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The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present - for the first time on DVD in the UK - Claude Lanzmann's four films that he made as follow-ups to his landmark Shoah, each of which explore in further depth specific aspects and events of the Nazis' externimation progamme. A Visitor from the Living (1997) is based on an interview conducted by Lanzmann with Maurice Rossel during the filming of Shoah. A member of the Berlin delegate for th..
Voted one of the top five Japanese films ever made in a critic's poll by Japan's leading cinema publication Kinema Junpo, yet barely known in the West, Yuzo Kawashima's richly funny multi-levelled portrait of Japanese society Bakumatsu taiyo-den (A Sun-Tribe Myth from the Bakumatsu Era) is a glorious rediscovery. When man-about-town Saheiji (the beloved comedian Frankie Sakai) finds himself unable to pay for a bill at a brothel, he is f..
One of the best films from Italian genre master Sergio Sollima (The Big Gundown), Faccia a Faccia (Face to Face ) is a gangbusting western saga and a gripping parable of the rise of fascism. Upstanding history professor Brad Fletcher (played by the incomparable Gian Maria Volonte) is forced into retirement by his poor health and moves west to the warmer climate of Texas. Almost as soon as he arrives, however, he is taken hostage by fame..
A feverish collision of avant-garde aesthetics and grindhouse shocks (not to mention a direct influence on Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange). Funeral Parade of Roses takes us on an electrifying journey into the nether-regions of the late-'60s Tokyo underworld. In Matsumoto's controversial debut feature, seemingly nothing is taboo: neither the incorporation of visual flourishes straight from the worlds of contemporary graphic design,..
A pair of incredible action-adventure extravaganza's from the legendary Jackie Chan, Project A and Project A Part II make their long overdue debut on Blu-ray in the UK from brand new 2K restorations. Starring three of the greatest martial-arts action stars of all time (Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao), the Project A films blended unparalleled martial artistry, death defying stunts and physical comedy in a way that has yet to be ma..
Albert Einstein once said "If bees were to disappear from the globe, mankind would only have four years left to live." In the past five years, billions of honeybees have simply vanished for reasons still unknown. If the bees keep dying, it will have drastic effects for humankind; more than one third of our food production depends on pollination by honeybees and their life and death are linked to ours. Life without the bee is unthinkable..
Albert Einstein once said: ''If bees were to disappear from the globe, mankind would only have four years left to live''. In the past five years, billions of honeybees simply vanished for reasons still inknown. If the bees keep dying, it will have drastic effects for humankind: more than one third of our food production depends on pollination by honeybees and their life and death are linked to ours. Life without the bee is unthinkable. ..
Samuel Fuller directs this 1950s US drama exploring the fierce competition between two newspapers in New York City. When dedicated journalist Phineas Mitchell (Gene Evans) launches his own newspaper, The Globe, he is delighted by its success and ability to capture the imagination of New Yorkers. However, the paper that previously employed Mitchell, The Star, is not about to cede its readership and sets about trying to reign in The Globe..
After filming the landmark Nosferatu, the silent cinema's master innovator F. W. Murnau demonstrated the reach of his genre versatility with a pair of films that explored the dimensions of the psychodrama and the adventure-programmer. All the Murnau characteristics are present: a vibrant naturalism, exquisite imagery, passages of dreamlike revery, and an atmosphere redolent with romantic longing. In Phantom, an aspiring poet on the verg..
A rhapsodic celebration of song, a brutal condemnation of wartime mentality, and a lyrical statement of hope within darkness; even amongst the riches of 1950s' Japanese cinema, The Burmese Harp (Biruma no tategoto), directed by Kon Ichikawa (Alone Across the Pacific, Tokyo Olympiad), stands as one of the finest achievements of its era. At the close of World War II, a Japanese army regiment in Burma surrenders to the British. Private Miz..
The supreme master John Cassavetes followed up his earth-shaking 1959 debut Shadows with this, his first directorial effort for a major studio. Positioned somewhere between Cassavetes' ferocious independent productions and the Hollywood fare of the early 1960s, Too Late Blues represents a glimpse at a road not taken neither by the director himself, nor by mainstream American cinema in the era of the studio system's collapse - a parallel..
Keisuke Kinoshita's Twenty-Four Eyes - which beat Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai as Kinema Junpo's Best Film of 1954 and won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1955 - is one of Japan's most beloved films. In 1999 it was picked by Japanese critics as one of the ten best Japanese films of all time. Both a huge commercial and critical success, this deeply affecting anti-war film has, according to the critic Tadao Sato, "wrung more t..
One of the greatest films by one of the finest directors of the second half of the 20th century, Maurice Pialat’s Van Gogh represents an ambitious and crowning achievement in its portrayal of the master painter’s final weeks of life, almost exactly one-hundred years earlier. Van Gogh, depicted by the remarkable actor/songwriter-singer Jacques Dutronc (Godard’s Sauve qui peut (la vie)), has arrived at Auvers-sur-Oise to come under the ca..
Classic seventies anime series Yatterman flies to the silver screen in a brilliant crime-fighting explosion of candy-coloured camp, over-the-top adventure, and pure popcorn entertainment. Directed by legendary cult director Takashi Miike (13 Assassins, Ichi The Killer, Audition) and featuring a brand new plot and re-imaged characters, this live action debut of Yatterman will re-define the robot action adventure genre. Gan, the only son ..
After the international firestorm of Last Tango in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci went on to create one of the grandest and most legendary epics in modern cinema, 1900 (Novecento). A stunning five-hour saga following the intertwined fates of two childhood friends born on the same day in 1900 at opposite ends of the social scale through five decades of class struggle. Described by Pauline Kael as making most other films “look like something ..
A stunning romantic drama from writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve, The Barefoot Contessa), A Letter to Three Wives explores the domestic travails of three couples and the woman that brings them to the brink of crisis. The letter of the title is written with a poisonous pen: the three women (portrayed by Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, and Ann Sothern) receive a note stating that one of their husbands has run off with a wom..
Ranked as one of the finest British films of all time, director Fred Zinnemann's (High Noon, From Here to Eternity, Day of the Jackal) A Man for All Seasons was lavished with awards and critical praise upon release for its opulent mise en scene and the incredible performances from its cast. Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield), England's Roman Catholic Chancellor, is forced into a difficult position when corrupt King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw,..
Elaine May writes, directs and stars in this romantic comedy alongside Walter Matthau. Having spent his entire inheritance, wealthy playboy Henry Graham (Matthau) is desperately searching for a new way to make more money. With no apparent skills to fend for himself, Henry vows to marry a wealthy woman so she can support him and makes a bet with his Uncle Harry (James Coco) that he can do so within six weeks. But if he fails to do so Hen..
Taiwanese martial arts feature. The film follows the painter Ku (Shih Jun) as he tries to protect a female fugitive, Yang (Hsu Feng), from being captured by an evil eunuch. After the eunuch arrives with an army of East Chamber guards, the artist and the warrior fortify Ku's mother's supposedly haunted mansion and set ghostly traps in preparation for the soldiers' arrival. Will the pair survive the inevitable battles?..
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Director Elia Kazan's first film, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn shows that the filmmaker's great empathy for his characters was already quite evident at this early juncture, and this endures as one of the most moving Hollywood dramas of the 1940s. Based on Betty Smith's novel – a bestseller in the U.S. but also one of the most popular books among American soldiers overseas in WWII – Kazan's debut is a sensitive, masterful adaptation. Set am..
The debut feature of Italian filmmaker-novelist-poet-provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salò, or: The 120 Days of Sodom; The Gospel According to Matthew; The Decameron), Accattone rocked the cinema world with its depictions, at once raw and elegant, of the underside of Roman street life – and, in the process, seemed to announce a new direction for Italian films: a neo-neorealism.On the mean streets of Rome, Accattone’s eponymous pimp (pla..
Since re-emerging in the 2000s, Billy Wilder's superb Ace in the Hole, so ahead of its time in the 1950s with its acidic and unflinching examination of journalistic ethics and human morality, has taken its place alongside Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, and The Apartment as among the director's greatest works. In one of the most powerhouse performances in American screen-acting, the great Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, a newspap..
An exceptional patriotic war movie that follows the story of prince Alaxander Nevsky from the apparent position of humble fisherman to a war hero leading his country in a successful campaign against invaders from Germany. It is 1242 and the story begins with Russia constantly being invaded by Mongol raiders, in their endless pursuit of land and treasure, when news comes of an impending attack by Teutonic knights. Some of the Russian hie..
A fifteen year old Fiona Fullerton heads up an all star British cast in this double Bafta award winning musical comedy - widely regarded as the most lavish and most faithful adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic fantasy novel. Alice is listening to a story told by Lewis Carroll when a white rabbit runs by Alice follows the rabbit down a hole and then falls deep into the centre of the earth, where she lands, on a bed of leaves in an endl..
A dark psychosexual drama from first-time directors Carlos and Jason Sanchez, Allure stars Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld) as a troubled woman who becomes entangled in an intense relationship with a young girl. Plagued by the abuse of her past and the turmoil of failed intimate encounters, Laura (Evan Rachel Wood) struggles to find a sense of normalcy. Her beacon of hope comes in sixteen year-old Eva (Julia Sarah Stone), a talented piani..
Aloys Adorn is a middle-aged private detective who lives and works with his father. He experiences life from a safe distance, through a video camera he keeps recording 24 hours a day, and the massive collection of surveillance tapes he organises and obsessively watches at home. But when his father dies, Aloys is left on his own and his sheltered existence begins to fall apart. After a night of heavy drinking, Aloys wakes up on a public ..
One of the last great German Expressionist films of the silent era, Joe May's Asphalt is a love story set in the traffic-strewn Berlin of the late 1920s. Starring the delectable Betty Amann in her most famous leading role, Asphalt is a luxuriously produced Ufa classic of Weimar cinema. A well-dressed lady thief (Betty Amann) steals a precious stone from a jewellery shop. She tries to seduce the policeman (Gustav Frohlich) who arrests he..
Planned by the Soviet Central Committee to coincide with the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the unsuccessful 1905 Russian Revolution, this film was developed by the 27 year-old Sergei Eisenstein from less than one page of script from a planned eight-part epic that was intended to chronicle a large number of revolutionary actions. Starting with the Potemkin's crew's refusal to eat maggot-infested meat, the mutiny develops and t..
The music of Benny Goodman comes to life in this wonderful musical biography of the famed King of Swing. Featuring all the outstanding songs and instrumentals made famous by the immortal clarinetist, the story follows the innovative musician from his childhood in Chicago to his historic concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938. Steve Allen (Casino, The Player), Oscar winning actress Donna Reed (It's a Wonderful Life, From Here to Eternity, Dall..
Often acknowledged as one of the best prison films ever made, Birdman of Alcatraz was director John Frankenheimer’s first huge success and received rave reviews for its performances, cinematography (by the great Burnett Guffey; From Here to Eternity, Bonnie and Clyde) and Frankenheimer’s directing. Burt Lancaster stars as the notorious prisoner, Robert Stroud, sentenced to a life of solitary confinement for murdering a prison guard. W..
Urban action and fatal attraction give rise to a groove from beyond the grave in this funkadelic, fangadelic Soul Cinema sensation! The eternally cool William Marshall puts a fresh spin on the age-old legend of the vampire, condemned to wander the earth with an insatiable lust for blood. In 1780, African Prince Mamuwalde (Marshall) pays a visit to Count Dracula in Transylvania, seeking his support in ending the slave trade. Instead, the..
One of the early films by Method Actor's director Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront), Boomerang! also marked one of the early American Hollywood entries into the Cannes Film Festival in 1947. Kazan's impactful noir drama stars a cast of stalwarts of the '40s and '50s hard-boiled streak and his own oeuvre, including Dana Andrews, Lee J. Cobb, Jane Wyatt, Arthur Kennedy, and Karl Malden. When the murder of a priest r..
This wondrous true adventure from the best-selling novel about a woman who raised a lioness and eventually set her free is beautifully photographed on the vast, golden savannas of Africa. Born Free is a story of courage and love, nature and human nature, and a relationship unlike any other ever filmed. When game warden George Adamson (Bill Travers) is forced to kill a menacing lion and lioness, he and his wife Joy (Virginia McKenna) ado..
An action-packed mystery western based on the best-selling novel by Alistair MacLean (The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare), Breakheart Pass throws open the throttle for runaway excitement! At the height of the frontier era, a locomotive races through the Rocky Mountains on a classified mission to a remote Army post. But one by one, the passengers are being murdered. Their only hope is John Deakin (Charles Bronson,..
The complete seven series of the classic British comedy in which Chris Barrie plays Gordon Brittas, the manager of Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre. Gordon means well and he tries hard but life just never seems to go his way. With the help of assistant Laura (Julia St John), janitor Colin (Michael Burns) and emotional receptionist Carole (Harriet Thorpe), Gordon tries his best to run a successful establishment while supporting his staff..
Capturing Keaton's first steps in front of a camera this box set charts his early association with ex-Keystone Kop Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle through to starring in, headlining, and directing his own box office smash hits. Using Chaplin's old Hollywood studios in 1920, Keaton's sophisticated technical inventiveness coupled with his haunted-yet-handsome 'Stone Face' persona, created a succession of the most timeless, classic comedy shorts e..
32 of Buster Keaton's short films made between 1917 and 1923. Capturing Keaton's early career in front of the camera, this collection charts his association with ex-Keystone Kop Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle through to headlining and directing his own box office hits. The films include: 'The Butcher Boy' (1917), 'The Rough House' (1917), 'His Wedding Night' (1917), 'Oh Doctor!' (1917), 'Coney Island' (1917), 'Out West' (1918), 'The Bell Boy' ..
Found footage horror directed by Brian Allan Stewart and Nick McAnulty. Jennifer (Jennifer Fraser) and Farhang (Farhang Ghajar) acquire a new camera with the intention of documenting their activities. These activities grow ever more sinister however as the couple prepare to kill someone in their basement and capture footage of the deed, purely for the visceral thrill. Farhang begins to have serious reservations about their plan but Jenn..
After the visual fireworks of Sunrise and the now-lost splendour of 4 Devils, F.W. Murnau turned his attention to this vivid, painterly study of an impulsive and fragile marriage among the wheatfields of Minnesota. During a brief stay in Chicago, innocent farmer’s son Lem falls for and weds Kate, a hard-bitten but lonely waitress. Upon bringing her home at the start of harvest time, the honeymoon soon turns into a claustrophobic struggl..
Jackie Chan stars as the girl-chasing private detective Ryo Saeba in this hilarious live-action adaptation of the popular Japanese manga series, City Hunter, presented from a stunning new 2K restoration! Hired to track down Shizuko Imamura, the runaway daughter of a publishing tycoon, Ryo initially turns the job down… until he sees a picture of the missing woman! Ryo eventually finds her aboard a luxury cruise ship, but much to the ann..
Director Ron Howard followed up the huge success of Splash with this light-hearted science-fiction tale about a group of elderly friends who find their youth returning after encountering a benevolent Alien species living next door to their retirement home. Bucking the trend of extravagant special effects targeted at a teenage audience, Cocoon with its senior cast and more personal focus was a huge success, picking up two Academy Awards ..
Three guys in their twenties love wine and women but they are still virgins.Under the guise of a wine tour they embark on a journey to Spain hoping to have their first sexual experience. Jozef is blind, Philip is paralysed from the neck down and Lars is in a wheelchair with a brain tumour, but they're not going to let anything stand in their way.... Based on the real life experiences of Asta Philpot, Come As You Are (Hasta la Vista) is ..
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Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is one of the wonderful highlights of an under-appreciated chapter of director Robert Altman's career. Between the box office disappointment of Popeye (1980) and the explosive comeback of The Player (1992), Altman returned to lower-budgeted, independent filmmaking, often boldly experimenting with how theatre work could be inventively adapted for cinema and television. This period of..
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Perhaps the most compelling picture ever made about the shattering aftermath of the Vietnam War. Coming Home earned eight Academy Award nominations and won three for Best Actress (Jane Fonda), Actor (Jon Voight), and Original Screenplay. Coming Home is an uncompromising, extraordinarily moving film directed by the great Hal Ashby (Harold & Maude). When Marine Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) leaves for Vietnam, his wife Sally (Fonda) vol..
Fritz Lang's trilogy of thrillers following the evil exploits of criminal mastermind and terror-monger Dr Mabuse. The three films, which were made over a 40-year period, are considered a cornerstone in the career of one of cinema's most celebrated directors. Films included are: 'Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (Dr Mabuse, the Gambler)' (1922), 'Das Testament des Dr Mabuse (The Testament of Dr Mabuse)' (1933) and 'Die 1000 Augen des Dr Mabuse (Th..
Eleven years after The Leopard, the revered Italian maestro Luchino Visconti reteamed with the iconic Burt Lancaster on the lavish Conversation Piece (Gruppo di famiglia in un interno). A retired American professor (Lancaster) lives a solitary and luxurious life in a house in Rome. His world takes an unexpected turn when he is forced to rent part of his house to a countess and her companions: a lover, a daughter and the daughter's boyfr..
One of the most lavish and successful Hollywood musicals of the 1940s, Charles Vidor’s Cover Girl is a breath-taking spectacle that established its stars Rita Hayworth (Gilda, The Lady from Shanghai) and Gene Kelly (Singin’ in the Rain), as the two most popular actors of their time. Nightclub dancer Rusty (Hayworth) has a happy life performing at her boyfriend Danny’s (Kelly) club in Brooklyn, but her whole world changes once she wins a..
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa first came to prominence in the West with his J-Horror masterpieces Cure and Pulse [Kairo]. Now he makes a triumphant return to the horror genre with Creepy, a macabre and deeply unsettling thriller that has sent shivers down the spines of audiences worldwide. Based on a novel by Yutaka Maekawa, Creepy follows ex-police detective and criminal psychologist Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima, Dolls), who moves to a qu..
This second feature by the Japanese cinema-insurgent Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence) galvanised its home-turf with its topsy-turvy directorial dexterity and stinging constigation of an indolent, self-indulgent youth culture reposing on the eve of the turbulent 1960s. When high-schooler Makoto is saved from the advances of a lecherous middle-aged man by uni student Kiyoshi, the pair embark on a fi..
Released to critical acclaim in both the East and the West, Cure was a breakthrough film for director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a nerve shredding thriller about the hunt for a serial killer in a bleak and decaying Tokyo. A series of murders have been committed by ordinary people who claim to have had no control over their horrifying actions. Following the only link - a mysterious stranger who had brief contact with each perpetrator and their vi..
One of world cinema's most dynamic and highly regarded auteurs, Hou Hsiao-hsien has influenced entire generations of filmmakers and was once dubbed "one of the three directors most crucial to the future of cinema". The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present three films from early in his career, Cute Girl, The Green, Green Grass of Home and The Boys from Fengkuei, all making their worldwide debut on Blu-ray and presented from stunn..
One of the most iconic masterpieces in cinema history, Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.) shook filmgoers worldwide and changed the direction of the art form. Now presented in a definitive restoration, the film’s chilling, radically expressionist vision is set to grip viewers again. At a local carnival in a small German town, hypnotist Dr. Caligari presents the somnambulist Cesare, who can purport..
With the etching onto glass of a single word - "Mabuse" - Berlin reawakens into a nightmare. Fritz Lang’s electrifying Das Testament Des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse) is the astonishing second instalment in the German master’s legendary Dr. Mabuse series, a film that puts image and sound into an hypnotic arrangement unlike anything seen or heard in the cinema ever before - or since. It’s been eleven years since the downfall o..
Taiwanese auteur House Hsiao-hsien followed up his highly acclaimed coming-of-age trilogy of films with Daughter of the Nile [Ni luo he nu er], a rich and poignant drama about a young woman struggling to support her family amidst the violent and neon-soaked milieu of 1980's Tapei. Lin [Lin Yang] works as a waitress in a fried chicken restaurant, attends night school and pines after her brother's friend, local gigolo Ah-sang (Fan Yang). ..
Revered by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, the great director Andre de Toth made some of the most gripping and unusual American films of the 1950s, and Day of the Outlaw stands as one of his finest. Robert Ryan plays the ruthless cattleman Blaise Starrett who rides into the small, snowbound town of Bitters to settle a feud with homesteader Hal Crane (Alan Marshal) over access to land, with one eye on rekindling a pas..
After the relatively commercial Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Luis Bunuel returned to the surrealist and political style of his earlier works with Death in the Garden [La mort en ce jardin] the middle film in what has been described as his "revolutionary triptych", a trilogy of films that "study in the morality and tactics of armed revolution against a right-wing dictatorship". Amid a revolution in a South American mining outpost, a ba..
Paul Wegener's landmark gothic horror film was first released in 1914, before being substantially reworked for a reissue six years later. The Golem, a clay hulk brought to life by a magic scroll implanted in his chest, saves the Jews from Rudolf II in 16th Century Prague. Reverting to his inanimate form, the golem is given the gift of life once more by a Rabbi's assistant who wants him to kidnap the beautiful Miriam...
Before directing numerous genre defining masterpieces such as Metropolis, M, and Spione, Fritz Lang was already defying cinematic conventions with Der mude Tod (literally, The Weary Death). A young woman (Lil Dagover) confronts the personification of Death (Bernhard Goetzke), in an effort to save the life of her fiance (Walter Janssen). Death weaves three romantic tragedies and offers to unite the girl with her lover, if she can prevent..
Fritz Lang returned to Germany on the eve of the 1960s to direct this enchanted penultimate work, a redraft of the diptych form pioneered in such silent Lang classics as Die Spinnen; Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler.; and Die Nibelungen. Although no encapsulating title was lent at the time of release to what is, effectively, a single 3-hour-plus film split in two, the work that has come to be referred to in modern times as "the Indian epic" prov..
A masterwork of the German silent cinema whose reputation has only increased over time, Diary of a Lost Girl (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen) traces the journey of a young woman from the pit of despair to the moment of personal awakening. Directed with virtuoso flair by the great G. W. Pabst, Diary of a Lost Girl represents the final pairing of the filmmaker with screen icon Louise Brooks, mere months after their first collaboration in the n..
