German Filmmuseum Edition

[Tommaso]

While their release tempo is even slower than snail speed at the moment (even by their standards), here are five new announcements...

83 Menschen untereinander & Unter der Laterne Gerhard Lamprecht, 1926/1928
84 Sol' Svanetii & Lursmani cheqmashi Mikhail Kalatozov, 1930/1931
85 Fragments of Kubelka Martina Kudlácek, 2012
86 Tri pesni o Lenine Dziga Vertov, 1934
87 Deseret & Five Corners James Benning, 1995/1997

Potentially great, especially the Lamprecht and the Kalatozov, but probably none of it will be out before 2020...

<disgruntled user who wants "Algol" and that Barnet set, NOW!!!>

[foggy eyes]

87 Deseret & Five Corners James Benning, 1995/1997

5 corners

Looking forward to (hopefully) seeing good-looking copies of these two films. Nice that Fragments of Kubelka is getting a proper release as well.

[Tommaso]

'Five' Corners: not the only thing they messed up in that announcement; I manually corrected the years for the Kalatozov films already.

[Michael Kerpan]

Whatever did happen to the Barnet set?

[lubitsch]

Whatever did happen to the Barnet set?

The announcement was made before the Ruscico Academias came out and the Mr Bongo discs, so maybe they don't see any point in competing against these releases. But announcing films around the clock without releasing anything is by now rather embarassing.

[zedz]

Personally, I'd much rather this label invested its limited resources in films that aren't otherwise available, like the Bennings, the Lamprechts and (cough) The Unknown Orson Welles.

[Michael Kerpan]

Whatever did happen to the Barnet set?

The announcement was made before the Ruscico Academias came out and the Mr Bongo discs, so maybe they don't see any point in competing against these releases. But announcing films around the clock without releasing anything is by now rather embarassing.

Has anyone ever compared these newer releases to the French ones? Unless they _look_ considerably better I can live with French subtitles.

[Tommaso]

If the Barnet indeed doesn't come out because of the Ruscico releases (which are at a very steep pricepoint, however), then they should quietly drop the announcement and find something worthy as a replacement for spine number 50. But I doubt that this is the cause for the delay, as the announcements show that they're not afraid of releasing something that is available already. Most incomprehensible in this respect is the pairing of "October" with "Potemkin" (#82), as even the German Transit disc of the latter is still available and can hardly be bettered.

The announced Vertov may be interesting though. The old Image disc of "Three Songs for Lenin" clearly needs improvement, and ideally they could combine it with "Lullaby", which is missing entirely on disc, I think. Or they could provide a nice selection (or all of them) of Vertov's early 'Kino-Pravda' films as extras.

But still, probably it would be best to concentrate entirely on the German output, at least as far as silents are concerned. As they've released some Asta Nielsen, why not "Erdgeist" and "Dirnentragödie", too? These are clearly much more important than those four early films they put out already.

[MichaelB]

Nice that Fragments of Kubelka is getting a proper release as well.

I thoroughly recommend Fragments of Kubelka, despite the irony of the film being nearly four times longer than the combined running time of its subject's output!

(Naturally, in accordance with Kubelka's wishes, you never get to see unadulterated clips from his films - there's always some visual or editorial distraction. But you do get a reasonable idea of what they're like, not least thanks to the exhaustively detailed contextual information.)

[lubitsch]

This is getting ridiculous ... even more announcements:

88 Prinzenbad Richard Blank, 1995
89 Oktoberfest München 1910-1980ü
90 Helena. Der Untergang Trojas Manfred Noa, 1923

[Tommaso]

Weird especially as "Helena" has recently been announced by the Filmjuwelen label as coming in the second half of 2014.

[TMDaines]

They've updated the site again: unfortunately, a lot of the long-term projects have disappeared and, I guess, been pulled. No Abwege or Welles, for example.

[Tommaso]

This doesn't exactly come as a surprise, but is still depressing. Especially as some of those long-term projects were much more exciting than their latest bunch of 'forthcoming' (well...) releases. Apart from those you mention, I really hoped we would see "Der lebende Leichnam", Grune's "Waterloo", and "Das Mädchen Sumiko" some time in the 2020s...

[AlexHansen]

Hopefully it's just a matter of tidying up the page rather than the projects being outright cancelled. Constantly having a bunch of Cocktail Molotov's hanging around your forthcoming release page can't do a lot for moral (though perhaps they should be referred to as Cousin Cousine's, as that's actually somewhat seen the light of day).

[Aunt Peg]

Two new releases up for order:

The Films

Deseret - USA 1995 - Directed, written, photographed, edited and produced by: James Benning - Voice: Fred Gardner - Premiere: January 22, 1995 (Sundance Film Festival, Utah)
Four Corners - USA 1997 - Directed, written, photographed, edited and produced by: James Benning - Voices: Hartmut Bitomsky, James Benning, Yeasup Song, Billy Woodberry - Premiere: December 17, 1997 (Wicker Park, Chicago)
DVD features (2-disc DVD)

DVD 1
Deseret 1995, 78'
James Benning: Viennale Q & A 1996, 15'
DVD 2
Four Corners 1997, 76'
20 page bilingual booklet
Edited by: Österreichisches Filmmuseum Vienna
DVD authoring: Tobias Dressel
DVD supervision: Oliver Hanley
First Edition January 2014


&

The films

Willow Springs - West Germany 1973 - Directed, written and photographed by: Werner Schroeter - Cast: Magdalena Montezuma, Christine Kaufmann, Ila von Hasperg, Michael O'Daniels - Produced by: Werner Schroeter Filmproduktion, Munich - Premiere: April 3, 1973 (ZDF)
Tag der Idioten - West Germany 1981 - Directed by: Werner Schroeter - Written by: Dana Horáková, Werner Schroeter - Cinematography by: Ivan Slapeta - Music by: Peer Raben - Cast: Carole Bouquet, Ida di Benedetto, Ingrid Caven, Christine Kaufmann, Tamara Kafka, Hermann Killmeyer, Magdalena Montezuma, Marie-Luise Marjan, Mostefa Djardam, Carola Regnier - Produced by: OKO-Film Karel Dirka, Munich - Premiere: Oktober 31, 1981 (Internationale Hofer Filmtage)
Dietrich Kuhlbrodt im Gespräch mit Werner Schroeter - Germany 2010 - Edited by: Stefan Drößler, Christian Ketels - With Werner Schroeter, Dietrich Kuhlbrodt - Premiere: May 24, 2012 (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
Wolf Wondratschek: Laudatio auf Werner Schroeter - Germany 2011 - Edited by: Stefan Drössler, Christian Ketels - With Wolf Wondratschek, Werner Schroeter, Monika Keppler - Premiere: May 24, 2012 (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
Das letzte Jahr: Begegnung mit Werner Schröter - Germany 2009 - Directed, written, photographed, edited, and produced by: Klaus Wyborny - With Klaus Wyborny, Werner Schroeter - Premiere: Oktober 29, 2009, (Viennale)
DVD features (Doppel-DVD)

DVD 1
Willow Springs 1973, 78'
Dietrich Kuhlbrodt im Gespräch mit Werner Schroeter 2010, 8'
Wolf Wondratschek: Laudatio auf Werner Schroeter 2011, 20'
Begegnung mit Werner Schröter 2009, 10'
Trilingual booklet with texts by Werner Schroeter, Wolfram Schütte and Carole Bouquet
DVD 2
Tag der Idioten 1981, 106'
Aggression 1968, 22'
Fotos from the shooting of Tag der Idioten by Digne M. Markovicz
Edited by: Filmmuseum München and Goethe-Institut Munich
DVD authoring: Tobias Dressel
DVD supervision: Stefan Drössler

[Tommaso]

Finally they're getting somewhere. Three new releases in February:

The first Kristl installment

Kalatozov

Lamprecht

And thank God they provide a piano soundtrack by Sosin as an alternative to the absolutely abominable soundtrack for "Menschen untereinander" that made the arte transmission close to unwatchable.

[zedz]

This is great news! Was Kalatozov even on the radar?

[Tommaso]

The Kalatozov disc was first announced some weeks ago, but of course no-one believed in it Looking very much forward to it now, for sure.

[zedz]

The Kalatozov disc was first announced some weeks ago, but of course no-one believed in it Looking very much forward to it now, for sure.

Well, that's reassuring. I thought I'd be told that it had been on their fabled "forthcoming releases" list for the last five years (like various other titles I could name).

[knives]

Just want to clarify something. There are no subtitles for Eika Katappa with the music being left untranslated in the disc, correct?

[max_cherry]

Just want to clarify something. There are no subtitles for Eika Katappa with the music being left untranslated in the disc, correct?

Yes, no subtitles on film or extras.

[Tommaso]

Now released: Fragments of Kubelka

And I've just seen the new Lamprecht and Kalatozov discs. The Lamprecht films both come from newly restored prints and look excellent, as expected. I particularly loved "Unter der Laterne", which is very compelling, wonderfully acted (Lissy Arna and Mathias Wieman!)and also somewhat more 'stylish' than some of Lamprecht's earlier silents. This as well as "Menschen untereinander" comes with new soundtracks by Donald Sosin. I only listened to his score for "Unter der Laterne" so far, which I found extremely fitting and idiomatic. Mostly piano, but occasionally also other sampled instruments, and even a grammophone record from Weimar times. Wow, has this man gotten great in the last years! The alternative 'modern' soundtrack doesn't seem bad, either, but I think Sosin is the way to go here (and he most definitely is on "Menschen untereinander", as the alternative soundtrack for that film is a complete disaster which marred that film for me when I first watched the arte transmission some months ago).

Perhaps even more important is the Kalatozov release. While the films are not in as good shape as the Lamprechts, the transfers are excellent and "Salt for Svanetia" is about 14 min. longer than the version that has been floating around in the backchannels (and "Nail in the boot" is also 10 min. longer). Not sure whether this is because of new material or because of slower framerate, though. I really liked the new experimental soundtrack for "Svanetia"; ambient and archaic where needed, but also fittingly dissonant when the Soviets come to the country at the end of the film to ring in the 'modern age'. Very informative booklet here, too, with a lot of details on Kalatozov's early films in general.

Two absolutely wonderful releases, which belong in the collection of every silent film enthusiast. Highly, highly recommended.

[neilist]

New release, a double DVD set of Richard Blank's 'Friedliche Tage' (1983) & 'Prinzenbad' (1993).

Friedliche Tage & Prinzenbad

This double DVD holds two unusual films by Richard Blank. In Friedliche Tage, we enter a totalitarian and inhuman society, in which daily life is a series of nightmares and the protagonists search for a utopia of freedom and love. Prinzenbad gives us a microcosm of a society dominated by male power plays, wheeling and dealing, corruption, love, and eroticism. Both films dispense with established dramatic conventions, instead consolidating scenes, episodes, and stories into a grotesque roundelay of the decline of civil society.

[MichaelB]

The Cinema Ritrovato Awards for 2014 have just been announced, including:

BEST DVD: DZIMN SVANTE (SOL'SVANETII & GVOZD' V SAPOGE
(Michail Kalatozov, USSR, 1930-32) - Edition Filmmuseum (PM, TK)

As part of the series edited under the collection «filmmuseum», the Cineteche of Monaco and the Filmmuseum of Vienna in association with the National Archives of Georgia at Tbilisi have join efforts to rescue from l'oubli two unknown films of Michail Kalatozov, whose cinematographic path has still some parts that remain in the dark. The first film, Džim Švantė (Salt for Svanetia) directed in 1930, is a reconstruction of the harsh daily life conditions of the Caucasus mountains peasants. The second title, Gvozd’ v sapoge (A nail in the boot) from 1932, is a parable about the lack of responsiveness in times of war, that constitutes a dreadful anticipation of the Stalin regime purges. Both films were ristored for the occasion and additioned with a musical comment and subtitles in German and English. The edition is accompanied by a 16-page bilingual booklet (German-English).

(Full press release and other winners here)

[Gregory]

A member at Nitrateville has posted some interesting reports of a premiere of a restoration of Homunculus, using elements obtained from Moscow. Like some other folks here, I've only seen a fragment of this (Part 4) and would love to see more. I wonder if we can expect Filmmuseum to bring this amazing find to DVD.