The Official New Wave Films Thread

[rapta]

Great news, guys!

I contacted New Wave about a couple of their upcoming titles - namely, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery of Splendour and Jia Zhangke's Mountains May Depart - and whether they would be released on Blu-ray as well as DVD. At first, I got this response:

Not sure about BRD yet, we still haven't got a release date yet for either - out later this year.

But later today they deleted that response and instead changed it to:

Yes on Cemetery of Splendour - late summer, release date tbc. Mountains to be decided later.

Excellent news! That'll be the third Weerasethakul title to make it to Blu-ray in the UK - the first being Uncle Boonmee (also from New Wave), and the second being Mysterious Object at Noon (from Second Run, and only their second ever Blu-ray release). Seeing as he's one of the very best directors working today, I am very glad to see his work being appreciated like this!

I hope they will do the same for Jia's new film, as he is potentially the most interesting director from mainland China right now (that I know of).

I will follow this up with a query about Miguel Gomes' Arabian Nights, thought that might be a little more tricky to get to Blu-ray - presumably they would have to press it across three discs, or squeeze them onto two or one (which could prove difficult). With today's announcement of Criterion arriving in the UK, we should be reminded to support smaller labels such as this one, otherwise we may one day never see these kinds of films on home video at all!