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I always look forward to Severin's summer sale, since not only are they discounting previous releases, but they have announced Ten new titles that will be available, including the 4K Uhd release of Opera. The sale kicks off on Friday, July 12th and we have the details:

"Severin Films today announced full details of their 2024 Severin Summer Sale, the most ambitious and eclectic in company history. Leading the mid-year event is the Worldwide Uhd Premiere of Dario Argento’s masterwork Opera, newly restored by Severin and featuring 5 discs, 12 hours of Special Features and the CD soundtrack; the North American Disc Premiere of Dario Argento’S Deep Cuts, a 4-Disc Collection featuring 10 hours from his Rai TV shows; The Worldwide Uhd Premiere of Joe D’Amato’s Penne Post-Apocalypse epic 2020 Texas Gladiators, a 3-disc collection that includes a CD of the never-before-released soundtrack; and Bert I. Gordon’s politically incorrect crime...

Each year, the Sundance Film Festival rolls out an enviable lineup of jury members — billed as “experts in film, art, culture and science” — to dole out awards to the feature-length works shown at the festival. In total, 28 prizes (and sometimes more!) will be announced at a ceremony on January 28 (as ever, Short Film Awards will be announced at a separate ceremony on January 24). The festival has now announced this year’s various jury members, including actors, filmmakers, producers, writers and other luminaries (and, yes, plenty of Sundance alums pop up amongst their ranks).

Additionally, the festival has also announced that actress, comedian, correspondent and podcast host Jessica Williams will host the annual awards. Jones seems poised to have a very busy Sundance indeed, as she also toplines James Strouse’s premiere “The Incredible Jessica James,” which will close out the festival the night before.

The awards, which recognize standout artistic and story elements,...

Above: Ozualdo Ribeiro Candeias’ A margem (The Margin, 1967).

"I will never transmit sanitised ideas, eloquent discourses or plastic images before the garbage (…) Crushed and exploited, the colonized can only invent their own form of suffocation: the scream of protest comes from an abortive ‘mise en scene’ (…) I’ll continue to make an underdeveloped cinema by condition and vocation, barbarian and ours, anticulturalist (…)" —Rogério  Sganzerla, The Aesthetics of Garbage

Not even garbage escapes retrospective respectability; what was once reviled by snobby film buffs has now become their new gospel. Subcultural capital (that which is “hip” and “illicit”) is usually outsourced from our business enemies (China, Iran, etc.) or from forgotten episodes of film history. One wonders what will the subject of a retrospective be in 30 or 40 years when the whole globe will have been converted to consumer fundamentalism. Now that our visual economy is funded on total exposure and immediate consumption,...