Invasion (Hugo Santiago, 1969)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Invasion.

In 1957, a small group of middle-aged men fight a clandestine battle against forces quietly invading and taking control of their city, Aquilea.  Enigmatic in its story-telling, Hugo Santiago’s once-lost film obscures the motivations of either side, leaving only a series of moves and counter-moves that evokes past dictatorial oppression and those still to come.  With stark, spare cinematography by Ricardo Aronovich, a lively and unnerving score by Edgardo Canton, and a screenplay written by Santiago with Argentine literary titans Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, Invasion is a tense and timeless portrait of resistance and an unheralded classic of international art house cinema and Latin American filmmaking.

Disc Features:

• New, digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary by Richard Peña, program director of New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center
• New interview with Hugo Santiago
• Los Contrabandistas (1967) and Los Taitas (1968), two short films by Santiago
• The Others (1974), Santiago’s follow-up feature to Invasion, also co-written with Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares
• Profile of a Writer: Jorge Luis Borges, an 80-minute documentary on the writer including dramatized sequences from his stories and interviews with Borges in the author’s home
• Bioy, a 38-minute interview with the author
• PLUS:  A booklet featuring a new essay by Argentinian film scholar Maria de los Angeles Sanz

La Antena (Esteban Sapir, 2007)

“Inventive, elegiac, gently surreal.  If David Lynch had been around in the 1920s, it’s exactly the kind of film he would have made.” – Ian Berriman, SFX.CO.UK

In the year XX, an entire city has lost the ability to speak save for the mysterious Voice (Florencia Raggi), a hooded singer whose soothing songs are heard on a program broadcast under the media monopoly of Mr. TV (Alejandro Urdapilleta).  When Mr. TV’s nefarious schemes escalate and he kidnaps the Voice with plans to use her vocal chords to extend his power, her eyeless son Tomás, also gifted with the power of speech, becomes the only hope for her and the voiceless city.  An inventor (Rafael Ferro), his ex-wife (Julieta Cardinali), and their devoted daughter Ana (Sol Moreno) race to save Tomás, the Voice, and the city from Mr. TV’s despotic plot, dodging the mogul’s silhouetted henchmen and his evil righthand, the Mouse Man.  A cautionary tale on media control, Esteban Sapir’s La Antena is a stylized sci-fi thriller drawing heavily on silent cinema, film noir, and German expressionism that is “in a word: Unmissable” (Kat Brown, Empire Online).

Special Features:

• Interview with filmmaker Esteban Sapir
• Making of La Antena: a documentary featurette on the making of the film
• Deleted and alternate scenes
• Picado fino, Sapir’s 1996 debut feature
• Trailers
• 42-page booklet of script excerpts and storyboard art

“Calle Eclipse” Edition – Package includes:

• La Antena on Blu-ray or Standard DVD featuring over 2 hours of bonus material
• High quality 720p HD Digital Download of the Film Available on Street Date
• Instant Download of the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Leo Sujatovich in Apple MP4
• 27″ x 40″ Theatrical Poster Autographed by Sapir
• 27″ x 40″ Mondo Poster by Tyler Stout
• Alimentos TV Dinner Biscuits