The British Film Institute has officially announced that it will release on Blu-ray
The Battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands (1927). The release will be available for purchase on January 19th.
Originally released in 1927 to great acclaim and popularity, The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands is an exciting recreation of two key battles faced by the Royal Navy in the early days of World War One. The first major engagement between German and British ships at Coronel was a terrible defeat for Britain with the loss of two warships. Later the British responded in a desperate bid to save the morale of a nation at war.
The stunning restoration has a stirring new score by award-winning composer Simon Dobson, commissioned by the BFI and performed, appropriately, by 24 members of the Band of Her Majesty's Royal Marines in honour of the 24 members of the band who lost their lives with the sinking of HMS Monmouth at the battle of Coronel.
Special Features:
- Four Archive shorts: Sea Dreams (1914, 6 mins); Naval Review (1914, 5 mins); Our Naval Losses (1914, 1 in); England Expects (1914, 1 min)
- Recording the Score (2014, 7 mins): new documentary with interviews with the Royal Navy and Simon Dobson
- Fully illustrated booklet with new essays and full credits
In 2015, the BFI will also add to its catalog the following releases:
Back to 1942 (2012) – Feng Xiaogang's epic blockbuster, starring Adrien Brody, Tim Robbins and Fan Xuand, set during the second Sino-Chinese war, will be released in separate DVD and Blu-ray editions (February).
Spring in a Small Town (1948) – regarded as one of the great world cinema rediscoveries of recent years, this restoration of Fei Mu's drama by the China Film Archive comes to DVD for the first time (January).
Love Is All (2014) – Coming to DVD, Kim Longinotto's celebration of 100 years of love and courtship on the silver screen mixes archive footage with music by Richard Hawley (February).
Black Skin White Mask (1995) – Isaac Julien's film, released on DVD, stars Colin Salmon (Arrow, Prime Suspect, Tomorrow Never Dies) as the anti-colonialist writer Frantz Fanon (January).