‘DVD Surveys’ Archives
Wojciech J. Has on DVD
As the Barbican Centre in London gears up for a long overdue part retrospective of the career of the man I recently described in Sight & Sound as Polish cinema's only authentic surrealist, I thought I'd post another DVD overview for the benefit of those who can't get there - or indeed those who can, and who'd like to explore further. The good [...]
Miklós Jancsó on DVD
To mark the release next Monday of Second Run's long-awaited DVD of Miklós Jancsó's The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, 1965), here's an overview of the surprisingly impressive number of Jancsó DVDs currently in circulation - provided you don't mind shopping around Britain, the US, France, Italy and Hungary. I'll be looking at many of these in [...]
Paradjanov on DVD: an update
About a year ago, I surveyed what were then all seven English-friendly DVD releases of the films of Sergo Paradjanov for Sight & Sound - concluding that, in general, the Russian Cinema Council (Russia) and Films Sans Frontières (French) releases were superior to the Kino ones (US). That opinion is almost certainly out of date, because Kino [...]
Walerian Borowczyk on DVD
Someone stumbled upon this site in quest of information about Walerian Borowczyk's films on DVD. So just in case they return... 1957 - Once Upon a Time (Był sobie raz..., IMDB) Included in PWA's Anthology of Polish Experimental Animation, Region 0 PAL (with English subtitles) 1957 - Standard of Youth (Sztandar Młodych) Included in PWA's [...]
Jiří Menzel on DVD
Going from private e-mail, last week's Kieślowski DVD survey seemed to have gone down pretty well - so here's a similar overview of Jiří Menzel's output. Unlike the situation with Kieślowski, if you aren't familiar with the Czech DVD market you could be forgiven for thinking that there's next to nothing available besides the inevitable [...]
Krzysztof Kieślowski on DVD
The very welcome arrival of PWA's DVD survey of Krzysztof Kieślowski documentaries earlier today made me realise that of all Polish filmmakers, his output is probably the best represented on English-friendly DVD. So here's a survey of what's available with English subtitles, based on the filmography appended to Culture.pl's admirably thorough [...]