New BFI DVDs and Blu-rays announced for autumn/winter 2019
Highlights among the BFI’s October – December home entertainment releases include a medley of musicals, the return of the Flipside and the final film by Agnès Varda.
We kick off our autumn slate with the 39th release in the long-standing BFI Flipside strand. Combining two ‘far out’ British films – exploitation director Derek Ford’s Secret Rites and Malcolm Leigh’s Legend of the Witches – the release sees both titles available on Blu-ray for the first time ever. The final set will also feature to-be-announced artwork by renowned illustrator Graham Humphreys, and be launched at a special Halloween event at BFI Southbank.
As previously announced, October will also see the release of Miloš Forman’s Hair (celebrating its 40th anniversary with its UK Blu-ray premiere), the first in a series of Blu-rays coinciding with the BFI’s Musicals blockbuster. Other musicals out on BFI Blu-ray as part of the season include Jacques Demy’s groundbreaking Les Demoiselles de Rochefort and Barbra Streisand’s 1983 directorial debut Yentl.
Following screenings in cinemas across the UK throughout the summer, Varda by Agnès receives a dual format edition release in November. The final film by iconic director Agnès Varda, the documentary offers a personal insight into her oeuvre, using excerpts from her work to illustrate her unique artistic visions and ideas.
November also sees John Huston’s acclaimed Toulouse-Lautrec biopic Moulin Rouge receive its Blu-ray premiere. This new 4K restoration, which premiered in the Cannes Classics strand at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, brings stunning new life to the film’s exquisite production design and Technicolor photography, which brilliantly evoke Lautrec’s unique vision of Paris’s Montmartre.
In December Paul Verhoeven’s breakout hit Spetters is released on Blu-ray. Newly restored and available in high definition for the first time in the UK, the film – a controversial tale of lust, desire and motocross – helped launch Verhoeven’s international career and that of its stars, including a pre-Blade Runner Rutger Hauer.
An FBI agent infiltrates a dangerous white supremacist movement connected to a brutal murder, in Costa-Gavras’s edge of your seat thriller Betrayed. Starring Debra Winger and Tom Berenger, and from the writer of Basic Instinct, the film comes to BFI Blu-ray in early December.
And finally, also to be released before the end of the year, Michael Caton-Jones’ acclaimed interpretation of the Profumo affair, Scandal, which celebrates its 30th anniversary with a debut Blu-ray release.
