Die Filme des schweiz-amerikanischen Fotografen, Filmemachers und Kameramanns Robert Frank (siehe auch Wikipedia BRD und USA) werden derzeit in den USA auf DVD zugänglich gemacht. Aufmerksam geworden bin ich auf diese überaus kostspielige Edition durch einen Artikel im Filmmaker Magazine:
“The Robert Frank Project” is an ambitious long term publishing program from Steidl which encompasses every bit of images the great Robert Frank created. Known for his photography, primarily with his book “The Americans” (first published in 1958 in Paris and then in 1959 with a text by Jack Kerouac, Frank also made many films, wanting to capture narratives further than he could with stills. Rare and legendary, some of these films reached VHS and the internet trading craze of the 90s. Finally all of his films are being released on DVD.
Drei der zehn geplanten DVD-Sets sind bereits zu einem Preis von jeweils $125,00 bei artbook.com erhältlich.
“Robert Frank: The Complete Film Works, Vol. 1”
The significance of Robert Frank’s photography is unquestionable. His The Americans is arguably the most important American photography publication of the postwar period, and his work has spawned numerous disciples, as well as a rich critical literature. However, it is also true that at the very moment he became a star–the end of the 1950s–Frank chose to abandon still photography for more than 10 years in order to entrench himself in filmmaking. Steidl’s long-overdue DVD compilation of the Complete Film Works provides a comprehensive overview of more than 25 films and videos, some of them classics of the New American Cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. Volume I features a booklet with several in-depth essays and new stills taken from the original films and videos, as well as a DVD containing Me and My Brother, Frank’s first feature-length work; The Sin of Jesus, based on a story by Isaac Babel and with music by Morton Feldman; and the seminal Pull My Daisy, a 1959 short film co-directed by Alfred Leslie, starring Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Peter Orlovsky, David Amram, Richard Bellamy, Alice Neel, Sally Gross and Frank’s then-infant son, and narrated by Jack Kerouac. One of the most important experimental films of the twentieth century, Pull My Daisy, has been deemed “culturally significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
“Robert Frank: The Complete Film Works, Vol. 2”
Here is volume two of Robert Frank’s long-awaited Complete Film Works. At the end of the 1950s, Frank abandoned traditional still photography to become a filmmaker. He eventually returned to photography in the 1970s, but Frank, as a filmmaker, has remained a well-kept secret for almost four decades. Volume two comprises Conversations in Vermont, Liferaft Earth and OK End Here. Conversations in Vermont was produced in 1969, and was Frank’s first autobiographical film, addressing his relationship with his two teenaged children, and partly told through his narration over filmed images of his photographs, family photographs and world famous images. Liferaft Earth opens with a newspaper report from Hayward, California: “Sandwiched between a restaurant and supermarket, 100 anti-population protesters spent their second starving day in a plastic enclosure…The so-called Hunger Show, a week-long starve-in aimed at dramatizing man’s future in an overpopulated, underfed world….” This film was made for Stewart Brand, the visionary founder of the international ecological movement and publisher of the bestselling Whole Earth Catalog (1968-85). OK End Here is Frank’s 1963 short film about inertia in a modern relationship. The film alternates between semi-documentary scenes and shots composed with rigid formality, and suggests the influence of the French Nouvelle Vague and Michelangelo Antonioni’s films.
“Robert Frank: The Complete Film Works, Vol. 3”
Robert Frank, born in Zurich in 1924, has made, in his 50-year career, an unquestionably significant contribution to photography. His seminal book The Americans is arguably the most important American photography publication of the postwar period. His work continues to influence photographers and has spawned a rich body of theoretical writing. Yet at the very moment Frank became an art-world star at the end of the 1950s, he abandoned still photography to become a filmmaker. Though he did return to photography in the 1970s, Frank the filmmaker has remained a well-kept secret for almost four decades. A compilation examining his missing years is long overdue. Robert Frank: The Complete Film Works details each one of Frank’s more than 25 films and videos–many of them classics of 1950s and 60s New American Cinema. Volume 3 of the set, this beautifully packaged publication, features three DVDs–which include Keep Busy (1975), About Me: A Musical (1971) and S-8 Stones Footage from Exile on Main Street (1972)–in a film-roll-box slipcase.
