Leadbelly (Gordon Parks, 1976)

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

In his final theatrical film, celebrated director Gordon Parks cast Roger E. Mosley as the iconic blues and folk singer Huddie Ledbetter, better known to music history as Lead Belly, the King of the 12-String Guitar. Dramatizing the musician’s turbulent life from his early 20s to his mid-40s, Leadbelly follows Huddie as he performs at bars and sukey jumps, learns the blues from “Blind Lemon” Jefferson, faces violent racism and its deadly consequences, and twice finds himself incarcerated, labouring on back-breaking chain gangs and performing at the behest of white authorities. Combining pastoral simplicity with the resilient and rebellious spirit of the 1970s, all to the sounds of Lead Belly’s iconic songs, Leadbelly offers a vibrant and harrowing portrait of the segregated Jim Crow South and stood as the film Parks most admired amongst his own filmography.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with filmmaker Spike Lee and music historians Kip Lornell and Charles Wolfe
• March of Time newsreel on Lead Belly
• Three Songs by Leadbelly, Blanding Shaw and Wah Mong Chang’s 1945 footage edited together two decades later by folk singer Pete Seeger
• Legend of Lead Belly, Alan Ravenscroft 52-minute documentary on the folk singer
• Selected performances from A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly
• Archival interview with folklorist Alan Lomax
• Theatrical trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: A new essay by scholar L. Roi Boyd III and novelist Richard Wright’s 1937 tribute to Lead Belly written for the Daily Worker

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

Based on I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang!, the autobiographical book of chain gang escapee Robert E. Burns, Mervyn LeRoy’s uncompromising and starkly realistic 1932 drama, about an out of work veteran twice railroaded into the hell of a Georgia chain gang, still has the power to shock. Paul Muni commands the screen in a brilliantly lived-in performance as a man whose only prospect is a life perpetually on the run, and the film’s gritty realism spares no anger at a cruel and unjust legal system. Eighty years later, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang remains the studio era’s greatest social message film and it stands as a crucial turning point for Warner Bros., Paul Muni, Robert E. Burns, and the American prison system.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2005 by film historian Richard B. Jewell
• Vintage musical short 20,000 Cheers for the Chain Gang!
• The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains, a 1987 TV movie starring Val Kilmer and adapting Robert E. Burns’ I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang
• Theatrical trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: A new essay by TCM film historian and author Scott McGee

Orders (Michel Brault, 1974)

https://vimeo.com/325952008

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

Straddling fiction and documentary reconstruction, Michel Brault’s Orders is a gripping reenactment of the roundup and imprisonment of ordinary Québécois citizens during the October Crisis of 1970, when Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau imposed martial law following the political kidnappings of a British diplomat and a government minister by the secessionist Front de libération du Québec. Nearly 500 people were arrested, imprisoned, and questioned during this period before eventually being released without any charges ever being brought against them. Brault, who won the Best Director’s Award at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival for Orders, interviewed 12 detainees and recorded 50 hours of material to base this harrowing portrait of the Crisis, drawing upon his pivotal contributions to the direct cinema and cinema vérité movements during its filming. Now restored 40 years after its explosive debut at Cannes, Orders is an understated examination of the erosion of democratic values that foresees the rise of the permanent state of emergency.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Interviews with director Michel Brault and actors Jean Lapointe, Claude Gauthier, and Louise Forestier
• On Screen – Les Ordres, a one hour television documentary on the film for Canadian television
• Les raquetteurs, Brault’s landmark short film that launched Quebec’s direct cinema movement
• Le direct avant la lettre, Denys Desjardins’ 2005 documentary on the direct cinema movement
• The October Crisis: 50 Years Onscreen, a discussion on Orders with actors Claude Gauthier and Louise Forestier, filmmaker Mathieu Denis, and documentarian Félix Rose (son of FLQ member Paul Rose)
• Action: The October Crisis of 1970 and Reaction: A Portrait of a Society in Crisis, two documentaries by Robin Spry utilizing extensive archival footage
• Trailers
• PLUS: New essays by Quebec film scholar André Loiselle and Canadian art critic and historian David Silcox

Dave Barber, A Tribute

These are sad days at MMC! Dave Barber, filmmaker and beloved programmer of Winnipeg’s Cinematheque, passed away earlier this week at the age of 67. Dave was a champion of Canadian and independent cinema and a tireless advocate for his theatre and the films it featured.

I met Dave at a get-together hosted by a mutual friend eight years ago. Attended by professional, semi-professional, and amateur pop culture nerds, we were invited to share lists of our favourite films and Dave’s list expressed his love of music as well as his love of cinema at its biggest and most minute.

• The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins (Les Blank, 1968)
• Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival (Murray Lerner, 1995)
• The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
• Vinyl (Alan Zweig, 2000)
• The Fabulous Baker Boys (Steve Kloves, 1989)
• Jazz on a Summer’s Day (Bert Stern, 1959)
• Plan 9 from Outer Space (Ed Wood, 1959)
• Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
• The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960)
• Crime Wave (John Paizs, 1985)

In the years that followed, we would watch movies together when we ran into each other at a screening, we would text about programming ideas and other movie stuff, and we would share festival discoveries. I would give him rides home when he needed them, he would hook my son up with Godzilla stuff, and my wife would restrain her urge to make him a sandwich. When I discovered he was in the hospital, I sent him a message wishing him well and asking him to reach out once he recovered, hoping he would find the message once he was discharged. Sadly that won’t happen, but I’m very grateful for the time I got to spend with Dave and I wish him the best on whatever new project he’s now moved on to.

In celebration of Dave, MMC! offers this brief tribute to the man on screen and there’s no better place to start than Dave’s 2014 short film Will the Real Dave Barber Please Stand Up?, a hilarious account of Dave being awarded a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal.

You Cannot Kill David Arquette (David Darg and Price James, 2020) – Fantasia International Film Festival

FROM STUMBLING TO RUMBLING!

Branded as the most hated man in professional wrestling after winning the WCW World Heavyweight Championship in 2000, actor David Arquette attempts a rocky return to the sport that stalled his promising Hollywood career. Despite having two stents in his heart, being under treatment for depression and anxiety, and exhibiting functioning alcoholism, the 47 year-old actor dangerously commits himself reclaiming his self-respect in the squared circle. Arquette’s journey takes him to the backyards of amateur wrestling in Virginia, the fast-paced style of Tijuana’s lucha libre shows, and near-fatal hardcore deathmatches. Along the way, he puts his health, his credibility, and his marriage on the line, but Arquette’s determination to earn a respected place in the world of pro-wrestling cannot be denied.

Part car-wreck, part inspirational Rocky-docky, You Cannot Kill David Arquette is a fascinating look into the closed world of pro-wrestling and a portrait of the physical toll and unbridled passion required to perform in its peculiar brand of theatre. Appearing alongside David Arquette are his wife/producer Christina McLarty Arquette, his siblings Patricia, Rosanna, and Richmond, his ex-wife Courtney Cox, and wrestling legends including Ric Flair and Diamond Dallas Page.

Special Edition Contents:

• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and Uncompressed Stereo PCM
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Two feature-length audio commentaries, one with directors David Darg and Price James and one with David Arquette and Christina McLarty Arquette
• Full matches between David Arquette and Nick Gage, RJ City, Mr. Anderson, Jungle Boy, and others, with introductions and alternate commentaries by Arquette and City
• Outtakes and extended interviews
• This is the End, a new interview with wrestling historian Dave Meltzer on David Arquette’s reign as WCW Heavyweight Champion
• New video tribute to the song “You Cannot Kill David Arquette” by The Black Math Experiment
• Original theatrical trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring two artwork choices

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring new writing by wrestling critic Andy Murray

Negativipeg (Matthew Rankin, 2010)

Welcome to 2020!

MMC! kicks off a new year of imagined releases of favourite movies (and various other miscellany) with one of 2019’s favourite short film discoveries — Matthew Rankin’s Negativipeg (2010). Rankin’s The Twentieth Century (2019) was a favourite of the 2019 Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival and MMC! happily gorged itself on Rankin’s various short works as well. Both the shorts and Rankin’s first feature are typified with DIY inventiveness, satirical humour, and spectacular visuals that easily inherits the prairie postmodern tradition of filmmakers like Guy Maddin and John Paizs, however this post celebrates an outlier in Rankin’s filmography.

Negativipeg is a fascinating documentary on Rory Lepine’s 1985 encounter in a 7-Eleven with Winnipeg rock legend, Burton Cummings of The Guess Who. Lepine, who was 19 when he put the boots to Burt in that North End Sev’, served 4 months in prison for the beating given to Cummings and the incident became emblematic of the longstanding tension between the musician and his former hometown, neither of whom felt loved enough in the eyes of the other. While lacking the visual wonder of Rankin’s later work, the short is captivating and easily stands as the most Winnipeg-like thing I’ve ever seen on screen – the shuttered homes, the bleakness of winter, Lepine’s particular accent and his code for life in the North End, the love-hate relationship toward Cummings and the ongoing question of his local credentials after getting big, and the Pizza Pops. Rankin dresses Negativipeg in droll Errol Morris-like eccentricity and incisiveness, creating something that is equal parts hilarious, tragic, and perplexing and all conveyed in an exceptionally local vernacular. As wonderful as Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg (2007) may be, Rankin’s Negativipeg may cut even closer to the bone in revealing the city’s essence.