60 Liverpool

[hammock]

Liverpool

To be released on August 22nd, 2011.

[antnield]

[Alan Smithee]

This is available on watch instant netflix now as well.

[What A Disgrace]

According to Amazon, this has been delayed until January.

[knives]

Bounced over to February according to Amazon.

[Bikey]

The new release date at Amazon is the correct one - 23rd January 2012.

[antnield]

Final artwork:

[AlexHansen]

If the mention on Mubi is accurate, the inclusion of the Letter to Serra short is good news indeed. Extra glad I finally put in my preorder.

[AlexHansen]

Found confirmation of Letter to Serra's inclusion. More than happy to have a second copy of this short (it also being in Intermedio's Correspondences set), as I'm completely in love with it. My somewhat scattershot thoughts:

Wind picks up as the camera drifts forward. What are we looking for, what are we pursuing? Easy to forget he shoots on film. The past brought into the present, using nothing but a simple reveal. Use of the land; one mans playground is another’s workplace. Distressed avian. Touch of Straub. The reader commands the camera. He walks forward, pushing it back. Once he has taken control of the space, he steps back to do his recitation. When he's finished, he commands the subjects, hiding just out of sight, all around the frame of the earlier portion of the film to follow him. The camera does the same; the viewer has become one of the subjects. The past recedes. The camera stays back, waiting for whatever’s to come.

[Bikey]

Full details are not at our website quite as yet but here are some of the confirmed details for you. Hope you will like the package we have put together for this wonderful film.

LIVERPOOL
A film by Lisandro Alonso / Argentina, 2008

DVD Release Date: 23 January 2012

A sailor, Farrel, leaves his ship and begins a lengthy journey to wintry Tierra del Fuego’s interior, to an isolated village and family that he hasn’t seen in years. The route seems familiar to him, and we gradually piece together his relationship with the people and community he finds there. From the opening sequences on Farrel’s ship, to the spectacular harshness of his destination, Alonso is meticulous in mapping the sights and sounds of the landscape and Farrel’s personal journey into the past.
Heralded at film festivals around the world, Liverpool has established Lisandro Alonso as one of contemporary cinema’s most acclaimed and exciting filmmakers.

“One of the great films of our times... I feel something in Liverpool that is so special and so rare in cinema these days” Daniel Kasman, MUBI

Special Features:
• Untitled (Letter for Serra)/Sin título (Carta para Serra) – a new (2011) short film by Lisandro Alonso.
• Alonso on Camera - newly filmed by the director exclusively for this release.
• Presented in a new anamorphic 16:9 digital transfer, approved by the director.
• 16-page booklet featuring new essays by film writer and critic David Jenkins.
• New and improved English subtitle translation.

[Bikey]

Beaver

[Bikey]

Full details of the Liverpool release now up at our website: http://www.secondrundvd.com/release_liverpool.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[TheDoman]

Found confirmation of Letter to Serra's inclusion. More than happy to have a second copy of this short (it also being in Intermedio's Correspondences set), as I'm completely in love with it.

I also saw the short as part of the Correspondences project, and whilst I did like a few of the other pieces, my clear favourite was the Alonso short, which meant I didn't want to pick up the whole of that set. I was very pleased to see Second Run include this short on the disc, and even though I already own the Kino edition of Liverpool, the second run is a much better release as a whole. It was worth £7.50 for the Untitled Serra letter alone. I've yet to watch the Alonso document, but this is the most extensive release of an Alonso film to date, as most are usually non anamorphic with unsubbed extras. I may even like the short as much as Liverpool itself.

Thanks to Second Run for this great release!

[antnield]

The Digital Fix.

[Bikey]

Talking Pix

[MichaelB]

Mondo Digital.

[colinr0380]

Spoilers:

After watching the film I'm happily left with more questions than definitive answers. Is the main character Farrel narcoleptic, given that we see him being awakened from a nap in the ship's engine room and that at a couple of points during his journey at exciting or confrontational moments the film fades out. Such as from Farrel at the strip club to awakening in the derelict van; or the scene where he is spying through the window on his daughter Analía to the next scene opening with him asleep in a shed open to the elements from which he is dragged into his family home half frozen (or is that the only way he would be briefly accepted back into the home, or be able to make contact?)

Is Farrel an alcoholic, or is the bottle that he regularly takes a drink from on his journey just a way of keeping warm (or a way of preparing himself to meet his family again)? The bottle itself empties at the point that Farrel is asleep in the shed just before he gets taken into the family home, which perhaps suggests more that this is alcohol taken in preparation for a difficult meeting.

Is the daughter mentally impaired in some way, or just standoffish? (Is that why the man who lives with the daughter and Farrel's mother complains "look at the legacy you have left me with"?) Or is this just an effect of living in an incredibly isolated area of the world? She does not really make contact with anyone, particularly blanking Farrel and then once Farrel disappears from the film near the end, also seeming to not make contact with the young man in the canteen who also then calls out to her in the snow later on.

The disappearance of Farrel striding off into the distance near the end is a great, slightly Antonioni-esque moment (though Antonioni characters either never turn up or suddenly disappear without trace, rather than purposefully walk off!), and one which the Second Run disc artwork in particular did not lead me to suspect with its 'there and back' footsteps suggesting we would follow Farrel on his return journey too, something which never happens as Farrel walks off, in a sense abandoning the film as much as he has his family while we are left to deal with our own issues of whether that abandonment was such a bad thing or not! Is Farrel going back to the ship or not? (Maybe not given that he packs a big black bag to leave the ship, then hides it behind some wood and takes the smaller red bag for his trip instead. Or is that just something he does in case he does not get back to the ship in time in order to not lose all of his stuff if it sails without him?)

So many elements are left open to audience interpretation. For example the 'Liverpool' key ring. Is this a final parting gift from a man who is both rejecting and rejected by his family after a final meeting in which duty is done but communication still impossible? Or is this just an ill thought out gift? A novelty trinket from a distant land? Useless in an environment in which it doesn't belong any more, thereby perfectly standing in for Farrel (and perhaps his daughter as well).

I like the idea expressed in the booklet essay that this is kind of a Western film, perhaps something like The Searchers, in which the main character takes a long journey to reach home, or perform a quest to fulfil obligations to an old life, only to find that they have been away so long that they do not belong there either.

I also particularly like the way that the scenes of Farrel and the other characters at work on the ship at the start of the film make a very effective bookend with the scenes of Analía tagging along while the older man is out hunting at the end, suggestive of a correlation between these two modes of keeping daily life going, rural hunting and industrial shipping, even if there is a wasteland or barren country separating them from each other. There's an isolation to be had whilst out in the wilderness or at sea which is punctuated with rather perfunctory conversations, or awkward silences on their return to 'civilisation'. Perhaps that suggests that while Farrel wanted to escape that stifling town (as suggested in the booklet essay, as well as by his hasty departure), he still ended up gravitating towards a similar style of life.

[AlexHansen]

From my fledgling blog:

Untitled (Letter to Serra) opens with a shot of landscape, peering towards some brush sitting amidst a smattering of trees, captured with the slight sway and quiver of a handheld camera. Birdsong is periodically interrupted by someone calling out “Estela”. After a few moments, a hunter rises from his hiding spot. He pulls out some binoculars and looks offscreen to the left, looking into the past, just as Vargas moved downriver to the left back to those he left behind in Los Muertos). The camera follows as he pushes forward, coming around behind him to frame him from the opposite side, now looking towards the future. When he again pulls out the binoculars, the camera pans over giving the viewer the opportunity to try and spy what he’s looking at. A cut and we’re back on his left. The camera move repeats, ending up on his right as he takes aim.

At this point we are re-introduced to Misael, the protagonist/subject of Alonso’s first feature La Libertad. Nothing about him seems to have changed. He still has his ball cap and jug of water. Still measures out a log by axe lengths. Though he has a few new canine companions. Once a bullet hits a tree close to him (has another shot been fired, or have we slipped back in time a touch and witnessed the impact of the hunter’s first shot?), Misael leaves his work, calling for the dogs. One man’s workplace has become another’s playground. The camera follows as Misael weaves his way through the trees, hollering to keep the dogs close. The past is brought into the present as Misael walks up to another new development in his life: a wife and child. They murmur something about the shots and where the dogs are, before walking out of frame; the camera stopped in its tracks.

The camera in Alonso’s films always seems to have a will of its own. It never kowtows to a character. It may trail along behind or beside a character as he moves through a space, but there are moments when it follows its own whims. Whether it be a turn away from the character to take in the surrounding environment, or as in Untitled, staying back as Misael and his family walk out of frame, turning its focus towards their dogs. In this instance, rather than being a brief aside before returning to the main “action”, the sequence following the dogs seems to go on for longer than usual. It’s almost like when the camera stays with the people Farrel leaves behind in Liverpool. Nothing occurs. The dogs wander. The camera follows.

This peculiarity sets the table for the jarring finale of Untitled. A cut takes us away from the dogs and into a dry creek bed. The confined space and shadows of tree branches cast by the midday sun instantly brings to mind the later works of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. A man appears from around the bend and walks towards the camera; forcing the camera to backpedal as he draws near. The man stops and takes a few steps back, creating some distance between himself and the camera. Unlike other Alonso characters, this man commands the camera. In another twist (and staying in the Straub-ian vein), the man pulls out a piece of paper and recites a story. The men of no words have been replaced by a man of prepared words. His story begins like a fairytale (long ago & far away…) about a man named Diego Zuluaga, that touches on historical footnotes and anecdotes, a person’s life expectancy along with information about the Jersey breed of dog, and seemingly alludes to what we’ve witnessed earlier in the film. He finishes his recitation, steps forward and says “let’s go” before going the way he came. Misael (the past), his wife and baby (the recent past), the hunter (the present), and the dogs emerge from the wings and follow him up the creek bed. The camera follows until the last disappears around the bend, leaving only the future and questions of what it holds.