Bologna Diary Five - The Cinema Ritrovato DVD and Blu-ray Awards

The Judging Panel

The Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards once again assembled its panel of aging white male cinephiles to hand out the prizes. It’s always fun, even inadvertently as when Jonathan Rosenbaum stumbled over the pronunciation of “Mozjoukine” about four times before finally giving up. Paolo Meregheti who was delivering the results in Italian after Jonathan’s English managed the name without a problem. Sometimes it's the little things that lick you. Mozjoukine’s name came up because Best DVD was named as The House of Mystery,  a serial made between 1921 and 1923 by Alexandre Volkoff. It’s been published in the US by Flicker Alley and Blackhawk Films.

The Award has now been named after the late Peter Von Bagh, whose death since last year’s Cinema Ritrovato left a vacancy on the panel of judges. His replacement , Lucien Logette fits into the age and gender demographic perfectly. It seems its a bit like being a Pope to be on the DVD Awards Panel. You have to die to get off it and it's a blokes only operation. I’ll not labour the point any more.

Best Blu-ray went to three films by Shirley Clarke issued by Milestone Films. Best DVD Box set went to the Walerian Borowczyk package published by Arrow Films. Other prizes went to Criterion for their Les Blank Blu-rays. Flicker Alley also got gongs for their Marcel Perez and Mack Sennett issues. There were prizes also for Best Rediscovery to Phillipe Garrel’s Les Hautes Solitudes and Karel Zeman’s  A Jester’s Tale

No handout with all the results was offered around though clearly the jury had a scripted version. For the full results right down to the minutiae of the panelists personal selections of DVDs not actually entered, we shall have to wait until Jonathan Rosenbaum publishes the script as part of his next DVD report in Cinemascope.