BFI have announced they will be releasing 32 films on DVD as part of their Ozu Collection, starting with Tokyo Story, Early Summer and Late Spring on 19 July 2010.
“Following its recent hugely popular theatrical retrospective of world-renowned Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu’s entire surviving films,” read a press release, “the BFI will release all 32 films on DVD over the next three years. At least seven of these films will also be made available on Blu-ray for the first time.”
The Ozu Collection launches with the Dual Format Edition releases (both a Blu-ray and a DVD disc in one box) of Tokyo Story (1953), Early Summer (1951) and Late Spring (1949). Extra features with each of these three titles, and with subsequent releases, will include an early Ozu film that has never been available in the UK before.
Yasujiro Ozu came into the Japanese film business in 1923; he was 19 at the time and a huge film buff, having spent much of his teenage life watching imported Hollywood films. He joined Shochiku (the company he stayed with all his life) as a camera assistant and soon went on to become an assistant director and script collaborator. He learned his craft on the job and quickly became competent in framing shots, staging scenes and building gags in the conventional Hollywood manner. Some five or six years into his career as a director, though, Ozu began to formulate his own distinctive filmic style, a method of framing, pacing and cutting which was soon unique in both Japanese and world cinema. It was a style he pursued right up to his death in 1963.
In film after film, Ozu focused on the everyday lives – at home, at work, in bars or in school – of ordinary people, deploying stories shorn of big melodramatic moments, and balancing gentle comedy with a poignant awareness of life’s limitations and transience.
subtitled will have more details on each title closer to their release dates.
“Following its recent hugely popular theatrical retrospective of world-renowned Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu’s entire surviving films,” read a press release, “the BFI will release all 32 films on DVD over the next three years. At least seven of these films will also be made available on Blu-ray for the first time.”
The Ozu Collection launches with the Dual Format Edition releases (both a Blu-ray and a DVD disc in one box) of Tokyo Story (1953), Early Summer (1951) and Late Spring (1949). Extra features with each of these three titles, and with subsequent releases, will include an early Ozu film that has never been available in the UK before.
Yasujiro Ozu came into the Japanese film business in 1923; he was 19 at the time and a huge film buff, having spent much of his teenage life watching imported Hollywood films. He joined Shochiku (the company he stayed with all his life) as a camera assistant and soon went on to become an assistant director and script collaborator. He learned his craft on the job and quickly became competent in framing shots, staging scenes and building gags in the conventional Hollywood manner. Some five or six years into his career as a director, though, Ozu began to formulate his own distinctive filmic style, a method of framing, pacing and cutting which was soon unique in both Japanese and world cinema. It was a style he pursued right up to his death in 1963.
In film after film, Ozu focused on the everyday lives – at home, at work, in bars or in school – of ordinary people, deploying stories shorn of big melodramatic moments, and balancing gentle comedy with a poignant awareness of life’s limitations and transience.
subtitled will have more details on each title closer to their release dates.
Early Summer
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