German Filmmuseum Edition

[swo17]

How much does it normally cost? I just placed a big order from amazon.it the other day and don't relish paying another €10.50 for shipping unless the savings are more than that.

[TMDaines]

Until now, this disc has actually been sitting around the €20 mark for weeks (on .de, .it and .es). Usually the two diskers floated around the €25-26 mark (€30 RRP, bar the Kluges) and getting them for €22-23 was a good deal. In recent months, however, the prices seem to have started to fall a little bit and there's been some as low as €20. This is the first I've seen at €18 though. It's more the one diskers that are hard to get a good deal on. They have an RRP of €20 but rarely go south of €18.

Needless to say, unless you want to order more stuff then it's probably best to wait until another splurge.

[triodelover]

For Stateside orders the best source i've found is jpc. They're a Euro or two less that EF and Amazon.de and remove VAT. Shipping is reasonable (much more so that EF themselves) and they send me a nice Christmas card every year. \:D/

[TMDaines]

Yeah, jpc is always worth a look too (good packaging and customer service, plus a €5 gift voucher on your birthday or if you haven't shopped with them for some time), although for big orders you'll nearly always be better off with one of the European sites Amazon sites.

Grooves I use a lot too, as they offer free shipping worldwide on orders above €20 and they regularly post vouchers on their Facebook page. Their site can be difficult to search though and they only have a few Edition Filmmuseum titles.

[zedz]

Either somebody's hacked the Edition Filmmuseum site, or somebody's slipped LSD into my coffee.

I was checking out their "Forthcoming Releases" page (here) and found a whole lot of 'customer reviews' trailing off of it, for, among other things, Rolex replicas, bridesmaids outfits, "peep-toe sexy cocktail dresses" and the much, much stranger mutant offspring of them. Here's a sample review:

That\'s a hundred fifty calories for a mile, imagine if you do it everyday and slowly increase your mileage you can burn thousands of calories in no white dresses wedding dresses time. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as fast weight loss shakes that do everything for you. If your serious about losing weight, you must be willing mermaid wedding dresses with lace to sweat it out. The shakes can help you, but in the end it\'s really all up to you.\' Tea length wedding dresses fall in between the knee plus the ankle and are frequently worn at much less formal weddings. This form of wedding gown has become increasingly preferred among brides. . .

[denti alligator]

Either somebody's hacked the Edition Filmmuseum site, or somebody's slipped LSD into my coffee.

I was checking out their "Forthcoming Releases" page (here) and found a whole lot of 'customer reviews' trailing off of it, for, among other things, Rolex replicas, bridesmaids outfits, "peep-toe sexy cocktail dresses" and the much, much stranger mutant offspring of them. Here's a sample review:

That\'s a hundred fifty calories for a mile, imagine if you do it everyday and slowly increase your mileage you can burn thousands of calories in no white dresses wedding dresses time. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as fast weight loss shakes that do everything for you. If your serious about losing weight, you must be willing mermaid wedding dresses with lace to sweat it out. The shakes can help you, but in the end it\'s really all up to you.\' Tea length wedding dresses fall in between the knee plus the ankle and are frequently worn at much less formal weddings. This form of wedding gown has become increasingly preferred among brides. . .

The important thing is that Max Mack and Meinert are still "in preparation."

[charal]

In the forthcoming list 6 films by Vlado Kristl are mentioned. Does anyone out there know anything about his features, especially the early ones like DER BRIEF? (Is he weirder & wilder than Kluge?)

[Tommaso]

While everyone's waiting for them to actually release some of their 'forthcoming' discs, here are two new announcements:

77 Die Verrufenen & Die Unehelichen Gerhard Lamprecht, 1925/1926
78 California Trilogy James Benning, 1999-2001

Of course I'm very much looking forward to the Lamprecht

[warren oates]

78 California Trilogy James Benning, 1999-2001

This is a major release. Anybody who's remotely interested in Benning's work, experimental film, landscape docs or the idea of California should check these out. Saw them on 16mm at USC a while back and was blown away. Happy to see these films come out anywhere on DVD. The past Benning releases from this label have been, well, quite cromulent. Still sad that it's not a company like Criterion that would really do them up right.

[lubitsch]

While everyone's waiting for them to actually release some of their 'forthcoming' discs, here are two new announcements:
77 Die Verrufenen & Die Unehelichen Gerhard Lamprecht, 1925/1926
Of course I'm very much looking forward to the Lamprecht

Frankly they should stop the whole announcing business. It's ridiculous to promise films for years and years with nothing happening and even worse to give them release numbers without any commitment to certain dates. The Barnet films were handled by Ruscico now, so who needs their release? Instead of making certain of a steady output and reliable release dates, they continue to have ahead of them a growing mountain of unreleased discs for whch the customers are waiting partly impatient, partly cynically amused. There's much to love about these people but their marketing sense is terrible.

[Michael Kerpan]

Would the proposed Barnet releases likely feature different (possibly better) transfers than the Ruscico ones?

[Tommaso]

Difficult to say, as the Ruscico Hyperkino releases are normally top-notch. But on the other hand, Filmmuseum's transfers of silents have proved to be outstanding in the past (latest example: the Asta Nielsen set, simply stunning). However, the only real reason to wait for Filmmuseum's Barnet is probably "The House on Trubnaya", not available from Ruscico I think.

[Michael Kerpan]

Looks like Mr. Bongo is also entering the Barnet fray too (see that thread).

[antnield]

The Digital Fix on Die Oberhausener.

[antnield]

Materialfilme 1968-76

"Film should not be misused for non-filmic messages": Wilhelm and Birgit Hein examine in their films the process of reproduction and the film material itself. Rohfilm shows the destruction of the common "film image" and was described by Stephen Dwoskin as a "visual bombing" of shreds, fragments, dirt and leftovers of film editing. Reproductions dissolves photos in greys, 625 films a negative "snow" TV image with different speeds, in Portraits photos are changed by the development and reproduction processes. Materialfilme consists of film starting and ending leaders, the elements of every film that normally are not seen on the screen. W+B Hein's underground film classics deal with the unexplored potentials of the film material which starts to disappear in the digital world.

More info.

[AlexHansen]

Looks like I won't be waiting too long to nab Materialfilme as Benning's California Trilogy (2-disc set: El Valley Centro and Los on the first with Sogobi on the second) is due out in December according to the Österreichisches Filmmuseum shop.

[neilist]

A new 2DVD set of German silents now up for order here. For what it's worth, the plot of 'Die Verrufenen' immediately strikes me as sounding somewhat similar to that of 'Berlin Alexanderplatz', although that wasn't published until a few years later.

Edition Filmmuseum 77 - Die Verrufenen (Der fünfte Stand) & Die Unehelichen

This double-DVD presents two feature films by Gerhard Lamprecht which reproduce Heinrich Zille's view of the Berlin milieu ("Milljöh"). In Die Verrufenen (1925) the engineer Robert Kramer, released from prison, cannot find his way back to civilian life. He wants to end his life, but is held back by the streetwalker Emma. In Die Unehelichen (1926) three working-class children suffer under their violent foster parents, till a dramatic incident changes their lives.

[TMDaines]

Awesome. I do love some Edition Filmmuseum. Arguably the most in-depth DVD releases out there. This one looks a bit light on extras but their double feature releases are great value if you can pick them up for €20-22. Die Unehelichen isn't even floating about online so that's truly something new.

[Tommaso]

Excellent, and so quickly after it was announced.... "Die Verrufenen" seems to be half an hour longer than the old version floating around, so this might also be called "something new", then.

[antnield]

December 17th 2012

Edition Filmmuseum 78
Produced at the junction of two millennia, the California Trilogy is James Benning's three-part topographical study of America's "Golden State". Looking to the past while investigating the present, the mathematician-turned-filmmaker condenses three distinct Californian landscapes into a total of 105 shots, each exactly 2½ minutes long. Formal restraint and compositional precision combine with ambient sound and an unheard social commentary to create a hypnotic journey across the 31st US State; from the Great Central Valley (El Valley Centro) through greater Los Angeles (Los) to the Californian wilderness (Sogobi). This 2-disc set presents the complete California Trilogy for the first time ever on DVD.

[warren oates]

Too bad there's no pre-order up yet. They ship so quickly that it would probably get to most big cities in North America by Xmas. And Benning's film would make such an excellent holiday present for serious lovers of cinema. Along with Ten Skies this is my favorite work of his. Each shot is precisely 2.5 minutes long, a static take. And yet there's endless variety and mystery on offer. You never know quite what you're looking at until the whole shot plays out. There's a beauty and a strangeness in his vision of the California landscape and in his revelation of the secrets of forgotten, mundane and interstitial spaces that has changed the way I see my home state forever, the same way Paris, Texas did before I moved here.

[AlexHansen]

On the briefest of glances the California Trilogy looks like another winner. No windowboxing, and sharper than the last set, so I'd hazard a guess that they're HD-sourced. Very excited to dive into them. Just started in on the Materialfilme and it looks like it's going to be a stunner.

[warren oates]

A nice write-up of Benning's California Trilogy at, of all places, DVDtalk.com. What I like most about the review is how it captures the unpretentious immediacy of Benning's work, how it's not abstruse experimentation but a truly democratic art. I've seen this first-hand, as I had these films playing in the background while the fam was here over the holidays and people would just start watching them and get sucked in. If anyone out there doesn't know Benning's work this title would be a great place to start, so consider adding it to your next order.

[Tuco]

According to Edition Filmmuseum's website regarding their DVD, and for that matter many others, an unsung hero of silent comedy. Since Hal Roach Studious in the late 20's was producing Laurel and Hardy and Charley Chase comedies that were absolutely brilliant...let me rephrase that. If I buy a region-free layer, my wife will kill me (yes, miss-placed priorities, food, mortgage, kid's college). Anyone? Any glimmer of hope for a R1 release? Huh? I'm dyin' here...

[zedz]

Good rule of thumb: if Edition Filmmuseum have released an edition of a film, it's not going to be bettered. It's region free, completely English-friendly, why wouldn't you just go and buy it?