First, when offering this small overview of recent DVD offers, it should be remembered that theaters do not stop. Among those of this week of Wednesday, June 25, is at least one title worthy of attracting great attention. Discovered at the Cannes Film Festival, where he won the staging prize in the a certain look selection, Once Upon a Time in Gaza Arab brothers and Tarzan Nasser, criticized here, is a singular proposal not to be missed, all the more in the current context.
Then, let us make a ritual recall but necessary that, unlike a very widespread idea, the use of DVD and Blu-ray, if it decreases from year to year, is far from having become marginal with 24.1 million small pancakes sold in 2024 in France, according to figures from the National Cinema and Animated Image Center (CNC). Film relationship mode, now a clear minority compared to theaters, platforms, online video and television, this device retains its reasons for being.
It is first of all the pleasure, or the need, of having a physical object at home in connection with a work that is close to who holds it, or of which he or she has special uses, especially educational. It is also the editorial work which often accompanies the transfers of feature films on the polycarbonate rings.
Videos, extracts, stories, making of, printed documents, reflection texts, photos, other realizations related to the film and of course assembly of films in boxes deploy resources that no other diffusion mode allows.
The DVDs (and Blu-ray, treated here indistinctly) offer a second chance to films released in theaters in a too confidential manner. They arouse the discovery of achievements that have remained unpublished. They offer the opportunity to explore margins that do not find the right of a city on large screens or on platforms.
And, of course, they bring a relationship to the cinematographic heritage that restorations make accessible in good image and sound conditions. Provided you use them with the reading equipment, if possible to projection, up to the quality of the technical offer of the published object.
“Four nights of a dreamer”, by Robert Bresson (Potemkin)
For decades, it was a grail out of reach. The reissue, of very good quality, first in theaters – that discovered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024 – and now on physical video support, makes an exceptional film accessible, including within the incomparable work of Robert Bresson.
Made in 1971, in a moment of relative hope of an improvement in the state of the world and the relationships of humans between them, Four nights of a dreamer Supports the romantic companies of a young painter in Paris, with unforgettable lightness and sensuality.
At the edge of literary adaptation (Fiodor Dostoyevski) and autobiography, the film finds a mysterious path, where humor, even self -mockery, emotion and play with the codes of the formation novel mixes. Great film of modest appearance, it also lights up a singular day the whole work of the author of Pickpocket (1959) and Devil probably (1977).
“Sambizanga”, by Sarah Maldoror (Carlotta Films)
Made in 1972, in the midst of the war of independence from Angola and at a time when the cinemas of Africa are still at the start of their awakening, by a woman when they are so rare behind the camera, Sambizanga has many reasons to draw attention. It is above all an impressive, moving film, playing in a dynamic and sensitive way with the codes of cinema engaged by circulating between combat for a cause and intimate proximity with its heroine and those which she meets.
Remaining a very long time that is almost invisible, the second feature film of Sarah Maldoror tells the long quest, in the village and in Luanda (capital of Angola), of a woman in search of her husband kidnapped by the Portuguese colonial police. It is more than one necessary and happy to (re) discovered. The edition also has four short films by this artist and anti-colonialist activist, whose place has really only started to be rediscovered only after his death in April 2020.
Véréna Paravel box and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Potemkine)
“An unusual film experience”announces the promotional sticker, which in this case tells the truth. The four achievements of Véréna Paravel filmmakers and anthropologists and Lucien Castaing-Taylor are all exceptional proposals for the mobilization of cinema resources to approach, understand, experience situations themselves both singular and extreme.
Inventing a new way of filming the sea, the sky, those who live there (fish and birds) and those who work there (fishermen aboard an industrial trawler), Leviathan (2013) is a turning point in the history of cinematographic language. The labyrinth of dreams and language with somniloquies (2017), madness to crime and self -destruction approached with great sweetness by Caniba (2018), organic relationships between the interior of the human body, the work of caregivers and the hospital apparatus By Humani Corpos Fabrica (2023) welcome new, disturbing, overwhelming looks.
In the boxes (DVD or Blu-ray), the work of the two artists and teachers in the Sensory Ethnography Lab research center of Harvard University is accompanied by a rich set of documents and comments, both in the form of a video bonus and in a well-supplied booklet (where an interview is with the directors by the author of these lines).
“Vitalina Varela” and “Ventura”, by Pedro Costa (survival)
These are recent films and yet already classics. Vitalina Varela was released in France in 2022, Ventura
Also, but several years after being presented at the festival. Visual splendor is a narrative resource and a political affirmation, around these two figures – the vitalina hero, the Ventura hero – and the odyssey of each in the mazes of the poor districts of Lisbon.
Coming from Cape Verde for a long time for Ventura, just landed by the archipelago for Vitalina, they are at the heart of two dreams that are both dreamlike and realistic, of staggering and yet fruitful beauty. These two films by Portuguese Pedro Costa are two new summits of the work of one of the most inspiring contemporary filmmakers, in continuity with long -term work where attention to the state of the world and formal requirement are walking together.
“Fantasies”, by Jang Sun-Woo (Carlotta Films)
After causing a sensation at the Venice Festival in 1999, the film had remained ultra confidential, including because it was too systematically promoted as a juice of The Empire of Senses de Nagisa ōshima (1976). But if a frontal relationship to sexuality is one of its characteristics, increased by explicit sadomasochistic relationships, the singular power of the work of the South Korean filmmaker Jang Sun-Woo is of another nature.
It is due to its way of accompanying what is blossoming between the two lovers from their impulses, towards a universe of tenderness and attention that the means of the cinema – presence of bodies, rhythms of gestures, effects of distances – allow to explore and make sensitive.
Penultimate realization of an astonishing filmmaker, figure of the spring of South Korean cinema at the end of the dictatorship in the 1980s and until Resurrection of the Little Match Girl In 2002, whose transgressive inventiveness completed flowing his career, Fantasies is both an exciting film and a major element of a work to be rediscovered.
“Dam” and “Maret”, by Laura Schroeder (Red Lion)
Typical of the ability of the DVD to offer another chance to not or little seen films, the edition of the two achievements of the Luxembourg filmmaker Laura Schroeder allows us to find Dam (2017), which experienced in France an overly discreet outing, and to discover Maret (2023), remained unprecedented here on the big screen, excluding festivals.
These two courses of women confronted with the difficulty of finding their place and their role, a young mother who is drifting or photographer struck with amnesia, with the assistance each time of an impressive actress (Lolita Chammah in Dam and Susanne Wolff in Maret), invent from the same movement an original tone and universe, where realism and the romantic are reconfigured.
Catch -up of recent films, already recognized or not
Magnificent wonder and modest, magnificent modesty, The travelerfrom Hong Sang-Soo (Capricci), is a kind of miracle of laughing and worried freedom, delicate and crossed by sharp flags, where Isabelle Huppert deploys the vastness of her talents, all the more impressive than arranged in a minor.
Past almost unnoticed when it came out, Back Madresfrom Victor Iriarte (Shellac), an inventive story embodied by two memorable women, shot a very political contemporary story with a sense of the romantic which inscribes this film among the successes of the fertile movement of the young Spanish cinema current.
At the same publisher, Tall tourfrom Miguel Gomes, has benefited from a certain visibility, oh so deserved, since its presentation in Cannes. Its DVD and Blu-ray edition is accompanied by a rich set of filming archives which allow to enter in a living way into the cinema factory of this author.
Without going unnoticed, The Thief Pie,, From Robert Guédiguian (Diaphana), did not receive a welcome up to what he deserved. Moral fable, but not moralist, with a joyful affection in the human and urban cosmos of the Estaque and the troop of faithful from the Marseille filmmaker, the film finds thanks to the DVD the opportunity of a new life. The possibility of a new life is also, in part but for all its characters, its beautiful subject.
Twenty gods,, From Louise Courvoisier (video pyramid), was one of the most beautiful discoveries of French cinema of the year 2024. After the success in theaters and the multiple awards, the romantic journey and Totone cheese deserves to be discovered by who does not know it, or to be revised by all the others.
Another public success last year, Branded, From Emmanuel Courcol (Diaphana), found the right place between comedy and drama, with attention to his characters and to the places where they live who continues to arouse emotion and smiles.
