Coming in August: A Confucian Confusion / Mahjong, a pair of sharp satires from one of Taiwan’s most celebrated directors, Edward Yang; Cairo Station, Youssef Chahine’s noir-melodrama set on the streets of Cairo; Shoeshine, an Italian neorealist fable of innocence lost directed by Vittorio De Sica; Compensation, Zeinabu irene Davis’s portrait of Deaf African Americans and the complexities of love; and Saving Face, Alice Wu’s queer romantic comedy set in multicultural New York City. Plus: Fires on the Plain and The Burmese Harp, two powerful works from Kon Ichikawa, one of Japanese cinema’s most versatile filmmakers—now on Blu-ray and 4K UHD.
Fires on the Plain (#378) out Aug 5
An agonizing portrait of desperate Japanese soldiers stranded in a strange land during World War II, Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain is a compelling descent into psychological and physical oblivion. Denied hospital treatment for tuberculosis and cast off into the unknown, Private Tamura treks across an unfamiliar Philippine landscape, encountering an increasingly debased cross section of Imperial Army soldiers, who eventually give in to the most terrifying craving of all. Grisly yet poetic, Fires on the Plain is one of the most powerful works from one of Japanese cinema’s most versatile filmmakers. The Special Edition Features are:
Buy Fires on the Plain Criterion Collection DVD- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Introduction by Japanese-film scholar Donald Richie
- Program featuring interviews with director Kon Ichikawa and actor Mickey Curtis
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Chuck Stephens
The Burmese Harp (#379) out Aug 5
An Imperial Japanese Army regiment surrenders to British forces in Burma at the close of World War II and finds harmony through song. A private, thought to be dead, disguises himself as a Buddhist monk and stumbles upon spiritual enlightenment. Magnificently shot in hushed black and white, Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp is an eloquent meditation on beauty coexisting with death and remains one of Japanese cinema’s most overwhelming antiwar sentiments, both tender and brutal in its grappling with Japan’s wartime legacy. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Interviews with director Kon Ichikawa and actor Rentaro Mikuni
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic and historian Tony Rayns
Cairo Station (#1273) out Aug 12
Youssef Chahine established his international reputation with this masterpiece, which, though initially a commercial failure in Egypt, would become one of the most influential and celebrated works in all of Arab cinema. The director himself stars as Kenawi, a disabled newspaper hawker whose obsession with a sultry drink seller (Hind Rostom, known as the “Marilyn Monroe of Arabia”) leads to tragedy of operatic proportions on the streets of Cairo. Blending elements of neorealism with provocative noir-melodrama, Cairo Station is a work of raw populist poetry that explores the individual’s search for a place in Egypt’s new postrevolutionary political order. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New 2K digital restoration of Cairo as Seen by Chahine (1991), a short documentary by Youssef Chahine, with an introduction by film scholar Joseph Fahim
- New interview with Fahim
- Chahine . . . Why? (2009), a documentary on the director and Cairo Station
- Excerpt from Chahine’s appearance at the 1998 Midnight Sun Film Festival
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by Fahim
Shoeshine (#1272) out Aug 19
An international breakthrough for neorealism, Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award–winning film is an indelible fable of innocence lost amid the hardscrabble reality of 1940s Italy. On the streets of Rome, two boys—best friends Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni) and Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi)—set out to raise the money to buy a horse by shining shoes. When they are inadvertently caught up in a robbery and sent to a brutal juvenile detention center, their loyalty to each other is severely tested. A devastating portrait of economic struggle made all the more haunting by its child’s-eye perspective, Shoeshine stands as one of the defining achievements of postwar Italian filmmaking. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by The Film Foundation and the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Sciuscià 70 (2016), a documentary by Mimmo Verdesca, made to mark the film’s seventieth anniversary
- New program on Shoeshine and children in Italian neorealism featuring film scholars Paola Bonifazio and Catherine O’Rawe
- Radio broadcast from 1946 featuring director Vittorio De Sica
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar David Forgacs and “Shoeshine, Joe?,” a 1945 photo-documentary by De Sica
A Confucian Confusion / Mahjong: Two Films by Edward Yang (#1275) out Aug 19
In this pair of sharp, sprawling satires, one of Taiwan’s most celebrated filmmakers, Edward Yang, captures the anything-can-happen mood of Taipei at the end of the twentieth century. Made in between his epic dramas A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi, A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong find Yang applying a lighter but no less masterly touch to his explorations of human relationships in an increasingly globalized, hypercapitalistic world. These intricately constructed ensemble comedies—one set in a cutthroat corporate milieu, the other in a shady criminal underworld—reveal the absurdity and cynicism at the heart of modern urban life. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restorations, with 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
- Excerpts of director Edward Yang speaking after a 1994 screening of A Confucian Confusion
- New interview with editor Chen Po-wen
- New conversation between Chinese-cultural-studies scholar Michael Berry and film critic Justin Chang
- Performance of Yang’s 1992 play Likely Consequence
- PLUS: An essay by film programmer and critic Dennis Lim and a 1994 director’s note on A Confucian Confusion
Compensation (#1274) out Aug 26
A poignant portrait of Deaf African Americans and the complexities of love at both ends of the twentieth century, Zeinabu irene Davis’s film is a groundbreaking story of inclusion and visibility. In dual performances, Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks play an educated dressmaker and an illiterate migrant in 1910s Chicago, and a resilient graphic artist and an endearing librarian living in the same city eight decades later. Employing archival photography, an original score blending ragtime and African percussion, and lyrical editing, Davis deftly intertwines the two couple’s stories, in ways both tender and tragic. Compensation is a landmark of American independent cinema that confronts the social forces and prejudices that hinder love. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Zeinabu irene Davis, in collaboration with the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Wimmin with a Mission Productions, and in conjunction with the Sundance Institute, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring Davis, screenwriter Marc Arthur Chéry, and director of photography Pierre H. L. Désir Jr.
- Q&As with members of the cast and crew
- Two short films by Davis, Crocodile Conspiracy (1986) and Pandemic Bread (2023), the latter with audio commentary featuring Davis and cast and crew members and descriptive audio
- Interview with Davis from 2021
- New program about select archival photographs and adinkra and vèvè symbols in the film
- Trailer
- English subtitles and intertitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, and English descriptive audio
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Racquel Gates, a director’s note, and a conversation between Davis and artist Alison O’Daniel about the process of captioning the film
Saving Face (#1276) out Aug 26
A queer romantic comedy set in vibrant, multicultural New York City, Alice Wu’s irresistible feature debut breathed fresh life into the genre by combining snappy dialogue and a swooning love story with a poignant narrative about a mother and daughter coming to terms with each other. Just as Wil (Michelle Krusiec), a harried young surgical resident, begins a promising romance with the flirtatious dancer Vivian (Lynn Chen), her life is turned upside down when her more traditional Chinese mother (Joan Chen)—unwed and unexpectedly pregnant—moves in with her, forcing both women to confront the generational and cultural barriers that have long troubled their relationship. Both embracing and cleverly subverting rom-com conventions, Wu delivers a bighearted ode to the Chinese American diaspora, and the liberating joy of living one’s truth. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- High-definition digital master, approved by director Alice Wu, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring Wu
- New interviews with Wu and actor Joan Chen
- Deleted scenes with optional commentary by Wu
- Behind-the-scenes featurette
- Program featuring Wu and members of the cast at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Phoebe Chen
