6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Agnès Varda turns her camera on an Oakland demonstration against the imprisonment of activist and Black Panthers cofounder Huey P. Newton.
Starring: Stokely Carmichael, Bobby SealeDocumentary | 100% |
Short | 69% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: LPCM Mono
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Note: This film is available as part of
The Complete Films of Agnès Varda.
In the wake (figurative or otherwise) of Agnès Varda’s death last year at the age of 90, quite a bit has rightfully been written about this iconic force
in
both
French and global cinema. Varda’s output includes well over fifty credits as a director (including some television entries as detailed by the
IMDb), and aside from listing some of her better known triumphs,
many obituaries and/or eulogies about Varda mentioned any number of other biographical data points, including her rather unique position as a
woman in France’s nouvelle vague movement, her own feminism which was featured none too subtly in some of her films, and her
frequently provocative experimental style. But you know what one of the things that kind of fascinates me personally most about Varda? That she
was married for 28 years to Jacques Demy, from 1962 until Demy’s death in 1990. That Varda, often a purveyor of verité infused
“realism”,
whether that be in outright documentaries or at least ostensibly more “fictional” outings, and Demy, a director whose candy colored, dreamlike and
at least relatively "Hollywoodized" musicals with
Michel Legrand brought a new luster and gloss to French cinema, managed to make a marital go of it for so long is certainly testament to the
maxim
that “opposites attract”, even if those oppositional forces in this instance played out at least in part in terms of what kinds of films the two were
often
best remembered for. If Varda's long marriage to Demy is more than enough reason to celebrate her personal life, her professional life is
beautifully
feted in this rather astounding new set from Criterion, which aggregates an amazing 39 films (albeit some running as short as a few minutes) to
provide what is arguably one of the most insightful
overviews of Varda's cinematic oeuvre. Perhaps unavoidably, but also undeniably movingly, these personal and professional sides of
Varda
merge in at least some of the films in this set, including
The
Young
Girls Turn 25, The World of Jacques
Demy, Jacquot de Nantes, and The Beaches of Agnès.
Black Panthers is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. Some prefatory text discloses that this was restored in 2013 by L'Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Ciné Tamaris, with a 2K restoration from the 16mm original color negative. Agnès Varda supervised the color grading. As befits its smaller format, this is a pretty heavily grainy feature from the get go, something that is probably most apparent in some of the outdoor material. This is another Varda color offering where things looked just slightly blue to my eyes, though that said, the palette generally looks natural and pops quite well. Clarity is generally fine, given an understanding that some of this film was shot on the fly. That said, one of the more "planned" moments, the in jail interview with Huey Newton, is a bit softer and more ragged looking than some of the rest of the presentation.
Black Panthers features an LPCM Mono track in English. Prefatory text discloses that the mono track was restored from the original 16mm magnetic track. This is a bit chaotic sounding at times, especially in some of the crowd scenes where music is playing and people are all talking over each other, but both narration and the more formal interview sections sound fine.
Black Panthers begins with Varda's camera panning across a huge banner which states "Black is Beautiful", and the rest of the documentary serves as support for that thesis. This is perhaps more relevant today than it was even when it first came out. Technical merits are generally solid, and Black Panthers comes Recommended.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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1967
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1964
Réponse de femmes: Notre corps, notre sexe / Women Reply: Our Bodies, Our Sex
1975
1958
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1982
1966
Along the Coast
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Mural Murals
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L'univers de Jacques Demy
1995
Les glaneurs et la glaneuse... deux ans après
2002
2015
Agnès Varda: From Here to There
2011
You've Got Beautiful Stairs, You Know
1986
1984
1976
Les demoiselles ont eu 25 ans
1993
2003
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2019