the austrian film museum is going to release a double DVD (edition filmmuseum 44) around the 25th of september - i guess its 29 euros like the straub-huillet box.
two features by the canadian born and probably outside from vienna very little known filmmaker john cook. restored and with english subtitles. one is "langsamer sommer" (1974-76), the other one is "schwitzkasten" (1978) and as an extra his documentary "ich schaff's einfach nimmer". if there was sthg like an austrian new wave in the 70s, cook occupied a central position. anyway, very interesting documents of vienna in the 70s. his credo was sthg like "documentaries should look like feature films and feature films should give you a feeling of reality like a documentary". to me this is probably the most anticipated release of the year. high recommendation!

Specs for the John Cook films are now at the filmmuseum site. Release is somewhere in September. The Ruttmann set has again been postponed and is now set for October...hmmm...

Good news is that the filmmuseum discs seem to be carried again by jpc. At least they now have "The River" and "Nerven" available (with release dates given as 31.08.08 and 12.09.08 respectively, rather strange as both discs are already out, of course). But pricing is considerably cheaper than filmmuseum, especially as you can of course order other things to save on shipping costs. Hope this continues with the Ruttmann.

I haven't noticed this mentioned in a quick scan of the last few pages, but I just noticed it during my frequent, always-frustrated check up on the progress of the big Kluge set.

EFM Set No 5 is The Other Weimar, a collection of the following eight discs for E114.95 (saving about 35 Euro):
Vom Reiche der Sechs Punkte
Nathan der Weise
Nerven
Bergmann-Michel Dokumentarische Filme 1931-33
Friedrich Schiller - Eine Dichterjugend
Anders als die Andren
Die elf Teufel / Konig der Mittelsturmer

A nice way to pick up lots of obscure German silents.

Release dates are up: November 20th for Hedy Lamarr, November 28th for Berlin.

Kornblum's "Wunder der Schöpfung" is now announced for March 2009.

Specs as follows:

* Wunder der Schöpfung 1925, 80'
* Musik von Aljoscha Zimmermann und Sabrina Zimmermann
* Kapitelwahl
* The Einstein Theory of Relativity 1923, 20'
* Musik von Günter A. Buchwald
* Hanns Walter Kornblum erzählt 1967, 35'
* 12seitiges Booklet mit Texten von Hanns Walter Kornblum

DVD Times on Nerven

...and Journey to Justice

Both Edition Filmmuseum and Filmarchiv Austria listed the running time of their upcoming DVD Die freudlose Gasse as 142 minutes (20 fps). According to imdb this seems to be the ZDF/arte 1996-1998 restored version.

Wow, Sir Karl, I didn't even know that there was already info on "Gasse" on the filmmuseum site. Seems one can only get it via their search function. I may have misremembered the running time, or the 185 min. result from a slower speed. Anyway, great to see it's finally coming.

Specs:
* Die freudlose Gasse 1925, 148'
* Musikbegleitung von Aljoscha Zimmermann
* Kapitelwahl
* Presse-, Aushangs- und Arbeitsfotos
* Der andere Blick 1991, 130'
* Pabst wieder sehen 1997, 20'
* ROM-Bereich mit Drehbuchentwürfen und Dokumenten zum Film
* Booklet mit Essays zum Film von Jan-Christopher Horak und Werner Sudendorf

Coming May 2009.

There's also info on the upcoming Raffé and Dieterle disc.

Specs:
* Das Schweigen am Starnberger See 1920, 80'
* Kapitelwahl
* Musikbegleitung von Günter A. Buchwald
* Ludwig der Zweite, König von Bayern 1930, 120'
* Kapitelwahl
* Musikbegleitung von Joachim Bärenz
* Im Ozean der Sehnsucht 1986, 107'
* Plakate, Standfotos und Werbeanzeigen für den Film
* Booklet mit einem Essay von Ulrich Kurowski

Coming February 2009. Looks like a great double discer!

Oh, and the Ruttmann disc is finally OUT TODAY!
Man, this label is easily going to be my favourite in 2009, considering these films and the Kornblum and perhaps also "Das Mädchen Sumiko" and the Buchowetzki are coming. Yip!

Yesterday I took delivery of the Ruttmann Berlin set. It is stunning and well worth the wait!

So far, I've only managed to see disc 1, but apart from the "Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großstadt" film, the shorts and adverts. are extremely interesting.

I think I agree with a previous poster that in "Berlin, dSdG" there are some extra scenes which are not present in the previous version I had on DVD.

Another marvellous issue from the German Filmmuseum.

P.S. slightly off topic, but also received the new BFI Lotte Reiniger Fairy Tales set... What a great end to the year for German silent film fans!

Let me add to the praise for the new Ruttmann set, which really has all the right ingredients to blow any lover of silent and/or experimental film away.
I think I gave my comments on the new "Berlin" resto with the original Meisel score earlier in this thread, so let me move on straight to the other films. The first big surprise already comes with this new version of "Opus 1": they restored the original colours here, and if you've only ever seen the film in its earlier dvd incarnations, the impact is just striking. The colours now are vivid, eye-popping, and have an almost psychedelic effect. The impression is underlined by the original string quintet score by Max Butting, a great composition in the vein of early Schönberg which gives the film a strong emotional quality and almost makes it appear that the dance of the various abstract forms tell some sort of story which one however cannot quite pin down and narrate. It's fascinating to see the development of Ruttmann through the four "Opus" films, with formal concentration and abstraction developing from film to film to the pure geometrical and architectural forms of "Opus 4".
Almost as interesting and relevant are the six films Ruttmann made as industry commercials at the same time, using the same abstract styles and combining them with animation to striking effect. A good reminder that the avantgarde and a wider audience were not mutually exclusive at the time.

The second disc contains three sound films. "Melodie der Welt", the longest of them, tries to give an overview of the similarities in human behaviour all over the world in various fields of activity, basically using editing to match 'analogous' activity ; for instance, Ruttmann cuts from Japanese wrestlers to European boxing and somebody fighting a kangaroo in a box ring (weird!) and so on with all sorts of examples. This is fascinating, though perhaps a little too obvious and easy for modern tastes; in any case, the film never reaches the quality of "Berlin", but it has wonderful footage all around and is well worth seeing. "In der Nacht" is a brief visual interpretation of a Schumann piano piece, and somewhat reminded me of Eisenstein's "Romance sentimentale" in some moments. The most interesting piece, however, is "Weekend", a film without images or actually a sort of experimental radio play made using the optical sound track of the film material. The result is something like the early musique concrète of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, but Ruttmann made this 20 years earlier! Amazing, though whether you call it a film or a piece of acoustic art remains a question. It was transmitted on the radio at the time, but was also shown by Ruttmann in the cinema.

So, this set contains everything that still exists of Ruttmann's work prior to 1933, and the films alone should be worth the price of it alone, easily (re-)establishing Ruttmann as one of the foremost and most innovative figures of the avantgarde at the time. And I almost forgot to add that all the transfers are absolutely impeccable: great greyscale and detail, no manipulations, no compression issues or any other abnormalities. The sound films appear in 1.19, which is much appreciated of course. The prints show their age, but that is hardly surprising.

But as always with filmmuseum, the goodies don't end here. There's a great booklet with statements by Ruttmann and two brief, but highly informative essays and restoration notes (sadly, they only translated the Ruttmann text and the resto notes into English, so the situation here is somewhat comparable to the booklet of the NFI's "Brudeferden" set). On-screen extras include a gallery of photos from the 'Congres du cinéma independent La Sarraz' from 1929 (with Eisenstein making some hilarious fun there), and a gallery with early paintings and drawings by Ruttmann. Furthermore, there is a huge ROM-part containing contemporary texts, documents and analyses in German, English, and French (though nothing here is translated, its just that these texts were originally written in these languages) which look extremely informative. The best extra, however, is an 86-minute radio essay called "Walter Ruttmann – Der Visionär bewegter Bilder" which centres on "Weekend" and gives a very fine and detailed analysis of it as a quasi-musical piece, but also covers Ruttmann's whole career and gives tremendous insight into his relation with other artists, his aesthetics, the reception of his work and so on. As this is audio only, there are no subs for this, and so you'd have to understand German to make use of it. But if you speak the language, don't miss this by any means! Perhaps the best dvd extra I encountered for a very long time.

Okay, so much for now. I guess I could just have written: RUN, DON'T WALK , AND GET THIS DISC! I had really high expectations for this set, but the result exceeded anything I ever expected. Disc of the year, no doubt about it (I know, Murnau Borzage, but let's be fair about this one....).

Further to my ongoing saga of amused frustration, the latest release date for the complete Kluge set (Jan 16) has passed without it becoming orderable, and the release date has now been altered on their website to "Very soon." Whether that's measured in calendar or geological time is anybody's guess.

DVD Talk on Hedy Lamarr: Secrets of a Hollywood Star

I'm kinda selfishly relieved, since I've run out of dough. The thought of this beauty being avaliable and me not able to put my hands on it is painful.

DVD Talk on Berlin.

Just went to the ZweitausendEins store right around here and they said that the Kluge TV set is delayed and that they expect it to come out or in the store at 22th of February.

Thanks for your interest. A review of Lutz Dammbeck: Filme und Mediencollagen 1975-1986 is available here.

The Alexander Kluge boxset of Filmmuseum Edition has been altered again on their website and announces as release date february 20 2009.
The reason given for the several delays is covered by the following explanation:

"ALEXANDER KLUGE: The release of the last Alexander Kluge DVD is delayed because it will contain the new book by Alexander Kluge "Seen sind fuer Fische Inseln" which is still in production. Unfortunately we depend on our partner Zweitausendeins who postpones the release of the book from week to week. Before the collection is completed, the recently released Kluge 2-disc DVD's will be on sale for Euro 14,95 as a special offer."

The Kluge TV films are finally available at 2001 (on time for his 77th birtday, according to 2001):

2001 link

The Alexander Kluge 1960-2008 TV and Film box set (Edition Filmmuseum 20-34) has finally arrived and can be ordered now at a modest € 159,95.
Zedz (and others) waiting is over!

thjanklyou

i am tyopi ng rthis blind as i havr fal;en out of my chaor and can;t seem, to get up

And I should also report that, when ordering from outside Germany, this comes down to a gratifying €134 - less than 5€ per disc. Realising this after I'd come to terms with the horrendous exchange rate made me very happy indeed!

Although the hefty shipping charge pretty much erases the discount. Oh, well, I needed something to spend my tax refund on.

I'm told my order shipped today.

Comparing notes, it appears that Filmmuseum charge a flat fee of 13.88 EUR for shipping internationally, regardless of the number of titles you order, so it might pay to soak up some of their other delights at the same time. You can also order several Danish Film Institut titles from them (e.g. three early Dreyers, the indispensible Christensen twofer, some of the Jorgen Leth collections).

Dear fellow members,

A little problem with the shipment of my Alexander Kluge box set send by Edition Filmmuseum:

(Quote e-mail)

"Dear costumer,

Kindly pardon that due to logistic reason your order of ALEXANDER KLUGE FILMS & TELEVISION WORKS had been sent without box and booklet (italics mine).
We will ship these two items separately and you should receive them till mid march .

Sorry for the inconvenience,

Kind regards"

Just to let you know.