Read The Criterion Collection's book Criterion Designs. Published on 2014-11-25 by The Criterion Collection. #GraphicDesign #Arts #Photography | A lavishly illustrated coffee-table book celebrating thirty years of artwork from the Criterion Collection. The most exciting names in design and...

There has never been a filmmaker like Marlon Riggs (1957-1994): an unapologetic gay Black man who defied a culture of silence and shame to speak his truth with resounding joy and conviction. An early adopter of video technology who had a profound understanding of the power of words and images to effect change, Riggs employed a bold mix of documentary, performance, poetry, music, and experimental techniques in order to confront issues that most of Reagan-era America refused to acknowledge, from the devastating legacy of racist stereotypes to the impact of the AIDS crisis on his own queer African American community to the very definition of what it is to be Black. Bringing together Riggs's complete works-including his controversy-inciting queer landmark Tongues Untied and Black Is... Black Ain't, his deeply personal career summation-The Signifyin' Works of Marlon Riggs traces the artistic and political evolution of a transformative filmmaker whose work is both an electrifying call for liberation and an invaluable historical document.

This film by Tomas Gutierrez Alea is the most widely renowned work in the history of Cuban cinema. After his wife and family flee in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the bourgeois intellectual Sergio (Sergio Corrieri) passes his days wandering Havana in idle reflection, his amorous entanglements and political ambivalence gradually giving way to a mounting sense of alienation. With this adaptation of an innovative novel by Edmundo Desnoes, Gutierrez Alea developed a cinematic style as radical as the times he was chronicling, creating a collage of vivid impressions through the use of experimental editing techniques, archival material, and spontaneously shot street scenes. Intimate and densely layered, Memories of Underdevelopment provides a biting indictment of it's protagonist's disengagement and an extraordinary glimpse of life in postrevolutionary Cuba.

Lino Brocka broke through to international acclaim with this candid portrait of 1970s Manila, the second film in the director's turn to more serious-minded filmmaking after building a career on mainstream films he described as soaps. A young fisherman from a provincial village arrives in the capital on a quest to track down his girlfriend, who was lured there with the promise of work and hasn't been heard from since. In the meantime, he takes a low-wage job at a construction site and witnesses life on the streets, where death strikes without warning, corruption and exploitation are commonplace, and protests hint at escalating civil unrest. Mixing visceral, documentary-like realism with the narrative focus of Hollywood noir and melodrama, Manila in the Claws of Light is a howl of anguish from one of the most celebrated figures in Philippine cinema. Manila in the Claws of Light (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray)

A girl on the verge of womanhood finds herself in a sensual fantasyland of vampires, witchcraft, and other threats in this eerie and mystical movie daydream. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders serves up an endlessly looping, nonlinear fairy tale, set in a quasi-medieval landscape. Ravishingly shot, enchantingly scored, and spilling over with surreal fancies, this enticing phantasmagoria from director Jaromil Jires (The Joke) is among the most beautiful oddities of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

A spectacular song-and-dance revue filmed in luminous early Technicolor-rediscovered and newly restored Made during the early years of the movie musical, this exuberant revue was one of the most extravagant, eclectic, and technically ambitious Hollywood productions of its day. Starring the bandleader PAUL WHITEMAN, then widely celebrated as the King of Jazz, the film drew from Broadway variety shows of the time to present a spectacular array of sketches, performances by such acts as the Rhythm Boys (featuring a young BING CROSBY), and orchestral numbers overseen by Whiteman himself (including a larger-than-life rendition of GEORGE GERSHWIN's "Rhapsody in Blue")-all lavishly staged by veteran theatre director JOHN MURRAY ANDERSON and beautifully shot in early Technicolor. Long available only in incomplete form, King of Jazz appears here newly restored to its original glory, offering a fascinating snapshot of the way mainstream American popular culture viewed itself at the dawn of the 1930s.Features:New 4K digital restoration by Universal Pictures, with uncompressed monaural soundtrackNew audio commentary featuring jazz and film critic Gary Giddins, music and cultural critic Gene Seymour, and musician and bandleader Vince GiordanoNew introduction by GiddinsNew interview with musician and pianist Michael FeinsteinFour new video essays by authors and archivists James Layton and David Pierce on the development and making of King of JazzDeleted scenes and alternate opening-title sequenceAll Americans, a 1929 short film featuring a version of the "Melting Pot" number that was restaged for the finale of King of JazzI Know Everybody and Everybody's Racket, a 1933 short film featuring Paul Whiteman and His OrchestraTwo Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons from 1930, featuring music and animation from King of Jazz

The nightmare of war is seen through the eyes of one of its most tragic casualties-a child soldier- in this harrowing vision of innocence lost from Cary Joji Fukunaga (True Detective). Based on the acclaimed novel by Uzodinma Iweala, Beasts of No Nation unfolds in an unnamed, civil war-torn West African country, where the young Agu (Abraham Attah, in a haunting debut performance) witnesses carnage in his village before becoming the captive of a band of rebel soldiers led by a ruthless commander (an explosive Idris Elba [The Wire]), who moulds the boy into a hardened killer.Fukunaga's relentlessly roving camera work and stunning visuals-realism so intensely visceral it borders on the surreal-immerse the viewer in a world of unimaginable horror without ever losing sight of the powerful human story at its centre.2K digital master, approved by director Cary Joji Fukunaga, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrackNew audio commentary featuring Fukunaga and first assistant director Jon MallardTwo new documentaries on the development and making of the film, featuring interviews with Fukunaga; author Uzodinma Iweala; actors Idris Elba and Abraham Attah; and producers Amy Kaufman, Daniela Taplin Lundberg, and Riva MarkerNew conversation between Fukunaga and producer and cultural commentator Franklin LeonardNew interview with costume designer Jenny EaganTrailerEnglish subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearingEnglish descriptive audioAn essay by film critic Robert Daniels

THE MOST INDELIBLE ADAPTATION OF THE CLASSIC NOVEL, IN A NEW SPECIAL EDITION!In the hands of the renowned experimental theatre director PETER BROOK, William Golding's legendary novel on the primitivism lurking beneath civilization becomes a film as raw and ragged as the lost boys at its centre. Taking an innovative documentary-like approach, Brook shot Lord of the Flies with an off-the-cuff naturalism, seeming to record a spontaneous eruption of its characters' ids. The result is a rattling masterpiece, as provocative as its source material.Special Features:New, restored 4K digital film transfer, supervised by cameraman and editor Gerald Feil, with uncompressed monaural soundtrackAudio commentary featuring director Peter Brook, producer Lewis Allen, director of photography Tom Hollyman, and FeilAudio recordings of William Golding reading from his novel Lord of the Flies, accompanied by the corresponding scenes from the filmDeleted scene, with optional commentary and reading by GoldingInterview with Brook from 2008Collection of behind-the-scenes material, featuring home movies, screen tests, outtakes, and stillsNew interview with FeilExcerpt from Feil's 1972 documentary The Empty Space, showcasing Brook's theatre methodsSomething Queer in the Warehouse, a piece composed of never-before-seen footage shot by the boy actors during production, with new voice-over by Tom Gaman, who played SimonTrailerPLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Geoffrey Macnab and an excerpt fromBrook's book The Shifting Point

Multiple Maniacs photographs by Lawrence Irvine. Courtesy of the Criterion Collection and Janus Films. Multiple Maniacs ©1970 Dreamland Productions. All rights reserved.United States, 1970, 96 minutes, Black & White, 1.66:1, English, Spine #863John Waters’ gloriously grotesque second feature is replete with all manner of depravity, from robbery to murder to one of cinema’s most memorably blasphemous moments. Made on a shoestring budget in Waters’ native Baltimore, with the filmmaker taking on nearly every technical task, this gleeful mockery of the peace-and-love ethos of its era features the Cavalcade of Perversion, a traveling show mounted by a troupe of misfits whose shocking proclivities are topped only by those of their leader: the glammer-than-glam, larger-than-life Divine, out for blood after discovering her lover’s affair. Starring members of Waters’ beloved regular cast, the Dreamlanders (including David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Susan Lowe, Edith Massey, George Figgs, and Cookie Mueller), Multiple Maniacs is an anarchic masterwork from an artist who has doggedly tested the limits of good taste for decades.DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURESNew 4K digital restoration, supervised by director John Waters, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-rayNew audio commentary featuring WatersNew interviews with cast and crew members Pat Moran, Mink Stole, Susan Lowe, George Figgs, and Vincent PeranioNew video essay by scholar Gary NeedhamTrailerEnglish subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearingPLUS: An essay by critic Linda YablonskyNew cover by Eric Skillman

Film theorist Laura Mulvey, who introduced the world to the concept of the “male gaze,” is one of cinema’s most influential thinkers. She is a professor of film and media studies at the University of London’s Birkbeck College and is director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image. Her writings on cinema have taken on topics from Citizen Kane to home-video viewing. Of the difficulty of compiling her Criterion Top 10, she says, “I’ve tried to keep to ten, but sometimes the list refused and cheated with asides mentioning other Criterion films.”

Multiple Maniacs photographs by Lawrence Irvine. Courtesy of the Criterion Collection and Janus Films. Multiple Maniacs ©1970 Dreamland Productions. All rights reserved.United States, 1970, 96 minutes, Black & White, 1.66:1, English, Spine #863John Waters’ gloriously grotesque second feature is replete with all manner of depravity, from robbery to murder to one of cinema’s most memorably blasphemous moments. Made on a shoestring budget in Waters’ native Baltimore, with the filmmaker taking on nearly every technical task, this gleeful mockery of the peace-and-love ethos of its era features the Cavalcade of Perversion, a traveling show mounted by a troupe of misfits whose shocking proclivities are topped only by those of their leader: the glammer-than-glam, larger-than-life Divine, out for blood after discovering her lover’s affair. Starring members of Waters’ beloved regular cast, the Dreamlanders (including David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Susan Lowe, Edith Massey, George Figgs, and Cookie Mueller), Multiple Maniacs is an anarchic masterwork from an artist who has doggedly tested the limits of good taste for decades.DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURESNew 4K digital restoration, supervised by director John Waters, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-rayNew audio commentary featuring WatersNew interviews with cast and crew members Pat Moran, Mink Stole, Susan Lowe, George Figgs, and Vincent PeranioNew video essay by scholar Gary NeedhamTrailerEnglish subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearingPLUS: An essay by critic Linda YablonskyNew cover by Eric Skillman

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A buoyant hymn to sisterly solidarity rooted in the hard-won victories of a generation of women, One Sings, the Other Doesn't is one of Agnes Varda's warmest and most politically trenchant films, a feminist musical for the ages.

In the early 1970s, the great Italian poet, philosopher, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (SALR, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM) brought to the screen a trio of masterpieces of premodern world literature - Giovanni Boccaccio's THE DECAMERON, Geoffrey Chaucer's THE CANTERBURY TALES, and THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS (often known as THE ARABIAN NIGHTS) - and in doing so created his most uninhibited and extravagant work, which he titled his TRILOGY OF LIFE.

One of the most influential political films in history, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, by Gillo Pontecorvo, vividly re-creates a key year in the tumultuous Algerian struggle for independence from the occupying French in the 1950s. As violence escalates on both sides, children shoot soldiers at point-blank range, women plant bombs in cafes, and French soldiers resort to torture to break the will of the insurgents. Shot on the streets of Algiers in documentary style, the film is a case study in modern warfare, with it's terrorist attacks and the brutal techniques used to combat them. Pontecorvo's tour de force has astonishing relevance today.