A MAN VANISHES (Masters of Cinema) is to be released in the UK on DVD on 24 October 2011
SYNOPSIS:
It is difficult to summarise Shōhei Imamura's legendary 1967 film, the first picture produced by Japan's countercultural Art Theatre Guild (ATG). Is it a documentary that turns into a fiction? A narrative film from beginning to end? A record of improvisation populated with actors or non-actors (and in what proportion)? Is it the investigation into a true disappearance, or a work merely inspired by actual events? Even at the conclusion of its final movement, A Man Vanishes [Ningen jōhatsu, or The Unexplained Disappearance of a Human Being] mirrors its subject in deflecting inquiries into the precise nature of its own being.
A middle-class salaryman has gone missing — possibly of his own accord — and a film crew has set out to assemble a record of the man and the events surrounding his disappearance. As the crew meticulously builds a cachet of interviews with the man's family and lovers, their subject and his motivations become progressively more elusive — until the impossibility of the endeavour seems to transform the very film itself.
Long unavailable anywhere on home video, Imamura's A Man Vanishes remains a unique and crucial entry in a provocative filmmaker's body of work, daring as it does to ask the big questions: what is reality, and what is a man?
Directed by the great Japanese director Shōhei Imamura, A Man Vanishes is one of the most requested, influential, and acclaimed pseudo-documentaries ever made. Taken from a new high-definition restoration which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011, the Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present A Man Vanishes for the first time on DVD in the UK, in an impressive new restoration.
SPECIAL EDITION DVD FEATURES:
• New high-definition restoration of the film
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• Exclusive new video interview with scholar Tony Rayns
• More extras to be announced closer to the release date.
• PLUS: A lavish booklet featuring rare archival imagery, and more!
DETAILS:
Label: Eureka Entertainment Ltd
Catalogue No: EKA40343 (RETAIL ONLY)
Barcode: 5060000403435
RRP: £20.42
Release Date: 24 October 2011
Certificate: TBC
Run Time: 130 min. approx.
Format: 1.37:1 OAR/ B&W
Genre: Documentary/ Drama
Director: Shōhei IMAMURA
Year: 1967
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Subtitles: English (Optional)
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