BFI Blu-ray and DVD releases announced for October to December 2023

On 9 October, BFI Flipside presents the third volume in our Short Sharp Shocks series. This two Blu-ray set features another strange cinematic journey through uncanny stories, twists in the tale, low-budget weirdness, stylish spectacle, avant-garde art, peculiar public information, monstrous music and provocative experiment. Many of the films are ultra-rare, and each of them comes with oodles of atmosphere and remastered to high definition. Like previous volumes, this Blu-ray will feature newly commissioned artwork by the renowned horror illustrator Graham Humphreys.

This year marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. As well as a UK-wide re-release of Tokyo Story and a season at BFI Southbank, we also mark the occasion with the release on 23 October of Three Films by Yasujiro Ozu. This new set features new restorations of A Hen in the Wind (1948), Dragnet Girl (1933) and Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947), all presented on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.

On 20 November discover a ‘lost’ masterpiece from acclaimed director Michael Powell (The Red Shoes, Peeping Tom), with Bluebeard’s Castle (1963), a stunning adaptation of Béla Bartok’s expressionist opera. Unavailable for many years, the film has been painstakingly restored by the BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation, in association with The Ashbrittle Film Foundation, and is presented on Blu-ray for the very first time to coincide with our season Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger.

Also released on 20 November is the second volume of Ghost Stories for Christmas on Blu-ray. Following last year’s best-selling first volume, this three-disc set features five BBC yuletide chillers from the years 1974 to 1978, plus the 2005 and 2006 revivals as extras. Highlights include the first ever HD presentation of Lawrence Gordon Clark’s version of The Signalman from 1976, starring the great Denholm Elliot.

On 4 December we release the 15th volume of British Transport Films on double DVD set. This collection, called Life on the Line, gathers 14 previously unreleased films made from 1969 to 1983.