#123
Post
by Juan Meyer » Sun May 03, 2009 6:29 pm
I guess with the economy as it is, it is getting increasingly difficult for Second Run to release new titles.
For them, or for Criterion, there are a number of great films and filmmakers, many of which have already been mentioned here, which remain sadly out of reach.
I especially look forward to a release of the works of Slobodan Sijan, especially the great Who Sings Over There? Has anybody seen this film? It's hilarious and disturbing, recounting the oddissey of a disparate group making a journey on a rundown buss in the former Yugoslavia. The trip is a tragicomic disaster and it's an eerie harbinger of the things which were to come. Dark but very humane humour. It's a masterpiece. He has other films which I have not seen but look forward to, including The Marathon Family and How My Life was Systematically Destroyed by an Idiot. These DVDs are availabe in the You4You website, but they have no English subtitles.
A film I greatly want to see is The Forest of the Hanged, by Liviu Ciulei, it's a Romanian film which was screened last year in New York, and is said to be the best Romanian film of all time. It's one of the films picked by restoration in the Fund Martin Scorsese has created with other filmmakers to rescue some great works of world cinema.
Most Romanian and Bulgarian filmmaking remains, sadly, practically unknown, as well as Greek Cinema, with the exceptions of Theo Angelopoulos and Michael Cacoyannis.
My Friend Ivan Lapshin, from the former Soviet Union, would also be great.