Glorious glorious fucking heaven above.What A Disgrace wrote:...the entirety of your early Russian cinema classics are going to be on a DVD set? Protazanov and all? I know what I want for Christmas this year.
Yeehaw!
As far as I'm aware, the original Milestone VHS release was a clone of the BFI's ten-tape compilation (or vice versa).Tribe wrote:I'm way unfamiliar with this Russian cinema release...can anyone fill me in what would be included?
Early Russian Cinema
Director:
Russia. 1908-1917.
Black & White.
When these films first showed at the Il Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy, the world was astonished by the genius of these films. Unseen (and many of them banned) for more than seventy years by the Soviet Government, this anthology reveals the excellence of filmmaking in Czarist Russia. From the brilliance of Evgeni Bauer's astonishing tragedies, to the animation wonders of Ladislaw Starewitch, to the remarkable acting of Ivan Moujikine, you can discover new treasures in the world of cinema!
Volume One: Beginnings
Volume Two: Folklore and Legend
Volume Three: Starewiczs Fantasies
Volume Four: Provincial Variations
Volume Five: Chardynin' Pushkin
Volume Six: Class Distinctions
Volume Seven: Evgenii Bauer
Volume Eight: Iakov Protazanov
Volume Nine: High Society
Volume Ten: The End of an Era
Please, it's just DVD-Rs -- not too great of expectations please! But thanks for the enthusiasm.MichaelB wrote:As far as I'm aware, the original Milestone VHS release was a clone of the BFI's ten-tape compilation (or vice versa).Tribe wrote:I'm way unfamiliar with this Russian cinema release...can anyone fill me in what would be included?
Does that make any difference, apart from them probably not lasting as long as pressed dvds? Honestly, I couldn't care less whether it's a dvd-r or not, as long as these films are available in a format I can watch. Going through the descriptions in the pdf-file and looking at the running times of the videos, I thought it probably would all fit on four or five discs which would make the whole collection significnatly cheaper. But if it will be single-layered dvd-r, however, I assume it will be ten discs, then?drdoros wrote:Please, it's just DVD-Rs -- not too great of expectations please! .
Well, they'll be sourced from analogue tape masters that were created in the early 1990s - so while they'll probably be better than the VHS versions, they certainly won't be anywhere close to the standard of a Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung restoration. But then it would be wildly unrealistic to expect them to be.Tommaso wrote:Does that make any difference, apart from them probably not lasting as long as pressed dvds?
.Dennis D wrote:No, I don't mind at all. It would also make me very happy to own my own set. (It's so hard to look at Digibetas at home.) We have finished Volume 1 and 2 and one disc and will be doing them over the year as time, staff and finances permit. The real expense is printing the covers since you have to print in bulk.
He didn't specifically say he has these titles on Digibeta - he just said it's hard to watch Digibetas at home.HerrSchreck wrote:Well, Dennis just said he has them sitting at home on digibetas, no?
Yes, no problem at all. These films (or at least some of them) are so old and so rare that a top-notch resto would not only be unrealistic, but also probably impossible to make. I wonder that these films survive at all given the somewhat troubled Russian history in the 10s and 20s.MichaelB wrote:so while they'll probably be better than the VHS versions, they certainly won't be anywhere close to the standard of a Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung restoration. But then it would be wildly unrealistic to expect them to be.
It also occasionally coughs up things like a more complete (albeit not full) version of Tomu Uchida's Earth (only seen the less complete version so far -- hoping for a DVD based on the Russian version).HerrSchreck wrote:Gosfilmofond has to be the largest and greatest (and containing the hugest hidden treasure trove) archive on the earth... especially for the kind of cinema you & I love so much..
No, they're certainly not - even going by the BFI VHSes, they're in surprisingly watchable condition, even the stuff that's literally a century old.HerrSchreck wrote:And a restoration is never impossible to make unless the elements are just total deteriorated muck. Which these films don't seem to be anywhere near.
Yes I have, and of course this disc is one of the main reasons why I desperately want to see more pre-Soviet Russian cinema, though it's hard to believe anything else would be as good as these three Bauer films. And indeed the films as presented by the BFI (though I actually have the Milestone disc) are in fantastic condition, although I don't know whether there was additional restoration work of whatever kind for them.HerrSchreck wrote:have you seen the Yevgeni Bauer material w Twilight of a Woman's Soul, After Death, and The Dying Swan, Tom? This material is in incredible shape considering it's age.
did you hear about that group of employees from an Afghan Film Archive whom hid the room that held all of the films by plastering over the door (and unplugging the lights in that section of hallway to mask it further). The Taliban continually threatened their lives, but the cache of films was never discovered. After the Taliban was (temporarily) toppled, the film archive was opened up. I think it might have even been a National Geographic special.MichaelB wrote:just as huge swathes of Afghan film history were destroyed under the Taliban in the late 1990s.
I did indeed, and read about it only the other day - not sure where: one of the British broadsheet newspapers, I think.miless wrote:did you hear about that group of employees from an Afghan Film Archive whom hid the room that held all of the films by plastering over the door (and unplugging the lights in that section of hallway to mask it further). The Taliban continually threatened their lives, but the cache of films was never discovered. After the Taliban was (temporarily) toppled, the film archive was opened up. I think it might have even been a National Geographic special.MichaelB wrote:just as huge swathes of Afghan film history were destroyed under the Taliban in the late 1990s.
Partly correct. I have digibeta backups that I did a few years ago to protect my masters. The original masters were D2 which are digital, but about ten of the short films were recorded off a Steenbeck by the BFI (remember, this was the 1990s and I think they had the prints for an extremely short period of time such as 24 hours) so those nine are decent but not digital. Also, these nine have a very small time-code inbedded in the lower left. Volumes 8, 9 and 10 all have Bauer films and they are as good as the MAD LOVE disc. There's a press kit that be downloaded on the set at our website. Here are the contents and those with an asterik have the time codeMichaelB wrote:I'd be very surprised indeed if the masters originated on Digibeta, as that format was introduced years after the VHSes were released. But this is guesswork, and there's someone else reading this thread who'll know for certain.
I check in every now and then but I just spent the last four days at the Orphans 6 Conference at NYU and haven't done any internet over that time. POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL, THE HOODLUM and the restored SPARROWS will be out next year hopefully. ROSITA is my pick for a major restoration in time for the 100th anniversary of her first film appearance for 2009, but to be honest, nothing has been started yet so perhaps it will come later. PRIDE OF THE CLAN isn't on the list yet.tryavna wrote:Not sure how often you check in here, but I was just looking through some of Milestone's Mary Pickford releases and it occurs to me to ask if/when we might expect releases of Pride of the Clan, Poor Little Rich Girl, and Rosita. The latter, of course, was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, but it's actually the former two, both directed by Maurice Tourneur, that really interest me. I've gotten onto a Tourneur kick lately, but there really isn't much of his work available on DVD at the moment. The two Pickford films seem like fairly likely candidates, though, considering how many Pickford films Milestone has released so far.