Milestone

[davidhuxley]

Were Milestone DVDs ever distributed by Oscilloscope? I see listings at one time crediting Oscilloscope with some Milestone titles. Was this a temporary partnership before Milestone made a deal with Kino Lorber? Thanks!

[drdoros]

The answer is yes, and they did a great job.

[ianthemovie]

I just noticed that there is a listing up on Kino's website for a Blu-ray edition of The Exiles, in collaboration with Milestone, with a release date of December 5. I'm not sure when that was announced but I'm surprised that this is the first I'm hearing about it. It appears to come with a bunch of interesting short films as well as other supplements featuring Sherman Alexie and Charles Burnett (!). [EDIT: I see now that these extras were on Milestone's previous DVD release.]

Speaking of Burnett, please bring on Killer of Sheep next...

[beamish14]

I just noticed that there is a listing up on Kino's website for a Blu-ray edition of The Exiles, in collaboration with Milestone, with a release date of December 5. I'm not sure when that was announced but I'm surprised that this is the first I'm hearing about it. It appears to come with a bunch of interesting short films as well as other supplements featuring Sherman Alexie and Charles Burnett (!). [EDIT: I see now that these extras were on Milestone's previous DVD release.]

Speaking of Burnett, please bring on Killer of Sheep next...

I’d love to own Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation, which has never received any kind of commercial distribution. It’s really beautifully constructed, and despite being financed by the Namibian government and essentially intended to be propaganda, it’s absolutely Burnett’s vision. Some moments feel like Killer of Sheep in widescreen Technicolor, and it has the rich purple and yellow hues that define the aesthetics of To Sleep with Anger.

At a cost of $8 million USD, it’s the most expensive film he’s ever made. Even with an honorary Oscar, he’s still not able to get new projects off the ground

[drdoros]

One at a time, people!

[hearthesilence]

We want the finest movies available to humanity, and we want them here, and we want them NOW!

[beamish14]

We want the finest movies available to humanity, and we want them here, and we want them NOW!

Yes, goddamnit!

I’ll gladly leave my teaching job if you need another hand.

[jazzo]

Not officially announced, but the newsletter implies that Milestone will be releasing the restoration of Nancy Savoca's Household Saints sometime in the near future. Excellent news for me. Now if only some valiant soul would release Dogfight.

[drdoros]

Household Saints will be coming out theatrically around the world in January and then on disc with a LOT of bonus features including a wonderful hour-long documentary THE MANY MIRACLES OF HOUSEHOLD SAINTS directed by her daughter Martina Savoca-Guay. No release date yet. I can also say that Dogfight and True Love are in the works, but not from us. Missing Movies got busy to help her and a number of other directors so far.

[jazzo]

This, for me, is the most exciting disc news since Criterion's Last Picture Show/Texasville and some mystery label's oft-rumoured/yet-to-materialize Little Darlings.

I think Kino was going to release True Love, but that seems to have disappeared. Great to hear about Dogfight. It's a personal favourite.

Thanks for confirming.

[criterionsnob]

Household Saints 4K restoration trailer.

[drdoros]

The first of five films opening theatrically in the next five months. Stay tuned!

[drdoros]

https://thedigitalbits.com/item/edge-of ... ld-2024-bd

Milestone’s Blu-ray of The Edge of the World (via the BFI and released here through Kino Lorber) looks great. In its original 1.37:1 standard frame, the images are more striking than they’ve perhaps ever been—I think I last saw it on LaserDisc—with only title elements and other opticals looking less than pristine. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is also an improvement over previous home video versions. Optional subtitles are included for those who might struggle with the sometimes thick Scottish burrs.

Also included is Return to the Edge of the World (1979), a 30-minute documentary directed by and starring Powell, which reunites surviving cast and crew with the islanders. Opening with some startling footage taken on the backlot of Pinewood Studios, it’s a warm, lovely little film. Other bonus features continue with An Airman’s Letter to His Mother, a 1941 short directed by Powell; outtakes and alternate scenes (nine minutes); an audio commentary by Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Powell’s widow, and film historian Ian Christie; and a reading from Powell’s book on the making of the film by no less a talent than Daniel Day-Lewis. Finally, there are circa 1955 home movies of and by Powell (seven minutes), again narrated by Schoonmaker.

The Edge of the World is a terrific, visually striking film that anticipates director Michael Powell’s later great successes. Its themes of depopulation and community sustainability are as timely as ever, and the film holds up well because its themes are so universal. Heartily recommended.

[drdoros]

January 2024 Newsletter:
https://us3.campaign-archive.com/?u=4a0 ... db8d22f499

January 12: World theatrical premiere of Nancy Savoca's HOUSEHOLD SAINTS at IFC CENTER, NYC
January 15: US Premiere of David Schickele's BUSHMAN at MoMA, NYC
January 18: World premiere of Martina Savoca Guay's THE MANY MIRACLES OF HOUSEHOLD SAINTS at IFC Center, NYC
January 20: NY Premiere of William Worthington's THE DRAGON PAINTER at MoMA, NYC
January 29: World Premiere of Bridgett Davis's NAKED ACTS at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands
Feburary 2: World Theatrical premiere of David Schickele's BUSHMAN at BAM Rose Cinemas, Brooklyn
February 3: West Coast premiere of David Schickele's BUSHMAN at PFA, Berkeley
February 7: US Premiere of Bridgett Davis's NAKED ACTS at Lightbox Philadelphia


For decades, we (Milestone cofounders Dennis Doros and Amy Heller) were hands on with every aspect of the company’s distribution business.Then in 2021, after Milestone entered into an agreement with Kino Lorber, we began collaborating with a wonderful crew of dedicated and hardworking film professionals who could — and did — take over the day-to-day work of publicity, design, booking, production, and marketing. What would we do with more time on our hands?

Well, the schedule above gives you some idea of what we have been up to. While we kid that Dennis has never met a film he didn’t want to restore, it is true that we both remain excited to “mess” with the canon by discovering, restoring, and introducing audiences to great films outside the mainstream of movie making.


Milestone’s “luck” has always come from a great community of cinephiles, archivists, filmmakers, and friends. Every restoration premiering this year has been possible thanks to the advice, funding, expertise, and generosity of these folks — and so many others:
Ron and Suzanne Naples and Jesse Pires at the Lightbox/University of the Arts, Philadelphia
May Hong HaDuong, Todd Wiener, and Jillian Borders at the UCLA Film and Television Archive
Rob Byrne, Anita Monga, and Stacey Wisnia at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Margaret Bodde, Kristen Merola, and Jennifer Ahn at the Film Foundation
Peter Bagrov at the George Eastman Museum
Gail and Train Schickele
Ross Lipman, film restorationist and long-time friend
Richard Koszarski, film historian
Maya Cade, founder of the Blackfilmarchive.com
Rachael Stoeltje, Amber Bertin, and JaQuita Joy Roberts at the Black Film Center & Archive, Bloomington
Rob Stone at the Library of Congress
Giovanna Fossati, Elif Kaynakci Rongen, Anne Gant, Frank Roumen,
Leenke Ripmeester and the whole team at the Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam
Josh Siegel and Katie Trainor at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC
Susan Oxtoby, Jon Shibata, A.J. Fox, Jason Sanders, and Antonella Bonfanti (now at Lucasfilm) at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Philip Hallman, at the Screen Arts Mavericks & Makers Collection, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Nancy Savoca and Rich Guay, Martina Savoca-Guay, and Bridgett Davis — our filmmakers!
Keiko Kimura, designer of the Dragon Painter poster
Lauren Caddick, designer of the Household Saints poster
Adrian Curry, designer of the Bushman poster
Will Domingue, designer of the upcoming Naked Acts poster
Richard Lorber and and all of the other great colleagues at Kino Lorber, including George Schmalz, Kate Patterson, Juan Medina, Greg Hanson, Yaël Halbron, Nicholas Kemp, Rob Sweeney, Matt Barry, Christine Gerard, Martha Benyam, Judy Silverman, Estelle Grosso, and Reid Rossman
The many festivals and theaters who welcome our restored films
You — and all the members of our wonderful cinephile community
______________________________________________________________________

Interested in learning more about these film restorations?

Links to the press kits for Bushman, The Dragon Painter, Household Saints, The Many Miracles of Household Saints, and Naked Acts can be found at https://milestonefilms.com/pages/press
You can find out where the films are playing on Kino Lorber’s excellent theatrical web pages: Bushman, The Dragon Painter, and Household Saints.

And Milestone has more exciting film restorations scheduled for 2024… we will keep you updated on upcoming premieres and screenings!

[drdoros]

THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 11, 2024
"Rewind: ‘Household Saints’: Miracles on Mulberry Street"
By J. Hoberman
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/movi ... s-ifc.html

‘Household Saints’: Miracles on Mulberry Street

Nancy Savoca’s 1993 film, a mystical, multigenerational Italian American family saga, opens for a revival run at IFC Center.

Nancy Savoca’s 1993 film “Household Saints,” a warmhearted fable spiced with magic realism and zesty performances, may be the most endearing of multigenerational Italian American family sagas and is likely the most mystical. Heavy on folk belief, it flirts with Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest” and the divine madness the Greeks called theia mania.

Seemingly overlooked by the 1993 New York Film Festival, “Household Saints” was included as a restoration last October; it’s opening for a revival run on Jan. 12 at IFC Center.

Savoca and the producer Richard Guay adapted “Household Saints” from Francine Prose’s well-received 1981 novel. If the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer were a product of Little Italy, he might have spun a similar yarn. Amid a 1949 heat wave so hellish the annual feast of San Gennaro has all but been shut down, a rakish young butcher named Joseph Santangelo (Vincent D’Onofrio) wins a wife, Catherine Falconetti (Tracey Ullman), in a game of pinochle. God’s grace or Joseph’s thumb on the scale?

Catherine is the sullen daughter of Lino Falconetti (Victor Argo), a none-too-bright radio repairman. The Santangelos and Falconettis are unfriendly neighbors. Joseph’s superstitious mother, Carmela (played with alarming gusto by Judith Malina), hates her prospective daughter-in-law. Blessings battle tribulations. Savoca contrives a wedding night as filled with rococo confections as the interior of a Palermo church. A curse — disturbingly visualized as a bloody, stillborn infant — is lifted after Carmela dies and a healthy daughter, Teresa, is born.

Among other things, “Household Saints” refracts 25 years of the Cold War through a Mulberry Street lens. Teresa and her playmates are obsessed with the prophecies of Our Lady of Fátima, received by three country children in visions that coincided with the triumph of Russian Bolshevism. As an adolescent, Teresa (Lili Taylor) writes a prizewinning essay on the dangers of Communism. She also becomes a fanatical devotee of her namesake, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower, associating piety with a devotion to domestic chores.

Madness runs in the family. In a parallel obsession, Teresa’s Uncle Nicky (Michael Rispoli) searches Chinatown for a dream Madame Butterfly. In the meantime, forbidden by her parents to take Carmelite vows, Teresa enters an earthy relationship with an awkward but ambitious law student (Michael Imperioli). Happily ironing his shirts in their disheveled, casually psychedelic East Village pad, she has an ecstatic vision of Jesus amid an abundance of checkered garments.

“The story is filled with strange, homespun miracles,” Janet Maslin wrote in her New York Times review when the film was originally released, adding that “this single-minded little film could be counted as one of them.” So too its evocation of Mulberry Street. Largely shot on a North Carolina backlot built for the film “Year of the Dragon,” “Household Saints” seems the most authentically simulated New York movie since Sam Fuller’s “Pickup on South Street.” (The flavorsome line readings are supplied by a bevy of native New York actors, among them Argo, D’Onofrio, Malina, Rispoli and Imperioli.)

“Household Saints” never tips its hand. Eventually institutionalized, the beatific Teresa informs her parents of celestial pinochle games, noting that God (like her dad) cheats at cards. While the once credulous Catherine thinks her daughter has suffered a psychotic break with reality, the anticlerical Joseph takes Teresa for a saint. Thanks to the spell the film casts, they’re both right.

[drdoros]

New trailer for David Schickele's BUSHMAN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKQZTrVELrY

[kekid]

Did "I am Cuba" ever get a general release on Blu Ray?
It has been years since it was talked about.

[starmanof51]

Did "I am Cuba" ever get a general release on Blu Ray?
It has been years since it was talked about.

Feels like forever since the Cigar box DVD came out. Getting the restoration on Blu is turning into my Great White Whale

[kekid]

The Milestone website has the following:

"Although not currently available for home use, the DVD and Blu-ray of I Am Cuba are available for Institutional Purchase, which includes public performance rights and a 3-year streaming license."

If true, this would suggest that the Blu Ray exists, but is not available to general public. I have seen this blurb on the website for a long time. It raises the question, why secure the rights and restore the material to a Blu Ray if you have no intention of releasing it to public?

[Peacock]

It’s one of those great mysteries indeed. I just wish Milestone would give us a vague reason, surely it can’t be that hard to say that the home video rights ended up being unexpectedly complicated and we don’t have them but have been working on getting them for the last few years.

They’ve been rescuing some amazing obscure films in the last few years but it adds a bad taste everytime there’s an announcement which doesn’t include I Am Cuba as it makes you wonder, what if they do have this major canon classic which they announced repeatedly for home video but have decided not to put it out anymore and are not willing to sell the rights on to another label?

In the absence of information one speculates crazy things. A bit like WB not bothering to release Greed on DVD or Blu-Ray and releasing no statements as to why. One just assumes they aren’t interested in ever doing it or letting anyone else do it.

[drdoros]

There's no grand conspiracy, no legal problems, no mystery. There's a very simple reason. The release will be soon...

[What A Disgrace]

Is there any chance that the pre-revolution Russian films that Milestone has distributed in the past will get Blu-ray releases? The Evgeni Bauer triple feature is one of the few DVDs I still bother to keep on my shelf, as opposed to stuffing it in a box and forgetting about it or gifting it to random people to get it out of my house, but it's been nearly 20 years since I first saw those films and my enthusiastic curiosity for pre-revolutionary Russian cinema (on the basis of those three) has never been consummated.

[drdoros]

No. The original video masters of Early Russian Cinema aren't good enough and at the moment, it is illegal to deal with Russia.

[Saturnome]

That Evgeni Bauer DVD set was such a big revelation for me at something like 19 or 20. Rented it in a video store, watched two of the films, then bought it to watch the final one. Over the top sad goth russians does something to 2000s teens dressing in black.

[Peacock]

There's no grand conspiracy, no legal problems, no mystery. There's a very simple reason. The release will be soon...

Thank you Dennis for the update. I was worried it was tangled up in something legally or was being shelved. Look forward to it!

Sad about Bauer though, hopefully someday someone will restore them.