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Shipping from Poland to US looks to be about $4 - $5 per disc, however. Does that sound right?

Cool, I didn't realize that Illumination was out on Polish DVD.

There is also a Polish 2 film DVD set available featuring Zanussi's Life as a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Desease and Supplement with English subs. Here's the link to the page from that rockserwis site.

Thanks for the tip-off - I've just dipped a cautious toe in the water and have ordered a 4-disc Andrzej Wajda box set from Rockserwis (Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds, Lotna and Wesele).

The total cost including postage came to just over 25 euros (or sixteen pounds eighty in my local currency), so I thought it was a gamble well worth taking.

If anyone's interested, I'll report back on delivery speed/disc quality when it arrives.

vogler wrote:I'm definitely interested. Please do report back.

Apparently it's just been shipped, a fortnight after ordering, so hopefully I'll have it by the weekend.

Edit: OK, the Wajda box set turned up this morning, three weeks to the day since I placed the order.

Initial impressions:

Packaging: a cardboard slipcase containing four slimline DVD cases (total width equivalent to two normal DVDs). As a nice touch, if lined up in chronological order they spell WAJDA in bold block caps. Text is in Polish throughout. A single insert in each box has a still on one side and a chapter list on the other.

Kanal: The main menu has four options: 'Film', 'Ustawienia' (sound and subtitles, including English), 'Wybor scen' (chapter selection) and 'Dodakti' (quite a few extras). A quick glance at the film suggests an analogue tape master, and although the print is in surprisingly good nick, the image is soft and contrasty, clearly not up to the same standard as the Criterion (at least going from these Beaver captures). Sadly, the extras are Polish-only, which is a shame as they look very substantial indeed: a 25-minute Wajda interview, a 70-minute Polish TV documentary about him, and a 28-minute documentary marking the 60th anniversary of 1944 (or something like that). There's also a before-and-after restoration demonstration, though I'm not convinced that the "after" is necessarily an improvement: the image is certainly cleaner, but on occasion I could spot more actual detail in the "before" shots. Finally, a stills gallery features storyboards and Wajda's own handwritten notes.

Ashes and Diamonds: I got a very pleasant surprise when I loaded this up: it's in anamorphic widescreen (slightly windowboxed at the sides to preserve the 1.66:1 ratio). And the picture is also excellent - a very distinct improvement on Kanal, and I'm actually not at all sure that it isn't at least equivalent to the Criterion (again, going from the Beaver captures), if not actually superior (the Criterion image looks a fair bit grainier) though I'll need to watch it on a bigger screen than a 12" PowerBook to be sure. Extras are just as extensive (35-minute Wajda interview plus more video supplements totalling 20 mins, restoration demo and stills gallery) but just as useless to those who don't speak Polish.

Lotna: The first colour film in the set perhaps unsurprisingly has the most disappointing picture so far - although it claims to have been restored (and, to be fair, the print is in excellent condition), the colours are very pasty and the image distinctly soft, at times little better than VHS. It's framed at 4:3, and is windowboxed on all sides. Extras include more video supplements (20-minute Wajda interview plus two others totalling 18 mins) in Polish only, plus the usual restoration demo and gallery.

Wesele: by some distance the most recent film in the set (1973 as opposed to the mid-to-late 1950s), so expectations were higher than for Lotna. And in general they seem to be fulfilled - although it's disappointing that it's not anamorphic (by eye, I'd say it's letterboxed at 1.85:1), in all other respects this looks like an excellent transfer from a very well preserved print, with the colours ringing entirely true and plenty of fine detail. Extras are, as ever, Polish-only, and include a 32-minute Wajda interview, two more video supplements totalling half an hour, a restoration demo and stills gallery.

Conclusion: Based on a very quick spin through all four discs, I'm generally pretty happy - it's a shame the extras don't have subtitles, and the transfers vary so much in quality, though the two good ones seem to be very good indeed. But given that this cost me a grand total of £4.20 per disc including postage (that's €6.25/$8 per disc at current exchange rates), I think it's a bit of a bargain, especially as I don't think I've ever had the chance to see the two rarer titles.

Thanks for that Michael. I think I'll be ordering this fairly soon. I'm generally quite forgiving with transfers so I should find this set to be perfectly enjoyable and two of them sound very good indeed. I'm not really much of an extras person either so I'll be happy with just the films (although the extras do look like they would be great in this case).

I have actually never seen a Wajda film but I have wanted to for a long time. This looks like a good place to start with four films for such a low price.

One other thing - have you had time to assess the quality of the subtitles yet?

vogler wrote:One other thing - have you had time to assess the quality of the subtitles yet?

Based on what I saw, they look fine - white, electronic and idiomatic. I'll let you know if I spot any problems when I watch the films properly.

UPDATE: I've now watched Lotna all the way through, and the subtitles were absolutely fine - obviously, I can't judge the original Polish, but I have a pretty good instinct for when I'm being short-changed, and it didn't kick in.

I've just spotted what looks like an even bigger bargain - a seven-disc Wajda box set, with English subtitles, for a mere €23.75 (£16/$30, not including postage, but that looks set to be an equally trivial €3.88).

Here's the line-up:

Everything For Sale (Wszystko na sprzedaż, 1969)
Landscape After Battle (Krajobraz po bitwie, 1970)
Land of Promise (Ziemia obiecana, 1975)
Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru, 1977)
The Young Ladies of Wilko (Panny z Wilka, 1979)
Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza, 1981)
Pan Tadeusz (1999)

...and as I'd very happily pay the full price for a decent double of Man of Marble and Man of Iron, this is a total no-brainer.

Gordon wrote: I ordered Iluminacja and Camouflage and the grand total was $17.70 which is a bargain - or appears to be! I'll have to wait until I check out the quality.

Gordon, did you have a chance to look at these Zanussi films yet? Is the quality up to par with what MichaelB describes for the Wajda set?

Hi,

Man of Marble and Man of Iron are listed 4:3. Is this the correct aspect
ratio?

I just received an email to inform me that my order with rockserwis.pl will be despatched shortly. Excellent - with a bit of luck it might get to me by Christmas. I made the order about a week ago.

I ordered the 2 Wajda box sets and the 2 Zanussi dvds, all of which have been despatched except for Zanussi's Camouflage. For this title I received the note 'no more available (deleted from the catalogue by the distributor)' - oh bugger! Well it was Iluminacja that I particularly wanted but I would very much have liked to have this one as well.

I don't suppose anyone has a spare copy of this do they? (Very unlikely I know.)

The total cost for this lot was 263.75 zł/£46.77.

bergelson wrote:Man of Marble and Man of Iron are listed 4:3. Is this the correct aspect ratio?

As I said in the Wajda thread, Man of Marble is 4:3, and I believe this is the correct aspect ratio - I couldn't see any indication that it should be anything else, all the compositions looked convincing, and as the film is constantly cutting back and forth between colour footage from the 1970s and black-and-white newsreels from the 1950s, I suspect Wajda thought that it would make sense to shoot the entire film in 4:3, if only to avoid cropping the Fifties material.

As for Man of Iron, it's anamorphic 1.66:1, i.e. with slight black bars at the sides. Again, there's no reason to assume that this isn't the correct aspect ratio.

Screen captures from the dvd of Krzysztof Zanussi's Iluminacja posted here.

I just watched this dvd. The image is pretty good although there is a lot of print damage but that doesn't really bother me. The subtitles, however, are crap and a lot of the time they don't make a lot of sense. It's a very visual film though, and the bad subtitles didn't ruin it for me all that much.

Zulawski's science fiction epic is finally seeing an official, English subtitled release on August 28th from Polart.



It's listed as 1.33:1, but that may be a reasonably accurate aspect ratio. This thread on the official Andrzej Zulawski message board has comparisons between the German TV bootleg of the film; I used a ruler to measure the aspect ratios of the screencaps; the official release is about 1.4:1 and the TV transmission was about 1.5:1.

EDIT: IMDb says the OAR is 1.66:1, so this release might be slightly panned and scanned, but even if it is, I've been wanting to see this for a long time, and this is its first English subtitled release ever, so I can't complain.

I have seen the english voice-over version. It is a very strange film with long periods of stillness and confusion. Maybe it makes more sense in Polish with english subs. The transfer I had was terrible, too, so I wouldn't mind seeing some screen caps before I stump up for it again.

I'll put up screencaps when my copy arrives.

Good man!

Oh man--this movie is indeed very strange. Some astonishing imagery, though (a beach pocked with fifty-foot poles, each impaling a man up the sphincter; endless caves populated with hordes of batlike/reptilian humanoid creatures; forbiddingly dry deserts and crumbling bunkers). It compares favorably to the most ambitious science fiction of any country that I'm aware of.

I'm about an hour into this, and find that a painfully large number of the English subs are completely unreadable.
Are others noticing this or is it just a problem with my copy?

I'm a bit confused about the R1 release of this film. Is the Polart version separate from the forthcoming edition listed on Facets as being a Facets release which comes out on the 28th?

Either way, I'm really excited to finally see this.

Same edition I think. Polart's had their discs distributed through Facets in the past.

A hysterical Amazon comment:

Another masterpiece by Zulawski distributed illegally by POLART! 5 star for Film, 0 star for DVD!!, August 5, 2007
By Viva-Italy - See all my reviews

This is one the most haunting arthouse films ever made. Unfortunately it is getting released as a bootleg DVD by Polart - The DVD is Fullscreen (regular PAL-NTSC transfer from the Polish DVD presented in cropped Fullscreen) Zulawski's intended aspect ratio is 1.66:1.

Keep your $30 and wait for a legitimate company to pick up this film for proper distribution.

The admin of the official Andrzej Zulawski website has this to say about the new release:

Terrible Cover, but again you can't expect better for a bootleg copy The Polish DVD [from which the R1 Polart is ported] is 4:3, the original aspect ratio is 1.66:1, which will make a huge difference. Also, the colors on the Polish DVD don't look right as they were taken from a terrible VHS copy. My sources tell me that a legitimate release should be coming early 2008 with Zulawski commentary and interview. Don't waste $30 on this copy unless you are dying to see it.

Sadly, my copy has already shipped. But I'm glad this film's getting a better release down the line with special features; certainly the scope and history of this production merits that kind of attention.

Either Criterion or Anchor Bay.

I'm stoked, because I absolutely adored Third Part of the Night, and this film sounds like the sort of thing that I'll never stop talking about to a friend of mine about after seeing (like Sembene, Watkins, Jodorowsky, Taxi Driver...).

Is the Zulawski website admin refering to a Polish R2 or a USA R1 in 2008?

Polart are releasing Zulawski's 18th Century horror film, Diabel (The Devil) (1972, color). It was banned in Poland until 1988. Jerzy Kawalerowicz's (Mother Joan of the Angels) Celuloza (Cellulose) (1954, bw) is also due on September 25.

Haven't seen any reviews of the Facets/PolArt DVD of Silver Globe, but the English subtitles on my copy are definitely problematic (some sort of glitch renders much of the typeface unreadable, even when paused).

Has anyone else noticed this?

The last Polart/Facets DVD I watched was Innocent Sorcerers, and it was frankly terrible - not least thanks to a PAL-NTSC conversion job so ineptly done that the picture actually pulsed regularly any time there was any kind of sideways camera movement.

I also recall the subs spilling over onto additional lines - in one case this happened to both lines, creating a horribly unwieldy four-line subtitle - which suggests quality control issues. That said, they were electronic and removable, so an improvement on Facets' usual practice - but it's made me distinctly wary of anything else from the Polart label.