For the final new-release announcement of the year, we’re unveiling upcoming editions of a satirical afterlife comedy by Albert Brooks, an enigmatic ode to friendship and imagination from Jacques Rivette, the Palme d’Or–winning family drama that made Mike Leigh one of the world’s most beloved auteurs, and Djibril Diop Mambéty’s convention-shattering debut feature. Plus, our recently announced seven-film World of Wong Kar Wai box set!
Céline and Julie Go Boating
Whiling away a summer in Paris, director Jacques Rivette, working in close collaboration with his stars and coconspirators Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier, set out to rewrite the rules of cinema in the spirit of pure play—moviemaking as an anything-goes romp through the labyrinths of imagination. The result is one of the most exuberantly inventive and utterly enchanting films of the French New Wave, in which Julie (Labourier), a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline (Berto), an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama. Incorporating allusions to everything from Lewis Carroll to Louis Feuillade, Céline and Julie Go Boating is both one of the all-time-great hangout comedies and a totally unique, enveloping cinematic dream space that delights in the endless pleasures and possibilities of stories.
Available March 16, 2021
Spine #1069
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 2017 featuring critic Adrian Martin
- Jacques Rivette: Le veilleur, a 1994 two-part feature documentary by Claire Denis, featuring an extensive interview with Rivette by film critic Serge Daney
- New interviews with actor Bulle Ogier and producer and actor Barbet Schroeder
- New conversation between critic Pacôme Thiellement and Hélène Frappat, author of Jacques Rivette, secret compris
- Archival interviews with Rivette, Ogier, and actors Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, and Marie-France Pisier
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Beatrice Loayza and a 1974 piece by Berto
Secrets & Lies
Writer-director Mike Leigh reached new levels of expressive power and intricacy in his ongoing contemplation of unembellished humanity with this resonant exploration of the deceptions, small and large, that shape our relationships to those we love. When Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a Black optometrist who was adopted as a child, begins the search for her birth mother, she doesn’t expect that it will lead her to Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn, winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s best actress award), a desperately lonely white factory worker whose tentative embrace of her long-lost daughter sends shock waves through the rest of her already fragile family. Born from a painstaking process of rehearsal and improvisation with a powerhouse ensemble cast, Secrets & Lies is a Palme d’Or–winning tour de force of sustained tension and catharsis that lays bare the emotional fault lines running beneath the surface of everyday lives.
Available March 30, 2021
Spine #1070
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Mike Leigh and director of photography Dick Pope, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New conversation with Leigh and composer Gary Yershon
- New conversation with actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste and film critic Corrina Antrobus
- Audio interview with Leigh from 1996 conducted by film critic Michel Ciment
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film programmer and critic Ashley Clark
Touki bouki
With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a fractured portrait of the disenchantment of postindependence Senegal in the early 1970s. In this picaresque fantasy-drama, the disaffected young lovers Anta and Mory, fed up with Dakar, long to escape to the glamour and comforts they imagine France has to offer, but their plan is confounded by obstacles both practical and mystical. Alternately manic and meditative, Touki bouki has an avant-garde sensibility characterized by vivid imagery, bleak humor, unconventional editing, and jagged soundscapes, and it demonstrates Mambéty’s commitment to telling African stories in new ways.
Touki Bouki was restored in 2008 by the Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and the family of Djibril Diop Mambéty. Restoration funded by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways, and Qatar Museum Authority.
Available March 9, 2021
Spine #685
SPECIAL FEATURES
- 2K digital transfer, restored by the Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and the family of director Djibril Diop Mambéty, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Introduction from 2013 by The Film Foundation’s founder and chair, Martin Scorsese
- Interview from 2013 with filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako
- Interview program from 2012 featuring musician Wasis Diop and filmmaker Mati Diop, Mambéty’s brother and niece, respectively
- Contras’ City, a 1968 short film by Mambéty, in a new 4K restoration by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and the Cineteca di Bologna
- PLUS: An essay by film programmer and critic Ashley Clark
Defending Your Life
Is there love after death? Acerbic everyman Albert Brooks finds a perfect balance between satirical bite and romantic-comedy charm as the writer, director, and star of this wonderfully warm and imaginative existential fantasy. After he dies suddenly, the hapless advertising executive Daniel Miller (Brooks) finds himself in Judgment City, a gleaming way station where the newly deceased must prove they lived a life of sufficient courage to advance in their journey through the universe. As the self-doubting Daniel struggles to make his case, a budding relationship with the uninhibited Julia (Meryl Streep) offers him a chance to finally feel alive. Buoyed by a brilliant supporting cast that includes Rip Torn, Lee Grant, and Buck Henry, Defending Your Life is a rare feat of personal, philosophical filmmaking that happens to also be divinely entertaining.
Available March 30, 2021
Spine #1071
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director Albert Brooks, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New conversation between Brooks and filmmaker Robert Weide
- New interview on the afterlife with theologian and critic Donna Bowman
- New program featuring excerpts from 1991 interviews with Brooks and actors Lee Grant and Rip Torn
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by filmmaker Ari Aster
World of Wong Kar Wai
With his lush and sensual visuals, pitch-perfect soundtracks, and soulful romanticism, Wong Kar Wai has established himself as one of the defining auteurs of contemporary cinema. Joined by such key collaborators as cinematographer Christopher Doyle; editor and production and costume designer William Chang Suk Ping; and actors Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung Man Yuk, Wong (or WKW, as he is often known) has written and directed films that have enraptured audiences and critics worldwide and inspired countless other filmmakers with their poetic moods and music, narrative and stylistic daring, and potent themes of alienation and memory. Whether they’re tragically romantic, soaked in blood, or quirkily comedic, the seven films collected here are an invitation into the unique and wistful world of a deeply influential artist.
Available March 23, 2021
SEVEN-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION COLLECTOR’S SET FEATURES
- New 4K digital restorations of Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046, approved by director Wong Kar Wai, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
- New 4K digital restorations of As Tears Go By and Days of Being Wild, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
- New program in which Wong answers questions submitted, at the invitation of the director, by authors André Aciman and Jonathan Lethem; filmmakers Sofia Coppola, Rian Johnson, Lisa Joy, and Chloé Zhao; cinematographers Philippe Le Sourd and Bradford Young; and filmmakers and founders/creative directors of Rodarte Kate and Laura Mulleavy
- Alternate version of Days of Being Wild featuring different edits of the film’s prologue and final scenes, on home video for the first time
- Hua yang de nian hua, a 2000 short film by Wong
- Extended version of The Hand, a 2004 short film by Wong, available in the U.S. for the first time
- Interview and “cinema lesson” with Wong from the 2001 Cannes Film Festival
- Three making-of documentaries, featuring interviews with Wong; actors Maggie Cheung Man Yuk, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Chang Chen, Faye Wong, and Ziyi Zhang; and others
- Episode of the television series Moving Pictures from 1996 featuring Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle
- Interviews from 2002 and 2005 with Doyle
- Excerpts from a 1994 British Film Institute audio interview with Cheung on her work in Days of Being Wild
- Program from 2012 on In the Mood for Love’s soundtrack
- Press conference for In the Mood for Love from the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival
- Deleted scenes, alternate endings, behind-the-scenes footage, a promo reel, music videos, and trailers
- PLUS: Deluxe packaging, including a perfect-bound, French-fold book featuring lavish photography, an essay by critic John Powers, a director’s note, and six collectible art prints
Editor-in-Chief | Seat42F, a leading source of entertainment news, information, television and movie resources.
