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Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film Blurb (10.18.05)

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Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film Blurb (10.18.05)

Old 06-30-05, 11:03 PM
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Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film Blurb (10.18.05)

From Barrie Maxwell at the bits

Image seems like the likely source (although unconfirmed) for a new seven DVD, twenty-hour box set called Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film that David Shepard and Bruce Posner have just completed work on. Expected to be released in late 2005, it is a collection of short films made in America or by Americans abroad from the beginnings of cinema until 1941. The seven-disc set will contain over 150 films, with each disc running about 150 minutes and organized thematically: 1: The Mechanized Eye: Experiments in Technique and Form; 2: The Devil's Playground: American Surrealism; 3: Light Rhythms: Music and Abstraction; 4: Inverted Narratives: New Directions in Storytelling; 5: Picturing a Metropolis: New York City Unveiled; 6: The Amateur as Auteur: Discovering Paradise in Pictures; 7: Viva La Dance: The Beginnings of Cine-Dance.
Old 07-22-05, 01:54 AM
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Anthology Film Archives in association with the British Film Institute, Cineric, Film Preservation Associates, Deutsches Filmmuseum, George Eastman House, The Library of Congress, The Museum of Modern Art presents:

Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941

The 7 DVD set includes over 19 hours of footage with a total of 155 films. Avalable October 18, 2005 by Image Entertainment through the Home Video retailer of your choice starting at $99.95.

The DVD series includes work by 100 avant-garde, professional, and amateur filmmakers working before World War II . It is curated by Bruce Posner and produced by film historian David Shepard to a high technical, informational and artistic standard.

Posner and Shepard have worked with the finest archival elements available, sometimes piecing together sequences from different source copies gathered from around the world. Each of the seven DVD programs runs over 2.5 hours and is organized by theme and chronological date of production. 155 films were digitally mastered from newly preserved and restored 35mm and 16mm prints.

The series also reveals hitherto unknown accomplishments of American filmmakers working in the U.S. and abroad from the invention of cinema until World War II. It offers an innovative, often controversial view of experimental film as a product of avant-garde artists, of professional directors, and of amateur movie-makers working collectively and as individuals at all levels of film production. Many of the films have not been available since their creation, some have never been screened in public, and almost all have been unavailable in copies as good as these until now. Sixty of the world’s leading film archive collections cooperated with Anthology Film Archives, curator Bruce Posner and preservationist David Shepard to bring this long-neglected period of film history back to life for modern audiences.

FEATURED FILMMAKERS: Orson Welles, Sergei Eisenstein, Elia Kazan, Ernst Lubitsch, Victor Fleming, Robert Florey, Busby Berkeley, William Cameron Menzies, Charles Vidor, Alexander Alexeieff, Sara Kathryn Arledge, Norman Bel Geddes, Josef Berne, G.W. "Billy" Bitzer, David Bradley, Francis Bruguière, Rudy Burckhardt, Mary Ellen Bute, Theodore Case, Joseph Cornell, Douglass Crockwell, James Cruze, W.L.K. Dickson, Boris Deutsch, Emlen Etting, Walker Evans, Oskar Fischinger, Robert Flaherty, Dwinnell Grant, D.W. Griffith, Jerome Hill, John Hoffman, Hector Hoppin, Theodore Huff, Leo Hurwitz, Lewis Jacobs, Charles Klein, Francis Lee, Fernand Léger, Jay Leyda, Norman McLaren, George L.K. Morris, Dudley Murphy, Claire Parker, Edwin S. Porter, Man Ray, Lynn Riggs, Henwar Rodakiewicz, Rrose Sélavy, Charles Sheeler, Stella Simon, Ralph Steiner, Archie Stewart, Paul Strand, Willard Van Dyke, Slavko Vorkapich, J.S. Watson, Jr., Melville Webber, Lois Weber, Herman G. Weinberg, Elizabeth Woodman Wright and many others.

Special Features include:
• 155 archival films newly preserved and digitally restored from rare archival masters!
• First-time ever synchronized music by George Antheil for Ballet mécanique (1924) performed on 16-player pianos, percussions and drums, sirens, and airplane propeller!
• Original scores by Marc Blitzstein for Surf and Seaweed and Native Land!
• New music by Eric Beheim, Neal Kurz, Paul D. Lehrman, and Donald Sosin!
• Film notes and biographies written by world renowned film historians and scholars!
• Photo gallery of historic production images of the films and filmmakers!

AVAILABLE OCTOBER 18, 2005 AT ALL VIDEO RETAILERS
Presented by Anthology Film Archives
Curated by Bruce Posner
Produced by David Shepard
Old 07-22-05, 08:52 AM
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Busby Berkely and Orson Welles in the same DVD set .... who woulda thought!

This sounds terrific - anoher pricey item to optimistically toss on my DeepDiscount wishlist.
Old 07-22-05, 09:00 AM
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Old 07-22-05, 07:47 PM
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Originally Posted by bboisvert
Woo Hoo!
Old 07-23-05, 06:40 PM
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Just a couple of years too early for Maya Deren's work. T'is a shame.

Wish the set had stretched to 1943 so that could have included Meshes of the Afternoon.

Oh well...still sounds like a great set. Would love to see some Vorkapich stuff outside of his classic Hollywood montages.
Old 07-23-05, 06:50 PM
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It'll be interesting to see how much overlap there is with the Kino avant-garde set coming out 8/2.
Old 07-23-05, 11:58 PM
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Originally Posted by William Fuld
It'll be interesting to see how much overlap there is with the Kino avant-garde set coming out 8/2.
yah...between the two its a lot of time
Old 07-24-05, 01:09 AM
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Originally Posted by TheAllPurposeNothing
Just a couple of years too early for Maya Deren's work. T'is a shame.
It's a good thing that Deren is not taking up space in the set since her films are already on DVD.
Old 07-24-05, 02:42 PM
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Originally Posted by TheAllPurposeNothing
Just a couple of years too early for Maya Deren's work. T'is a shame.
You can easily order her films on a single dvd from here:
http://www.mysticfire.com/index.html
Old 07-24-05, 04:24 PM
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Does anyone else get the feeling that this collection will be a must buy? Between this and the Hitchcock stuff coming out, October is gonna be a wallet emptying month.
Old 07-24-05, 05:12 PM
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Originally Posted by Rothlover
Does anyone else get the feeling that this collection will be a must buy? Between this and the Hitchcock stuff coming out, October is gonna be a wallet emptying month.
It's the biggest release of the year, as far as I'm concerned.
Old 07-24-05, 09:55 PM
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Originally Posted by garmonbozia
You can easily order her films on a single dvd from here:
http://www.mysticfire.com/index.html
How good is the quality on the Mystic Fire DVD??? Saw most of this stuff on film during my experimental film class, but the prints were pretty worn.
Would love to see a proper presentation of the films.
Old 08-04-05, 09:35 PM
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barry maxwell

The previously-announced Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941 will be released on October 18th by Image. As anticipated, it will have 7 discs containing 155 films and will be produced by David Shepard
Old 08-05-05, 01:30 AM
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This is indeed good news. With a potential 20% off DDD sale before years end, what sort of price might we be looking at? ~60?
Old 08-05-05, 10:40 AM
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Sign me up, sounds great.
Old 08-07-05, 01:45 PM
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Here's the website with the box art, films listed, etc:

http://www.unseen-cinema.com/
Old 08-07-05, 01:54 PM
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thanks for the website. those clips were great
Old 08-07-05, 02:37 PM
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How much overlap is there between this and the recently released 2 disc avant-garde set?
Old 08-07-05, 05:08 PM
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Originally Posted by Rothlover
How much overlap is there between this and the recently released 2 disc avant-garde set?
Ballet mécanique, The Hearts of Age, Le Retour à la raison, Anémic cinéma, The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra, H20, and Autumn Fire are on both sets.
Old 08-07-05, 05:52 PM
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Originally Posted by TheAllPurposeNothing
How good is the quality on the Mystic Fire DVD??? Saw most of this stuff on film during my experimental film class, but the prints were pretty worn.
Would love to see a proper presentation of the films.
they look pretty good imo. as good as it is going to look. i owned the vhs before dvd came out, and when I saw these films in film class in college, I don't think we watched actual prints (it was probably just the vhs projected).....so I don't know what your point of reference is.
Old 08-10-05, 02:11 AM
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taken from the HTF

I compared the contents of Kino's 2-disc Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and '30s with Image's upcoming 7-disc Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941 to document the overlap.

In BOTH collections
Anémic cinéma (1931/Duchamp)
Autumn Fire (1931/Weinberg)
Ballet mécanique (1924/Léger)
Even -- As You and I (1937/Barlow, Hay, Robbins)
H2O (1929/Steiner)
The Hearts of Age (1934/Welles, Vance)
The Life and Death of 9413 a Hollywood Extra (1928/Vorkapich, Florey)
Manhatta (1921/Strand, Sheeler)
Le Retour à la raison (1923/Ray)


In Kino but not in Image
La Coquille et le clergyman (1926/Dulac)
Emak-Bakia (1926/Ray)
L'Étoile de mer (1928/Ray)
La Glace à trois faces (1927/Epstein)
Lot in Sodom (1933/Watson, Webber)
Ménilmontant (1926/Kirsanoff)
Les Mystères du château du Dé (1929/Ray)
Regen/Rain (1929/Ivens)
Rhythmus 21 (1921/Richter)
Romance sentimentale (1930/Eisenstein, Alexandrov)
Symphonie diagonale (1924/Eggeling)
Le Tempestaire (1947/Epstein)
Überfall (1928/Metzner)
Le Vampire (1939/Painlevé)
Vormittagsspuk/Ghosts Before Breakfast (1928/Richter)


In Image but not in Kino
146 films---too many to list


Note: The films in the Kino set do not appear to have undergone any significant restoration or clean-up. The Image set is produced by David Shepard, who searched for the best available elements and completed varying degrees of restoration for each film.

The following also appear in the Treasures from American Film Archives sets:

The Fall of the House of Usher
Themis
Skyscraper Symphony
A Bronx Morning
Stewart Home Movies
Old 10-03-05, 11:03 PM
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anybody seen an early review?
Old 12-12-05, 07:45 PM
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read both of these and wanted to pass them along. This release was passed over to little fanfare.

Unseen Cinema - Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941 by DVD Savant

Unseen Cinema

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