of British Cinema), but somehow, on a wider front, things have to move to a tipping point where there are enough desired (non mainstream) discs to persuade the purchase of a region locked player...