International cinema

For 40 years, James Benning has been a singular, defiant voice in the American independent film scene. This 2-disc set the first in a planned series devoted to the filmmaker's oeuvre features two of Benning's seminal works from the mid-1980s for the first time ever on DVD: American Dreams (lost and found) is the filmmaker's personal take on the history of the USA from 1954 to 1976, told through a complex and thought provoking amalgamation of image, text and sound. In Landscape Suicide, he effortlessly strides the boundaries of narrative and documentary forms as he recounts two infamous murder cases that took place almost 30 years apart.

This double DVD comprises all three of Antonio Skármeta's films shot during his exile in Berlin in the 1980s: His award-winning story about Pablo Neruda and a simple postman, which was also published as a novel and later famously re-filmed as Il Postino; the portrait of a three-generation Chilean family living in a Berlin apartment; and a cinematic dairy, in which Skármeta visits other Chilean artists in exile. These films cast light on the everyday occurrences in a life shaped by politics the hope, the joy and the humour.

Erich von Stroheim's directorial debut is set in the alpine scenery of South Tyrol. It still baffles its audiences through its precise visual language and its moral ambiguity. This edition presents the film in its gorgeous tinted Austrian release version, Die Rache der Berge (Blinde Ehemänner) / The Revenge of the Mountains (Blind Husbands), featuring German language intertitles. This print of the film is the longest and oldest version available today. Extras include additional materials from the Austrian Film Museum's Stroheim collection.

The 2-disc DVD set presents new restored versions of two rare classics by Werner Schroeter connecting private stories with history: Der Bomberpilot tells the story of three eccentric women in Germany during the Nazi period who try to become show stars in America after the war. Nel Regno di Napoli is a chronicle of post-war Italy told from the perspective of a Neapolitan family. Additional features are an interview with Werner Schroeter by Gérard Courant, a video showing Werner Schroeter in a talk with the audience at the Austrian Filmmuseum, and stills from the shooting of Nel Regno di Napoli by Digne M. Markovicz.

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.

In casting a glance one artist pays tribute to another as James Benning offers his filmic paean to Robert Smithson's legendary "earthwork" sculpture, the Spiral Jetty. With RR, his homage to the American railroad, the filmmaker brings an era to its close by going back to cinema's roots. Shot back-to-back over a period of two years, these works marked James Benning's farewell to analogue filmmaking and together constitute the profound "last words" on the film medium by one of its most singular innovators. This 2-disc set presents both films together with rare audio interviews in which Benning recounts the experience of making his "last" films and gives unique insight into his creative methods.

2-disc DVD about the origins of the cinema. Dogs playing the pianos, contortionists defying the pain limits, handcoloured serpentine dances: attractions and sensations characterize the travelling cinema of the fairgrounds in the beginning of the 20th century. Rarities from the trasure chests of the European film archives ranging from Danish anarchistic slapstick and Scottish X-ray films to French erotic piquancies and a wild chase through Brussels caused by a leopard. Local films from the region Luxembourg, Trier and Saarbrücken resent a forgotten genre which was, in its days, another crowd puller in travelling cinema: Filmed local events and scenes depicting the local people who would then pay to see themselves in "living photographs" on the big screen.

Zagreb-born artist Vlado Kristl (1923 2004) was the most radical of the German auteur filmmakers. This two-disc set represents a re-discovery of his work. It comprises early animated films, made in Yugoslavia, his first live-action film, first feature-length film, a parody of holiday home movies, a pamphlet, and a previously unreleased 8mm film. The ROM section features sketches, storyboards, scripts, and texts by Kristl.

In the 1990s, James Benning's films were characterized primarily by an ongoing investigation of the relationship between the image and the (spoken or written) word. This 2-disc set features the two key works representing the peak of this "text-image film" period. In Deseret Benning (by way of the New York Times) retells the history of America's Mormon State Utah through spectacular black & white and color images. Art and landscape join as one in Benning's following film Four Corners, which serves as both a tribute to the famous region in the USA where four states converge and a portrait of four very different artists.

The Georgian-born filmmaker Michail Kalatozov (19031973) is best remembered for directing some of the most innovative and successful Soviet films of the 1950s and 1960s. This DVD presents digitally restored versions of two of his lesser-known, early works, which were highly controversial in their time but now rank among the finest achievements in Soviet silent cinema. SALT FOR SVANETIA is an austere depiction of peasant life in the inhospitable terrain of the Caucasus Mountains. NAIL IN THE BOOT, a biting parable of wartime irresponsibility, chillingly prefigures the later Stalinist purge trials. Günter Buchwald's and Stephen Horne's prize-winning scores and the experimental accompaniment by Masha Khotimshi underline the poetic and expressive visual style of these exceptional masterpieces.