Film Restoration and Preservation

Started by wilder, January 16, 2013, 09:30:59 PM

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wilberfan

Nice.  Thanks Marty!   How do we participate?  :ponder:

WorldForgot

Quote from: wilder on April 22, 2022, 02:05:10 PMMartin Scorsese Foundation Launches Free Virtual Screening Room For Film Restorations
The Playlist

Martin Scorsese is taking his love of cinema in a new direction. His long-running nonprofit The Film Foundation, dedicated to film preservation and the exhibition of restored and classic cinema, is officially launching a free virtual screening room to showcase film restorations.

The first Film Foundation restoration screening is set to launch Monday, May 9, and will feature the 1945 romantic comedy "I Know Where I'm Going!," directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film stars Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey. Scorsese is a longtime admirer of Powell and Pressburger. His longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker was married to Michael Powell for six years and the Scorsese was able to get to know the legendary English filmmaker intimately through her.


Quote from: wilberfan on April 22, 2022, 05:23:39 PMNice.  Thanks Marty!   How do we participate?  :ponder:

https://delphiquest.com/film-foundation/restoration-screening-room

wilder

James Mockoski: New 4K Restoration of Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart Coming Soon

James Mockoski, archivist and restoration supervisor for Francis Ford Coppola's company American Zoetrope, revealed today that he is overseeing a brand new 4K restoration of One From the Heart (1982). Preliminary plans for an upcoming 4K Blu-ray release have not yet been revealed.

Description: Legendary director Francis Ford Coppola shines his spotlight on a Las Vegas couple (Teri Garr, Frederic Forrest) whose break-up on the 4th of July leads them both to a night on the strip in pursuit of their romantic fantasies (Raul Julia, Nastassia Kinski). But in this town of gamblers and dreamers, should they bet it all on dreams, or give true love another roll of the dice?

Featuring breathtaking design, show stopping set pieces, the stunning photography of Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, The Last Emperor) and accompanied by the wonderful Oscar nominated music of the one and only Tom Waits, this neon explosion of color, sound and innovation is a cinematic valentine for all movie lovers.


wilder

L'Inferno (1911) was recently restored in 4K and is getting a very limited run blu-ray release via IndieGogo



QuoteL'Inferno is a 1911 Italian silent film, loosely adapted from Inferno, the first canticle of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. L'Inferno took over three years to make, and was the first full-length Italian feature film.

The ambitiousness of early Italian film production is marked in a series of grand-themed epic feature films that were produced long before the feature film took hold in Europe and America. Only the Australians had embraced the feature film before the whole-hearted dedication to the form by the Italians.

In L'Inferno (1911) we have a fine example of early epic filmmaking, for the scope of the subject matter is broad and the production is visually impressive. Themes of Italian history were often chosen in early Italian feature films to signal the solemn artistic intent of their filmmakers and to provide a more dramatic perceived context within which to mount lengthier stories. L'Inferno is no exception from this trend.

Based on the first part of Dante Alighieri's mammoth epic poem The Divine Comedy, L'Inferno faithfully follows the source poem in its representation of the journey of the author Dante through the realm of Hell as guided by the master poet Virgil. The production design is highly-influenced by and faithful to the illustrations of Gustave Dore, and is a visual treat for the viewer.








wilder

A 4K restoration of Álex de la Iglesia's Acción mutante (1993) is forthcoming from Severin


In a futuristic Spain lorded over by the rich and good-looking (often thanks to cosmetic surgery), a group calling themselves Accion Mutante (Mutant Action) begin a violent uprising. Led by Ramon (Antonio Resines), bearing assorted disabilities, and united by their disgust with the status quo, they massacre everything from an aerobics class to the wedding of heiress Patricia (Frédérique Feder). Kidnapping the young woman, the gang go on the run with the authorities pursuing and distrust rearing its ugly head among them, while Patricia falls for Ramon ("Not the Stockholm Syndrome again!"). And things only get more brutal when the crew wind up on a desolate mining planet...

wilder

Hundreds of classic Polish films made available for free online
Notes from Poland

Hundreds of classic Polish films have been made available to watch legally for free online as part of a project funded by the European Union and Poland's culture ministry.

Among the films published on the 35mm.online website – all of which have English subtitles – are works by famed directors Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieślowski, including the former's Man of Marble and Man of Iron and the latter's Three Colours trilogy.

The new service includes 160 feature films, 71 documentaries, and 474 animated films and TV shows, including classic children's favourites such as Reksio. The project also features 3,108 episodes of the Polish Film Chronicle, a newsreel shown in cinemas before films from 1944 to 1994.

As well as being available on the 35mm.online website, the films can also be viewed through an app for Android and iOS phones and an Android app for smart TVs.

wilder

Quote from: wilder on February 14, 2021, 10:38:14 AMGyörgy Kovásznay's Habfürdo (1979) was just restored in 4K and there's speculation Arbelos (or Criterion?) will be putting it out



A man wants out of a marriage and tries to convince a friend of the bride-to-be to tell her the bad news.

QuoteHungarian artist, writer, and editor György Kovásznay was a prolific painter and animator, working primarily in the 1960s and 70s. He made a couple dozen shorts, but Habfürdő (variously translated as "Foam Bath" or "Bubble Bath") is his sole feature, and his magnum opus. The plot is slight—focused on a studious nurse, her sexy nurse friend, and her friend's hypochondriac fiancé—but the animation is a roiling, dynamic tapestry of ever-shifting styles. Kovásznay considered his films to be extensions of his painting, and brings to them a kinetic, kaleidoscopic energy and a visual style that Eyeworks co-curator Alexander Stewart has likened to Ralph Bakshi. Habfürdő is a modernist-infused cartoon, with musical numbers, that reflects on social and personal relationships in a communist society in flux.






Quote from: Letterboxd user momalleyA supremely strange animated rumination on domesticity and marriage. I can't claim to really know much about Hungarian animation, but this film's style, in which the character models and backgrounds are in constant motion, stretching and twisting and ballooning in concert with the emotional register of the characters (or, sometimes, seemingly just on a whim), feels pretty radical to me--like a proto-Bill Plympton but on a metric ton of acid.

Currently streaming on Mubi


wilder

MEU NOME É TONHO (Dir. Ozualdo Candeias, 1969)



Quote from: The SpectacleSpectacle Theater and Cinelimite are proud to present Ozualdo Candeias second feature, the essential Cinema Marginal film, MEU NOME É TONHO.

Completed just two years after Candeias' debut cornerstone, A MARGEM, MEU NOME É TONHO is Candeias' first exploration into the Brazilian western. Photographed by master cinematographer, Peter Overbeck (THE RED LIGHT BANDIT) and scored by the virtuosic Brazilian composer, Paulinho Nogueira, Candeias follow-up feature is a raw and poetic western which compares to almost nothing in the western canon (a la the Italian Spaghetti westerns of Leone or Corbucci or any of the films of John Ford, Hawks, etc).

Filled with an unsettling sense of macabre humor, unremitting violence, and a demonic collective laughter that is louder and perhaps even more perverse than the sounds of the colt revolvers from the antagonistic Manelão gang, MEU NOME É TONHO unravels as a sardonic descent into Candeias' madness which includes an anarchic sense of pacing and some of the most remarkable and bewildering moments of montage and hand-held cinematography in the history of cinema.

The story of Tonho's revenge on the Manelão gang while straightforward in nature is told through sparse dialog, symbolic imagery, and Candeias' unique sense of pace which is felt and controlled by the ambient sounds of the terrain juxtaposed by the echoing laughter of the depraved, land-grabbing gang. MEU NOME É TONHO is not just essential Brazilian cinema but is also some of the most inventive filmmaking that came out of the 1960's.

WorldForgot

Spectacle Theater iz the best venue in NYC, no contest.

wilder

A new restoration of Patrice Chéreau's The Wounded Man (1983) opens at Anthology Film Archives in NY January 5th



Henri is a frustrated teenager living with his parents in a provincial French coastal town. When they drag him to the train station to bid adieu to his sister, Henri sneaks off to a secluded bathroom and interrupts a hustler named Jean satisfying the masochistic desires of an older male client. Henri falls desperately in love with the sexy criminal, but Jean evades Henri's affections. Undeterred, Henri shadows Jean as he traverses the dark and dangerous underbelly of their sleepy village. But as he descends deeper and deeper into Jean's world, there may not be an easy way out.

Patrice Chéreau's 1983 drama is a revelation: an amazingly accomplished work that genuinely channels the transgressive, unsanitized sensibility of Jean Genet, boasting a breakout lead performance by young Jean-Hugues Anglade and a script that took co-writers Chéreau and legendary gay French author and activist Hervé Guibert six years to perfect. The result is a rich, strange, and sumptuous film leading us to exhilaratingly mysterious and unfamiliar spaces both physical and psychological.

wilder

Quote from: wilder on March 01, 2021, 08:19:14 PM2023 TBD

John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) on 4K UHD blu-ray from new label Deaf Crocodile



An unlikely partnership between a Highway Patrol Officer, two criminals and a station secretary is formed to defend a defunct Los Angeles precinct office against a siege by a bloodthirsty street gang.



Quote"Almost all of John Carpenter's movies are owned by large entertainment conglomerates. One exception is ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, which is owned by people who made it," says Joseph Kaufman. "As executive producer of the film, I am excited to work with Deaf Crocodile on a 4K scan of the original camera negative, and the possibility of applying new technology, including HDR10 and Dolby Vision, to extract much more from the negative image than has been possible before, while still respecting the movie's original roots."


wilder

Deaf Crocodile is Kickstarting a blu-ray release of Jiří Barta's The Pied Piper (1986)







QuoteBorn in Prague in 1948, Barta studied film at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, and began making his first stop motion animated shorts in the late 1970s and early 1980s, often using wood, fur, hair and other organic materials to create his strange and Gothic visions.  His early short "The Vanished World Of Gloves" (Zaniklý svet rukavic, 1982) is a marvelous and eccentric tour through cinema history, told entirely through animated gloves.

In the mid-1980s, Barta began work on his first feature – and acknowledged masterpiece -- THE PIED PIPER (KRYSAR, 1986).  Based on The Pied Piper of Hamelin, is set in a dark and twisted medieval village of narrow streets and weird Gothic arches, half-CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and half-Jan van Eyck.  The money-obsessed citizens, carved out of wood blocks and speaking in an onomatopoeic babble (invented by Barta himself) are like George Grosz caricatures, literally spouting coins from their mouths instead of words.  The rats are far more organic and sympathetic, made of real fur and whiskers, constantly tunneling and burrowing under the towering arches and cobblestone streets above.  (In one of the film's many surreal moments, a rat emerges from a gargoyle's gaping maw.)

Your continued support is what allows us to bring these cinematic and cultural gems back from oblivion - introducing them to all-new audiences.

wilder

4K restoration of Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation (1995) is forthcoming from Strand Relasing


QuoteThe Doom Generation, restored in 4K with scenes edited for it's theatrical release in 1995, this version reflects the director's cut, intended by Araki. The film has been completely retimed and reedited for today's technological standards. The sound is remastered to compliment today's new audio standards in a new 5.1 mix.

WorldForgot

Quote from: wilder on March 09, 2023, 07:13:48 AM4K restoration of Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation (1995) is forthcoming from Strand Relasing


QuoteThe Doom Generation, restored in 4K with scenes edited for it's theatrical release in 1995, this version reflects the director's cut, intended by Araki. The film has been completely retimed and reedited for today's technological standards. The sound is remastered to compliment today's new audio standards in a new 5.1 mix.

OMIGOD!!!!

So fkn excited. Hopefully this meanz we'll get the full Teen Apocalypse trilogy (or all of Araki's work??) remastered for bluz. Even Splendor deserves that ~

wilder

Severin Reveals New Restorations of Cult Juraj Herz and Yoshihiro Ishikawa Films
blu-ray.com

Severin has revealed brand new restorations of three cult films, two directed by Juraj Herz, and one directed by Yoshihiro Ishikawa. The films are: Morgiana (1972)The Ninth Heart (1979), and Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit (1968).

All three restorations will make their debut on the big screen at the Salem Horror Fest next month, with Blu-ray editions to follow later this year.


MORGIANA (Juraj Herz, Czechoslovakia 1972)

US Theatrical Premiere of new restoration courtesy of Severin Films
Introduced by House of Psychotic Women author Kier-La Janisse

The best known in the West of Slovak filmmaker Juraj Herz' enchanting genre films (The Cremator (1969), Beauty and the Beast (1978), The Ninth Heart (1979) and Ferat Vampir (1982) among them), Morgiana is about two sisters – neither of whom is named Morgiana, that's the cat, who gets her own cat-cam – who are placed in opposition when one of them inherits the majority of their father's estate. In a brilliantly affecting dual performance by actress Iva Janžurová, the raven-haired Viktorie contrives to poison her naive fair-haired sister Klara when she is driven mad with jealousy over both their financial predicament and Klara's abundance of attention from possible suitors. As her sister becomes weaker and more prone to kaleidoscopic hallucinations, Viktorie's flamboyance threatens to foil her own murderous plans.

Morgiana is a dark fairytale bursting with extravagance - baroque garden parties, dramatic eye makeup, vintage tarot cards, fish-eye lenses – absolutely breathtaking stuff and a fitting gateway to Herz' brilliant ouevre. (Kier-La Janisse, excerpted from House of Psychotic Women)

House of Psychotic Women books and box sets will be available at the Severin table throughout the first weekend of the festival.


THE NINTH HEART (Juraj Herz, Czechoslovakia 1979)

US Theatrical Premiere of new restoration courtesy of Severin Films

Though Juraj Herz' most critically-lauded work remains his 1969 film The Cremator – first released on DVD in 2006 and given the Criterion treatment in 2020 – his opulent fairytale The Ninth Heart (featured briefly in the documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, playing elsewhere in the festival) is an uncanny trip into an underworld of automatons, stolen hearts and magic. A struggling student befriends an itinerant marionette troupe (led by iconic actor Josef Kemr, who also appeared in folk horror favorites Marketa Lazarová and Witchhammer), and when they collectively run afoul of the local Lord, he volunteers to rescue the Lord's daughter, who has been put under a spell by an evil alchemist. Inanimate objects spring to life as the living succumb to death in the topsy-turvy world of this dark fable.

Herz has been noted by historian Kat Ellinger as the only filmmaker in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia to openly identify as a horror director, and studied puppetry at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague alongside Jan Svankmajer, who would remain a key collaborator (Svankmajer's wife Eva designed the poster for The Ninth Heart and both provided visual effects and animation). It is thus in The Ninth Heart that many of his aesthetic and thematic obsessions converge — puppetry, poverty, imprisonment and death — illuminated by a parade of golden candelabras and a playful sense of the grotesque. (Kier-La Janisse)

Copies of Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched and the accompanying box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror will be available at the Severin Table throughout the first weekend of the festival.


BAKENEKO: A VENGEFUL SPIRIT (Yoshihiro Ishikawa, Japan 1968)

World Premiere of New 2K restoration from Severin Films

Also known as Ghost Cat of the Cursed Pond, Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit is one of the many mid-century Japanese explorations of "Kaibyo" or "ghost cat" mythology, and one of the best. Director Yoshihiro Ishikawa was no stranger to kaibyo country, having co-written Nobuo Nakagawa's equally chilling Black Cat Mansion (1958) and directed Ghost Cat of Otama Pond (1960). Released the same year as Kaneto Shindo's more well-known Kuroneko, Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit mines that indelible trope of the cat ghost story: a violent and greedy Lord kills a young woman when she refuses to become his concubine, only for her cat to drink her blood and become her shapeshifting avenger. "Beginning in a quietly haunting vein reminiscent of Ugetsu," wrote Spectacle Theatre in their promotional text for a 2016 screening of the film, "Bakeneko descends into a nightmarish parade of splattered blood, decapitations and ghosts gnawing on severed limbs." Not to be missed by anyone with a beloved feline familiar! (Kier-La Janisse)


This screening of Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit is held in conjunction with the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies' presentation of Alexandra West's multimedia lecture "The Cat Came Back: Feline Familiars in the Horror Genre".