Category: DVD review

This is the second part of an article exploring the first two DVD releases of the Center for Visual Music. Part 1 can be found here.

“This is a different kind of DVD,” Cindy Keefer, the director of CVM warned me, adding that she and Belson were wary of reviewers who 1) might expect something similar to Oskar Fischinger, or 2) were unfamiliar with the work of Jordan Belson and might criticize the DVD as being blurry or out of focus. Hard to believe, but I’m sure they’ve heard it. She encouraged me to watch the DVD on …

This is the first part of a two-part posting that will explore the first DVD releases of the venerable Los Angeles-based Center for Visual Music: Oskar Fischinger: Ten Films (2006) and Jordan Belson: 5 Essential Films (2007). CVM is a nonprofit film archive, library, research and education center devoted to “visual music.” It’s directed by Cindy Keefer, who amiably gave me a tour of CVM’s facilities located in downtown’s historic Spring Arts Tower. The Center has a long history of organizing exhibitions and is hard at work on upcoming programs for several European museums and festivals. Keefer has described …

It’s unfortunate that Artur Aristakisyan’s 1993 documentary, Palms (Ladoni), has been a film cited more than seen; it’s an intensely poetic, provocative–even inspiring–account of the poor and destitute in Chisinau (formerly Kishinev), the capital of Moldova. Despite winning a slew of awards, it all but disappeared from sight, in no small part due to its filmmaker’s disdain for the critical establishment as well as his penchant for living a bohemian life. Thankfully, the exemplary UK label, Second Run, has just released the film on DVD, and it’s a major addition to the canon of films focused on …

I’ve just seen a ghost . . . …ditions Gallimard in France has recently released a stunningly-produced DVD of Robert Bresson’s debut feature, Les Anges du PÈchÈ (1943), complete with Anne Wiazemsky’s elaborate (but unsubtitled) 2004 documentary, Anges 1943, Les histoire d’un film. The film was digitally restored and played as part of the “Cannes Classics” revival series in 2005, and it’s so much better than extant unofficial video releases floating around, it’s like seeing it anew. I’ve added my review to the site I co-administrate, Robert-Bresson.com, here.…

Alain Resnais has had difficulty winning an American audience, partly due to the unavailability of much of his work here, and partly due to the avant-garde nature of his first two features (Hiroshima mon amour and Last Year at Marienbad), which caused many US critics to dismiss him as a filmmaker interested in “form over content.” James Monaco offers a fine riposte to one such critic, Pauline Kael, in his book on Resnais:

“Really, Alain Resnais’s films, far from being the complicated and tortuous intellectual puzzles they are reputed to be, are rather simple, elegant, easily understood–and felt–investigations

Au hasard Bresson (1966)

DVD extras aren’t always so informative; you get the impression producers compile whatever they can find off the editing room floor or use the opportunity to re-sell the movie (as if that were needed), with actors and technicians warmly reminiscing about the production.

One of the best DVD extras I’ve seen recently is included with the Criterion Collection’s Mouchette DVD, Theodor Kotulla’s 30-minute Au hasard Bresson, but maybe that’s because it’s a real documentary (that won a German Lola) and not a “featurette.” It offers a rare glimpse into the production of Mouchette, and …