"OK, I've finally got round to exploring an Academia DVD in depth - Lev Kuleshov's Engineer Prite's Project (1918), the oldest of the initial batch of titles.
Although no masterpiece, the film itself is a fascinating slice of history - made when Kuleshov was just eighteen, it's one of the first films funded by the recently victorious Bolsheviks (which accounts for the aggressively anti-capitalist message, vaguely reminiscent of The Man in the White Suit in its tale of an engineer who devises a method of extracting electricity from peat, only to find himself undermined by American oil magnates seeking to protect their share price), but it also marks a clear link between the pre-revolutionary work of Yevgeny Bauer (Kuleshov's former boss) and what would eventually become Soviet montage (many of whose underlying theories would later be devised by Kuleshov). The montage here is far less flamboyant than what was to come, but there are already considerably more shots than would be the case with an equivalent American or earlier Russian film.
Like all the Academia releases, this is presented as a two-disc set, with one disc presenting an unadulterated version of the main feature (original Russian soundtrack/intertitles, with optional subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch or Portuguese), and the other offering the same transfer of the feature but with 'Hyperkino' contextual backup available in Russian or English.
In practice, this means that an orange number will occasionally pop up on the screen, indicating that contextual information is available - pressing 'enter' on your remote lets you jump to the relevant screen, which offers a mini-essay analysing or contextualising that particular part of the film (taking up multiple pages if necessary), complete with further links to stills, facsimile documents and even video clips - in this particular case, from the Yevgeny Bauer films on which Kuleshov originally cut his filmmaking teeth, and whose influence can clearly be seen. Annoyingly, the facsimile texts in Russian (original reviews, scripts, etc.) generally aren't translated, though the entire original treatment is presented in English.
With 27 contextual sections servicing a film running just 30 minutes, you can probably already appreciate that there's a fair bit of material to explore - it runs the gamut from production anecdotes through reception and its subsequent archival life, together with a fair bit of analysis, including clips from the actual film with added onscreen graphics to highlight key details. There's also a themed index of subjects in the style of one of Criterion's commentary indexes - for instance, 'Russian cinema of 1918', 'The film's plot and libretto', '"Super American drama"', 'First formula of montage', and so on.
As for the print and transfer, it's in pretty good condition for a 1918 film, and has clearly undergone a fair bit of restoration - purists may baulk at the fact that the intertitles are so obviously electronically-created, but the layout and typesetting seem appropriate to the period. English subtitles"
«Кино по пятницам». Еженедельная авторская программа Валерия Кичина:
24 сентября 2010: "В этой программе речь пойдет о выпуске кинокомпанией «R.U.S.C.I.C.O.» на dvd отечественной киноклассики с комментариями и системой ссылок. В гостях у Валерия Кичина: генеральный директор компании Роман Дихтяр; киновед и главный редактор серии Николай Изволов; участник проекта и один из его вдохновителей преподавательница из Германии Наташа Друбек."
"The Mosaic Approach. In defense of a nonlinear film criticism"
posted August 18, 2010, in the journal Moving Image Source, Museum of the Moving Image, N.Y.
"The fact that these commentaries belong to a hybrid form—existing somewhere between reading and watching, like various computer-related activities—is part of what seems forward-looking about them […] What all these forms of criticism suggest is not merely a less linear way of approaching film experience but also a more interactive methodology. The fact that movies are being seen more and more often away from public theaters shouldn't necessarily mean that the way we all experience them and share our experiences is any less social. Perhaps it's more pertinent to note that the very forms of our social interactions in relation to films are changing as well."
IL CINEMA RITROVATO DVD AWARDS 2010 VII edition. BEST SPECIAL FEATURES (BONUS). "Our BEST SPECIAL FEATURES (BONUS) award goes jointly to:
(a) three recent Ruscico releases of classic Russian films (two previously unavailable films by Lev Kuleshov, ENGINEER PRITE’S PROJECT and THE GREAT CONSOLER, and Sergey Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov’s OCTOBER)—both for their innovative handling of printed and illustrated commentaries by scholars and for their subtitles in many languages, despite the unfortunate fact that all three releases are identified on their covers only by their Russian titles
ENGINEERS PRITE’S PROJECT (Russia/1918) di Lev Kuleshov – Ruscico (Russia) -
THE GREAT CONSOLER (Russia/1933)di Lev Kuleshov – Ruscico (Russia)
OCTOBER (Russia/1927)di Sergey Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov – Ruscico (Russia)
and
(b) the Filmmuseum with Filmmuseum München and Goethe Institut Deutschland release of G.W. Pabst’s DIE FREUDLOSE GASSE (THE JOYLESS STREET), for the three documentaries about Pabst that are included."
On Quotation.
How Hyperkino is making its way into critical jargon where it mutated to HYPER-KINO. Tommaso Schulze in SPEX #321, June 2009 about Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds":
WAS ERLAUBEN TARANTINO? – DAS HYPER-KINO DES FILM-ZITATORS
michal klodner, 16. 2. 2010 19:28, 0 komentářů
Tagy
film annotation, russian film, reconstruction, hyperkino
1. Engineer Prite's Project (1918, Lev Kuleshov) - Hyperkino annotations by Natascha Drubek / Nikolai Izvolov
2. October (1927, Sergei Eisenstein) - Hyperkino annotation by Yuri Tsivian
3. The Great Consoler (1933, Lev Kuleshov) - Hyperkino annotations by Ekaterina Khoklova
4. Happiness (1934, Alexander Medvedkin) - Hyperkino annotations by Nikolai Izvolov
5. Strike (1924, S. Eisenstein) - Hyperkino annotations by Natalia Riabchikova
The annotations are structured as a system of footnote-like entries placed in support of key points in the film. They can be examined in the course of viewing the film; or can be switched off.
Film annotations include:
A. Academic, multifaceted, original interpretations of the content and the form of the films, written by experts in the field.
B. Explanations of political, everyday and other realities, of ethnographic and linguistic details.
C. References to archival and bibliographic sources.
D. Additional visual materials - photographs, drawings and fragments from other films - which can be comparatively analyzed in relation to films in question and expand their discursive contexts.
Additional titles are currently in preparation.
RUSCICO is releasing a series of classic Russian films in the Hyperkino format edited by Nikolai Izvolov in February 2010 http://www.ruscico.com/ e-mail address for orders and enquiries: honnest@ruscico.com
michal klodner, 16. 2. 2010 19:10, 0 komentářů
Tagy
digital reconstruction, hyperkino, film annotation
The Project of Engineer Prite (Proekt inzhenera Prayta) & Hyperkino - Digital Revival of Early Classics / Interactive Presentation by Nikolai Izvolov - 2/2/2007, 2:30 PM, Venster 2
FILMOVÁ A TELEVIZNÍ FAKULTA AKADEMIE MÚZICKÝCH UMĚNÍ V PRAZE > více...
FAMU vznikla v rámci AMU v Praze (filmový odbor) v letech 1946/47 jako pátá filmová škola na světě - po Moskvě, Belíně, Římu a Paříži. První uchazeči zde mohli studovat režii, dramaturgii a filmový obraz.
Dnes FAMU zahrnuje nasledující katedry a pracoviště:
