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repeat wrote:Beautiful, wonderful news - hats off to NWF for these acquisitions! For a taster of the documentaries, Landscape and another short film Artel are available, at least in some parts of the world, on DocAlliance (difficult to Google because for some bizarre reason they've used international scientific transliteration of his surname)

Loznica would be the standard state transliteration of his surname from Belarusian, but from Ukrainian and Russian it's the scholarly version. It's a minefield!

TMDaines wrote:Loznica would be the standard state transliteration of his surname from Belarusian, but from Ukrainian and Russian it's the scholarly version. It's a minefield!

When I reviewed the Ukrainian Re:vision box for Sight & Sound, I had to ask the subs in advance to respect the Ukrainian transliterations of names and titles - because standard S&S practice with names from former Soviet-bloc countries is to go for the more familiar Russian transliteration. Thankfully, they agreed to make an exception in this case, given that a key aim of the box was to restore familiar Soviet titles to their decidedly unfamiliar original Ukrainian versions.

OMG, I don't know which part of these announcements to be most excited about, the documentary set or getting In the Fog on Blu - and now on top of that, the VivaVerve pre-order page states that the In the Fog disc includes Loznitsa's 2013 short Letter! AND it's only 12 quid when you get it directly from them - if this ain't a no-brainer I don't know what is Ok peeps - bump down whatever's on top of your shopping list and get this instead (and then let's put it in the 2012 consensus top ten where it damn well belongs)

MichaelB wrote:

TMDaines wrote:Loznica would be the standard state transliteration of his surname from Belarusian, but from Ukrainian and Russian it's the scholarly version. It's a minefield!

When I reviewed the Ukrainian Re:vision box for Sight & Sound, I had to ask the subs in advance to respect the Ukrainian transliterations of names and titles - because standard S&S practice with names from former Soviet-bloc countries is to go for the more familiar Russian transliteration. Thankfully, they agreed to make an exception in this case, given that a key aim of the box was to restore familiar Soviet titles to their decidedly unfamiliar original Ukrainian versions.

It really is a complicated issue as you're looking at half a dozen widely recognised systems of romanisation for each of the three closely related languages. It's all made more difficult by the fact that names between the three languages are usually translated (which is something we don't do in English, apart from with certain historical and royal figures). It's made even murkier still by the fact that Russian is the dominant language in Ukraine, despite Ukrainian being the official, so in terms of addressing the individual do you work with his Ukrainian or Russian name? You'll see that many of the Ukrainians in the Ukrainian film sets are far more widely referenced by their Russian name online, but its extremely difficult to work out whether this is down to Russian dominance, and the former oppression of the Ukrainian langauge, or personal preference. Politically, it's a real hot potato.

TMDaines wrote:It really is a complicated issue as you're looking at half a dozen widely recognised systems of romanisation for each of the three closely related languages. It's all made more difficult by the fact that names between the three languages are usually translated (which is something we don't do in English, apart from with certain historical and royal figures). It's made even murkier still by the fact that Russian is the dominant language in Ukraine, despite Ukrainian being the official, so in terms of addressing the individual do you work with his Ukrainian or Russian name? You'll see that many of the Ukrainians in the Ukrainian film sets are far more widely referenced by their Russian name online, but its extremely difficult to work out whether this is down to Russian dominance, and the former oppression of the Ukrainian langauge, or personal preference. Politically, it's a real hot potato.

It was mainly because of the explicitly nationalistic aims of the box set that I insisted on Ukrainian spelling (or rather Ukrainian transliteration) - so Oleksandr rather than Alexander Dovzhenko. Although this was a one-off - when I reviewed Mr Bongo's edition of Earth I adopted the more familiar version.

newwavefilms wrote:This makes about 20/30 units of Hors Satan blu so far promised from here. We will do another calculation for its financial viability, but don't hold your breath too long. Incidentally, just looked at check disc of DVD today and looks pretty good.

Can we ask whether this nascent glimmer of hope for a Hors Satan blu has gone nova? There are a quiet few still clinging to the wreckage holding our breath.

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:Can we ask whether this nascent glimmer of hope for a Hors Satan blu has gone nova? There are a quiet few still clinging to the wreckage holding our breath.

The measly nine additional "pre-orders" from Blu-ray.com prompted me to exhale months ago, but it would be nice to get a confirmation before ordering the DVD...

Also, if newwavefilms is still reading - can you share any updates about the plans for My Joy? Would those possibly depend on how well In the Fog does?

There are those that are holding out for Blu still (like me) and there are those who bought the DVD to support the label and film (like me). So the DVD sales are a confusing indicator of the DVD market.

Yeah, I bought the DVD. I'd double dip.

repeat wrote:

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:Can we ask whether this nascent glimmer of hope for a Hors Satan blu has gone nova? There are a quiet few still clinging to the wreckage holding our breath.

The measly nine additional "pre-orders" from Blu-ray.com prompted me to exhale months ago, but it would be nice to get a confirmation before ordering the DVD...

Also, if newwavefilms is still reading - can you share any updates about the plans for My Joy? Would those possibly depend on how well In the Fog does?

We always read, and thanks for the transliteration correspondence..

It's extremely unlikely that we'll do a Blu on Hors Satan now. Was trying to get more countries involved but nothing happened so far. Exhale completely, please get the DVD. Somebody suggested crowd-funding but the crowd never seemed more than a small gathering of Dumontophiles.

On My Joy, it was partly this forum that made us think of doing some docs instead, as a Region 1 My Joy is available from Kino Lorber. And we're glad that we can make these Blockade, Landscape and Revue available. But a Region 2 of My Joy is still a possibility, just not an immediate one.

Huge disappointment about Hors blu but thanks a lot for the continuing dialogue.
FYI / FWIW - In the Fog and Post Tenebras blus ordered.

It's excellent news on the Loznitsa documentaries, but can I make a plea about not giving up on releasing My Joy at some point? I think there would be sales among people who are still region-locked as, although members of this forum are obviously very happy to import, I suspect the majority of UK DVD purchasers still probably don't for various reasons.

newwavefilms wrote:On My Joy, it was partly this forum that made us think of doing some docs instead, as a Region 1 My Joy is available from Kino Lorber. And we're glad that we can make these Blockade, Landscape and Revue available. But a Region 2 of My Joy is still a possibility, just not an immediate one.

I'm glad we could give you some guidance on this! It seems a very smart move, making this the best Loznitsa release in the world (so far). As far as I'm concerned, unreleased films (including shorts) are always the most persuasive extra you can include. And by making this release as strong as you have, we probably have an even better chance of seeing an eventual Blu of My Joy, which is one of the greatest films of the new century.

So all you guys better support this release!

FOG and the docs are will be day one purchases for myself.

Intend to buy In the Fog and Tenebrae Lux but no interest in the Hors Satan DVD, sorry. It's disappointing since an HD master must already exist, but with the DVD out there I guess the horse has shot the bolt.

Amazon's price for the In the Fog BD just dropped from £19.99 to £12.72. This is now officially a no brainer.

Also, New Wave don't have anything to do with Post Tenebras Lux, do they?

swo17 wrote:Also, New Wave don't have anything to do with Post Tenebras Lux, do they?

No, it's a Drakes Avenue release, but both labels are distributed by Verve Pictures - and available through vivaverve.com (where the In The Fog BD has been £12 w/ free UK shipping all along)

At this price there really is no excuse not to buy this release - will get both Loznitsas, Hors Satan and Aurora as soon as the docu disc comes up for pre-order. Also, if anyone is placing an order with Verve, I strongly recommend to include Aurora - such an amazing film, I don't know why it hasn't been discussed more over here. For me Puiu is easily the most exciting Romanian director working at the moment.

I can also thoroughly recommend Vivaverve's speed and customer service - as I posted a few pages back, they got a delivery to me and a replacement (because they'd initially sent me the wrong format) within 48 hours of me placing the order in the first place. Which is less time than plenty of rivals need to get the original order onto my doormat.

peerpee wrote:The Dumont interview by Jonathan Romney on HADEWIJCH is worth the price of the disc alone.

I agree. One of the things I like about Jonathan Romney as a critic is his willingness to change his mind. I remember he took the 'against' position in Sight and Sound's 'for' and 'against' article on L'Humanite (I think Mark Cousins was the writer in favour of the film), as you pointed out in your excellent article on Dumont on the old MoC website (before MoC started producing DVDs).

repeat wrote:I strongly recommend to include Aurora - such an amazing film, I don't know why it hasn't been discussed more over here. For me Puiu is easily the most exciting Romanian director working at the moment.

The people at New Wave seem to be fairly consistently picking up excellent stuff at the moment, don't they? I wonder if they acquired anything at Cannes this year.

AidanKing wrote:I wonder if they acquired anything at Cannes this year.

They did.

Thank you very much. Interesting selection. Grigris got mixed reviews, didn't it? The Missing Picture looks like an intriguing addition to New Wave's roster of political documentaries, if that's a reasonable description of such singular films as Nostalgia for the Light.

peerpee wrote:The Dumont interview by Jonathan Romney on HADEWIJCH is worth the price of the disc alone. Far better than that terribly shot Dumont Q&A that turned up on Soda's FLANDERS disc.

I haven't seen the Flanders interview, but if its style earns a negative comparison to the woefully pretentious and inept visual treatment of the Romney interview on Hadewijch, I will avoid it like the plague. It's an interview with the director, folks: nobody's interested in your feeble attempts to replicate key scenes from Seconds, or Chungking Express, or whatever the hell you thought you were doing with your idiotic fish-eye lenses and drifts way out of focus. Ugh.

I'd really like to know if New Wave plans to pick up Dumont's Camille Claudel 1915. As of now, it doesn't appear that it has been acquired by any US or UK distributors.

zedz wrote:I haven't seen the Flanders interview, but if its style earns a negative comparison to the woefully pretentious and inept visual treatment of the Romney interview on Hadewijch, I will avoid it like the plague. It's an interview with the director, folks: nobody's interested in your feeble attempts to replicate key scenes from Seconds, or Chungking Express, or whatever the hell you thought you were doing with your idiotic fish-eye lenses and drifts way out of focus. Ugh.

I agree re: the technical pretensions of the Romney shoot, I was overlooking that because the content is great. The Soda Q&A is painful because you can barely hear Dumont from the in-camera mic at the back of the room.