Kommende DVDs und Blu-ray Discs der nächsten Monate vom British Film Institute (BFI):

23. März 2009
DVD + Blu-ray “Samstagnacht bis Sonntagmorgen / Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” [GB 1960, Karel Reisz]

In the industrial streets and factories of Nottingham, Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) spends his days at the factory bench, his evenings in the local pubs and his nights in the arms of Brenda (Rachel Roberts), the wife of a fellow factory worker. Irresistibly handsome and brimming with animal vitality, Arthur is anti-authority and unashamedly amoral.

Based on Alan Sillitoes largely autobiographical novel, and with powerful central performances, crackling dialogue and a superb jazz score by Johnny Dankworth, the film stands as a vibrant modern classic. This Seminal film of the British New Wave was a great box-office success – audiences were thrilled by its anti-establishment energy, gritty realism, and above all its fresh, outspoken working-class hero.

• Commentary by film historian Robert Murphy, with writer Alan Sillitoe and cinematographer Freddie Francis.
• New interview with Shirley Anne Field.
• Interview with Albert Finney.
• Illustrated booklet containing essays and biographies.
• We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959), Karel Reiszs classic Free Cinema documentary.
• Feature presented with dual mono PCM audio (48k/16-bit), extras Dolby Digital mono audio (320kbps)

 
23. März 2009
DVD + Blu-ray: “Die Einsamkeit des Langstreckenläufers / The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” [GB 1962, Tony Richardson]

Colin (Tom Courtenay) is a defiant teenager who rebels against the system, refusing to follow his dying father into a factory job, railing against the capitalist bosses and preferring to make a living from petty thieving.
Sent to borstal, Colin discovers his talent for cross-country running. The borstal governor (Michael Redgrave) offers him the chance to redeem himself in a race against a local public school, and tensions build as the day approaches.
Following the huge success of Karel Reiszs Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe here adapted another of his works for the screen. Newcomer Tom Courtenay is compelling as the sullen, disillusioned delinquent in the British New Wave classic, a passionate, explosive tale of rebellion.

• Commentary by film historian Robert Murphy, with lead actor Tom Courtenay and writer Alan Sillitoe.
• Video essay by cinematographer Walter Lassally.
• Illustrated booklet including essays and biographies.
• Momma Dont Allow (1956), Tony Richardsons Free Cinema documentary shot by Walter Lassally.
• Feature presented with dual mono PCM audio (48k/16-bit), extras Dolby Digital mono audio (320kbps)

 
30. März 2009
DVD + Blu-ray: “Of Time and the City” [GB 2008, Terence Davies]
For Of Time and the City, Terence Davies returned to his native Liverpool and to his filmmaking roots to capture a sense of the city today and its influences on him growing up in the late 1940s and early 50s. His highly personal, acclaimed eulogy is also a response to memory, reflection and the experience of losing a sense of place as the skyline changes and time takes it toll.

Composed largely of atmospheric archive footage accompanied by Davies’s lyrical narration and a melancholy, nostalgic soundtrack, the film seamlesly intersperses Davies’s personal memories and experiences with observations about the history and culture of this iconic city.

• The making of Of Time and the City (2009) – in new interviews, Terence Davies and the film’s producers and archive producer discuss the making of the film and the inspirations behind it
• Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings, Stuart McAllister, 1942) the classic wartime documentary which helped inspire Of Time and the City, presented with a personal introduction by Terence Davies
• Q&A with Terence Davies at Cambridge Arts Picturehouse
• Original trailer
• Illustrated booklet featuring essays, credits and director biography.

 
30. März 2009

DVD: “Derek” [GB 2008, Isaac Julien]
An imaginative and loving appreciation of Derek Jarman, from filmmaker Isaac Julien (Looking for Langston, Young Soul Rebels) and actress Tilda Swinton, who appeared in many of Jarman’s films, and who here acts as an executive producer, screenwriter, and narrator. This documentary is a very good introduction to both Jarman the man — a World War II baby, 1960s reveller, and mature artist from the 1970s until his death from AIDS in 1994 — and Jarman the multi-talented painter, theatre and film designer, author, activist, and filmmaker.

 
19. April 2009
DVD: “Partner” [I 1968, Bernardo Bertolucci]
 
27. April 2009
DVD + Blu-ray: “Pasolini: Trilogy of Life”

• 3 discs
• Exclusive alternate English-language soundtracks
• Original trailers

Pasolini’s colourful, entertaining and highly erotic Trilogy comes to Blu-ray and DVD in sumptuous new hi-definition transfers from the original negatives. In The Decameron (1970), The Canterbury Tales (1971) and Arabian Nights (1974) Pasolini plunged with gusto into bawdy, earthy tales of love and lovemaking in all its myriad forms. Each film is based on a famous story cycle, and these tales of lusty nuns and priests, murdered lovers, slaves and kings are luscious, liberating, and joyful.

DVD + Blu-ray: “Decameron / Il Decameron / The Decameron” [I / F / BRD 1971, Pier Paolo Pasolini]
The first film in Pasolini’s ‘Trilogy of Life’ (followed by The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights) is an adaptation of ten bawdy stories by 14th century Italian writer Boccaccio, featuring betrayed husbands and dead lovers, immoral nuns and unlikely saints.

Sickened by empty left-wing sloganizing and by the way that hard-won sexual freedom was being commercially exploited, Pasolini’s Decameron was an act of artistic rebellion. Pasolini himself takes the role of Giotto and his construction of the frescoes of the church of Santa Chiara provides a symbolic framing to eight of Boccaccio’s stories. The beauty of the naked, youthful human body, of the sexual act in all its diversity, and of the Italian landscape, is undercut by the ugliness of social relations in which the rich, the church, artisans, exploit each other and the poor.

DVD + Blu-ray: “Pasolinis tolldreiste Geschichten / I racconti di Canterbury / The Canterbury Tales” [I / F 1972, Pier Paolo Pasolini]
Pasolini the artist takes the role of Chaucer the artist who looks and smiles and brings into being an archaic, anarchic world in which every frame emphasizes the social position of the characters and makes plain the objects of their desires. Constant voices off, songs and the presence of myriads of extras stress the place of characters in the collectivity. A series of more or less grotesque vignettes explore the diverse manifestations of sex, love and death, and what the poor do to get their own back.

DVD + Blu-ray: “Erotische Geschichten aus 1001 Nacht / Il fiore delle mille e una notte / Arabian Nights” [I / F 1974, Pier Paolo Pasolini]
Following ‘The Decameron’ and ‘The Canterbury Tales’, Pasolini completed his ‘Trilogy of Life’ series with this adaptation of a number of tales from ‘The Thousand and One Nights’. With its non-linear design structured around dreams and tales within tales, his telling of the story of Zumurrud, slave girl turned empress, is truly entrancing.

In slave markets and royal bedrooms, and with magic signs and evil demons, special potions and devious betrayals, these stories of love and destiny, sadism and passion deferred make a challenging and beautiful masterpiece, vast in scope.
 
27. April 2009
DVD: “Parade” [F / S 1974, Jacques Tati]
Never before released on UK video, this is French master of comedy Jacques Tati’s final film in which he goes behind the scenes of a circus, effacing the boundaries between performers and audience. This is a must have for all Tati completists.
 
18. Mai 2009
DVD + Blu-ray: “Magic Lantern” [USA, Kenneth Anger]
More than any other filmmaker of his generation, Kenneth Anger is recognized by the public as a maker of underground, experimental cinema. To mainline film critics he is the first-remembered such filmmaker, one who combines cinematic talent and an aura of scandal. This collection of films known as the Magick Lantern Cycle includes Fireworks, Scorpio Rising and Lucifer Rising which stars British 60’s icon Marianne Faithfull.
 
18. Mai 2009
DVD: “Lucky Star” [USA 1929, Frank Borzage]
This film was the last silent film Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor made as a team, and their soulful chemistry is more evident in this film than any other they made together. The story revolves around the relationship between Mary, a poor farm girl, and Tim, who Mary meets just before he is posted to the battlefields of Europe in World War I and their subsequent reunion upon Tim’s wounded return.
 
18. Mai 2009
DVD: “Im siebten Himmel / Seventh Heaven [aka: 7th Heaven]” [USA 1927, Frank Borzage]
Seventh Heaven, directed by Frank Borzage, is a tender love story set in pre-World War I Paris which unites two unlikely people in becoming a highly popular twosome. It stars the pert and angelic Janet Gaynor opposite the tall but not-so-rugged Charles Farrell in their initial union, their first of twelve movies in which they were to appear together. The film won three Oscars including the Best Actress award for Janet Gaynor and also the Best Director award for Frank Borzage.