Restored "Battleship Potemkin" to be released
 

Just got confirmation from Transit Film that the uncensored restoration of this classic will be out next year.

http://www.countercurrents.org/arts-bergan180205.htm

If you haven't seen it with the Meisel score, you have missed a great cinematic experience. (The currently available DVDs use music not written for the film.)

Can't wait to see it with the restored footage!

Mark

_________________________


Dear Mark,

We are in negotiation with Kino International and it looks good that Kino
will release the DVD. Release date Fall 2007.

Best regards,

Mark Grünthal

Great news - thanks for the heads up!

i guess that will finally kill the Eisenstein: The Silent Years Criterion collection...

Maybe it would help the negotations if a few of us emailed KINO to let them know there are people out here waiting for it:

[email protected]

Well, I guess there's always Masters of Cinema for people who want to own a good English-subtitled version on DVD.

I don't see it on their site or on this list of past releases:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...inema_releases

When was it released?

This is good news. Last year I stood on the great steps in Odessa Ukraine which were featured in a key scene of this movie.

I have never seen the film before, but have been curious since my visit.

I hope this turns out well. It is a cinematic masterpiece but the current releases are awful.

It's wishful-thinking or hoping on my part. Masters of Cinema seem to release some of the same big-name Transit titles that Kino does: Metropolis, Faust, Michael, Spione, and (in the near future, apparently) Diary of a Lost Girl and Nosferatu. Potemkin would be an obvious next candidate.

Dang, I was hoping Criterion would get this...

Why? All they will do is market the Transit Films DVD - why would a Criterion version be better than KINO's? Transit Film will do all the restoration and mastering, I think...

A huge quantity of Kino's silent titles are poor PAL->NTSC transfers (with visible ghosting effects). And with minimal extras.

I too was hoping that Criterion would get this. I'll wait to see what happens in R2 (Masters of Cinema or otherwise).

I hear they're not in great shape, but I've never heard of them refered to as awful though. I've not seen it myself, which will hopefully be remedied with this release. :)

But KINO's release of Metropolis was gorgeous, because they just released the Transit Film DVDs in the U.S. Since this will be the same situation (all restoration and mastering handled by TF and the Filmmuseum Berlin), I'm optimistic.

The print is indeed gorgeous, but the transfer was not. It's a PAL->NTSC port, which means two things: (1) It runs a little faster than it should, and (2) it exhibits lots and lots of "ghosting." (Check out the DVD Beaver review.) This admittedly isn't a big problem when you're watching the movie on a regular tube TV, but it's quite noticeable when you watch it on a hi-def screen. Just throw the disc into your DVD-Rom to see for yourself.

The real problem is not that Kino's releases are "bad"; they're just not as good as they could be. They don't invest the same amount of time and effort that Criterion or Masters of Cinema does, yet they charge similarly high prices.