The always interesting wood s lot blog has pointed out an interesting development:
Moscow film company Mosfilm has just made 50 Russian classics (including Tarkovsky’s Mirror, Solaris, and Andrei Rublev) available on YouTube in high definition. According to Yahoo News, Mosfilm has pledged to release five more films each week, all in HD with English subtitles, eventually bringing the total for the year to 200.
You can look over the whole list of currently available classics at Mosfilm’s YouTube channel.
I'm a huge fan of Tarkovsky, but have somehow never seen Andrei Rublev (I've got most of the others on DVD), so this is great news.
Next up: I've just taken delivery of a Pinwide from Wanderlust Cameras. I used to do a lot of pinhole stuff when I still used film -- I made myself a sweet medium-format pinhole camera out of an old bakelite Ilford Envoy camera -- but never quite got the results I was hoping for. The Pinwide is basically a Micro Four Thirds body cap modified with a pinhole, and I'm looking forward to giving it a try.
N.B. If you're thinking of getting one and will be using it on a Panasonic GF1, here's a tip: you need to go to the [CUSTOM MENU] and set [SHOOT W/O LENS] to ON. Otherwise you'll get an error "Please check that the lens is attached correctly" and won't be able to take a picture.
6 comments:
Pretty amazing. But damn! I can't read Russian to get through the titles. Here's the link for Andrei Rublev. Can you point me to Mirror? I've never been able to see that one.
Bad typing on previous entry: it's me.
Kent,
"Mirror" is "Zerkalo" in Russian (looks a bit like "3epkano"). A real treat if you're in the mood, but best seen in immersive cinema mode! The link is:
http://www.youtube.com/mosfilm#p/f/28/gCTMM1iZ5Lw
Mike
It turns out I can get it from Netflix after all (and so added to the list). It's "Nostalghia" that is still not available. Any idea if that one's on the Mosfilm Youtube site?
Kent,
No, Nostalghia was made outside the USSR without Mosfilm support, as was The Sacrifice, so won't be appearing here.
Mirror and Stalker are the ones to watch, if you ask me, but you've got to be in the right mood and the right company.
Mike
"Stalker" is a favorite of mine, although it's been a few years since the last viewing. "The Sacrifice" I've seen more recently.
Company when watching Tarkovsky? No one in my household will watch him with me. No matter...
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