Kino Lorber have announced that
Moana with Sound, Monica Flaherty's 1980 sound version of the groundbreaking 1926 documentary by Robert and Frances Flaherty, will be released on Blu-raY on December 8.
Originally released in 1926, this landmark in documentary filmmaking, depicting the lifestyles of the Samoan people on the South Seas island of Savai'i, was restored by the Flahertys' daughter Monica in 1980. Monica Flaherty traveled back to the island of Savai'i with documentarian Richard Leacock to create a new soundtrack of authentic recordings of the sounds of the island and voices in the regional dialect, taken in the locations where the film had been shot half a century earlier.
In 2015, film restorer Bruce Posner and Sami van Ingen (the Flahertys' great-grandson) created a new digital restoration of this important film, combining Monica Flaherty's innovative soundtrack with a pristine 35mm image, so that, for the first time,
Moana with Sound can now be seen -- and heard -- in its full glory.
Special Features:
- "Moana With Sound: A Short History," a 39-minute documentary
- "About the Restoration" (12 Min.)
- Flaherty and Film: Moana (1960), a 17-minute interview with Frances Flaherty by Robert Gardner
- Flaherty family home movies (5 Min.)
- "Twenty-Four-Dollar Island" (1925, 10 Min.), an experimental "city symphony" by Robert Flaherty
- Filmed commentaries by historians Enrico Camporesi and Bruce Posner
- Promo trailer (2015)