Cheap Treasures From American Film Archives - Encore Edition (DVD) Price
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But there are wonders to be found throughout the collection, from a trip through Interior New York Subway circa 1905, to the gorgeous avant-garde 1928 The Fall of the House of Usher, to the only film of Orson Welles's legendary 1936 Haiti-set stage production of Macbeth in the 1937 documentary We Work Again. The breadth of work is astounding and all of it is fascinating, whether it's a revealing glimpse of a forgotten social landscape in a home movie; the preservation of theater, dance, and concert recitals in one-of-a-kind records; or an ancient work of pioneering cinema.
The four-disc set is handsomely designed, with easy-to-navigate menus featuring extensive notes and short documentaries about each archive (narrated by Laurence Fishburne), and a detailed, informative 150-page booklet accompanies the set. It's a one-of-a-kind project and a true film treasure. --Sean Axmaker
| CATEGORY: | DVD |
| THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE: | 2005 |
| MANUFACTURER: | Image Entertainment |
| MPAA RATING: | NR (Not Rated) |
| FEATURES: | Black & White, Color |
| TYPE: | Classics (Silents/Avant Garde) |
| MEDIA: | DVD |
| # OF MEDIA: | 4 |
| UPC: | 014381091823 |
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Customer Reviews of Treasures From American Film Archives - Encore Edition
Available again May 2005?!?! YES! According to their website. Go to: <
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>http://www.filmpreservation.org/dvd/treasures.html <
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>For me, right now this is the holy grail of OOP DVD box-sets. They never turn up used on this site, and the few auctions that go up on Ebay get up to ridiculous amounts of money (last one went for upwards of $200). I hope to God that this is true. I would love it if Amazon could confirm it and post the date on this page. Finally, it's back (and at a lower price, too!) and I for one am very excited. Let's hope that it goes through OK. Every other reviewer has already spoken for the content you get in this priceless set, all I can say is HALLELUJAH...
martin marks is a genius
i don't actually own this dvd. but i would like to point out that the true hero of this set is martin marks, a professor of mine at the massachusetts institute of technology, who has assembled the music for this collection. it is truly a marvel that no one has mentioned this. i applaud him for his amazing work.
The Bureaucrat's Delight
This is just about the most disappointing DVD purchase I've made. To say that is not to detract from the goal of preserving and presenting rarely seen, non-Hollywood projects. Most of the items in these eleven plus hours are passably interesting, and several are more than that. Still, the label "treasures" suggests a qualitative richness that simply isn't there, for the good reason that the selection criteria were obviously political, not aesthetic.
By "political" I mean that the goal clearly was to demonstrate the breadth (or, if you must, the "diversity") of American film culture, rather than presenting the best the participating archives had in their collections. So we get standard narratives, experimental shorts, home movies, propaganda, ethnic cinema, records of theatrical performances and documentaries, but what we for the most part do not get is a collection of outstanding films. You can practically feel the politically correct clerks checking off their demographic lists to be certain the collection is "inclusive." The bland results are the perfect bureaucratic solution: the discs won't offend anyone.
Some of the films are more famous than others, such as D.W. Griffith's short "The Lonedale Operator" or John Huston's "The Battle of San Pietro." Even these are not necessarily the filmmakers' best work, however, although it is nice to have copies of them for analytical purposes. The less well-known works vary widely in quality and interest. Many seem to have been included just because they are "rare." Rarity does not necessarily imply value, however. (Maybe I should apply for a National Endowment of the Arts grant to preserve *my* home movies.)
The navigation is simple, devoid of the gimmicks that can make DVDs more obnoxious than entertaining. With one major exception, the discs are well-produced and handsomely packaged. That exception is the musical accompaniment to most of the films. In small doses, it's passable, but if you watch more than a couple of the films at a time, the impersonal clackety-clack of the solo piano is enough to drive you mad. It makes Techno seem like Verdi by comparison.