Upcoming Grasshopper Film Blu-ray Releases
HomeUpcoming Grasshopper Film Blu-ray Releases
Posted October 5, 2017 05:47 PM by Webmaster
U.S. label Grasshopper Film will add two new titles to its Blu-ray catalog acclaimed Portuguese director Pedro Costa's film Casa de Lava a.k.a. Down to Earth (1994) and Daničle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's Moses and Aaron (1975). The two releases will be available for purchase this November.
Casa de Lava
Synop-sis: In only his second feature, Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa (Horse Money, Colossal Youth) brilliantly reworked Jacques Tourneur's classic I Walked with a Zombie) into a reflection on his country s colonial legacy. A nurse, Mariana (Inźs Medeiros), accompanies Lećo (Isaach De Bankole) to his home on the volcanic islands of Cape Verde after an accident sends him into a coma. Yet he goes unrecognized by fellow denizens, leaving Mariana trapped with and eventually entranced by a mysterious community. Never before released in the U.S. and now beautifully restored, Casa de Lava foreshadows the masterful films that would follow, yet is an extraordinary, ravishing work in its own right.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Moses and Aaron
Synopsis: Moses and Aaron finds Jean-Marie Straub and Daničle Huillet, through their exemplary craft, transforming a familiar Biblical tale into a borderline-surreal cinematic opera of seemingly endless possibility. In expressive, melodic tones, the fraternal pair debate God's true message and intent for His creations, a conflict that leads their followers in extravagantly choreographed song and dance towards chaos and sin. Set almost entirely within a Roman amphitheater whose history lends every precise line-reading and gesture, every startling camera move and cut, a totalizing force, Straub-Huillet's adaptation of Schoenberg's unfinished opera opens us to the stimulating worldview of a filmmaking duo whose masterful efforts are finally coming to light.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Casa de Lava
Synop-sis: In only his second feature, Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa (Horse Money, Colossal Youth) brilliantly reworked Jacques Tourneur's classic I Walked with a Zombie) into a reflection on his country s colonial legacy. A nurse, Mariana (Inźs Medeiros), accompanies Lećo (Isaach De Bankole) to his home on the volcanic islands of Cape Verde after an accident sends him into a coma. Yet he goes unrecognized by fellow denizens, leaving Mariana trapped with and eventually entranced by a mysterious community. Never before released in the U.S. and now beautifully restored, Casa de Lava foreshadows the masterful films that would follow, yet is an extraordinary, ravishing work in its own right.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW 2K RESTORATION of the film
- Casa de Lava scrapbook - pages from Pedro Costa s notebook, featuring images and texts gathered during production, and set to original music (24 minutes, 2012)
- Interview with cinematographer Emmanuel Machuel
- Theatrical Trailer
- Illustrated booklet featuring essays by film scholars Darlene J. Sadlier and Jonathan Rosenbaum
Moses and Aaron
Synopsis: Moses and Aaron finds Jean-Marie Straub and Daničle Huillet, through their exemplary craft, transforming a familiar Biblical tale into a borderline-surreal cinematic opera of seemingly endless possibility. In expressive, melodic tones, the fraternal pair debate God's true message and intent for His creations, a conflict that leads their followers in extravagantly choreographed song and dance towards chaos and sin. Set almost entirely within a Roman amphitheater whose history lends every precise line-reading and gesture, every startling camera move and cut, a totalizing force, Straub-Huillet's adaptation of Schoenberg's unfinished opera opens us to the stimulating worldview of a filmmaking duo whose masterful efforts are finally coming to light.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW 2K RESTORATION of the film
- Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg's "Accompaninment to a Cinematographic Scene - a fierce condemnation of anti-Semitism and the barbaric war machine of capitalism, inspired by a letter written in 1923 by composer Arnold Schoenberg to painter Wassily Kandinsky. (15 min, 1972)
- Machorka-Muff - a powerful, almost surreal distillation of a story by Heinrich Böll, Straub-Huillet's debut work concerns a former Nazi colonel who takes advantage of his political and sexual status in post-war Germany. (18 min, 1962)
- Not Reconciled - Straub-Huillet's heralded feature debut charts the origins and legacy of Nazism, as well as the moral demands of obedience and sacrifice within the German bourgeois family, in this vigorous adaptation of Heinrich Böll's novel. (55 min, 1964)
- Booklet - illustrated booklet with essay by Ted Fendt, editor of "Jean-Marie Straub & Daničle Huillet" (Austrian Film Museum/FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen, 2016)
