Possibility For A Midori Restoration?
Dec. 11th, 2018 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eyeodysseyOriginally written on the 6th of December, 2018.
While digging around for some content to put on my art film focused Tumblr side blog, I found that the Japanese homepage for Hiroshi Harada’s Kiryukan production company underwent a real overhaul as of late. They apparently went through a whole domain switch sometime in the 2010s, and with that comes a lot of previously unreleased info regarding Harada’s film productions (both completed and still in production). With this, we’ve got some new screencaps of his 2-hour collaborative work Horizon Blue (originally known as H). When looking through though, I found an interesting bit of info regarding Midori. The original text was a bit butchered in the way that you would expect Google Translate to absolutely slaughter Japanese to English text, so I decided to fix things up a bit for this iteration.
“A 16MM negative of “Shôjo tsubaki: Chika gentô gekiga” was uncovered in an IMAGICA Productions warehouse, a new print was produced in contribution with the Kanazawa Film Festival.”
While the Kanazawa Film Festival was in 2013, I’m remaining optimistic in that this may eventually give the opportunity for a future restoration and rerelease of Midori. The quality of a 16MM reprint would be much more accurate to Harada’s original art over the telecine version that the Cinemalta DVD was transferred from. With the rising market in cult film and cinematic obscurity, I’m hoping that we’ll one day see a proper DVD anthology of Harada’s work with all new restorations (I’m looking at you Criterion Collection / Arrow Films). If we could see films like Belladonna Of Sadness and Hausu become cult sensations overnight from home video restorations, I feel that this film will be no exception. Oh, and Ken Russell’s The Devils too. Warner Brothers, get off your asses and have it where all of us don’t have to buy a region-free player to watch the ye olde censored BFI DVD.
While digging around for some content to put on my art film focused Tumblr side blog, I found that the Japanese homepage for Hiroshi Harada’s Kiryukan production company underwent a real overhaul as of late. They apparently went through a whole domain switch sometime in the 2010s, and with that comes a lot of previously unreleased info regarding Harada’s film productions (both completed and still in production). With this, we’ve got some new screencaps of his 2-hour collaborative work Horizon Blue (originally known as H). When looking through though, I found an interesting bit of info regarding Midori. The original text was a bit butchered in the way that you would expect Google Translate to absolutely slaughter Japanese to English text, so I decided to fix things up a bit for this iteration.
“A 16MM negative of “Shôjo tsubaki: Chika gentô gekiga” was uncovered in an IMAGICA Productions warehouse, a new print was produced in contribution with the Kanazawa Film Festival.”
While the Kanazawa Film Festival was in 2013, I’m remaining optimistic in that this may eventually give the opportunity for a future restoration and rerelease of Midori. The quality of a 16MM reprint would be much more accurate to Harada’s original art over the telecine version that the Cinemalta DVD was transferred from. With the rising market in cult film and cinematic obscurity, I’m hoping that we’ll one day see a proper DVD anthology of Harada’s work with all new restorations (I’m looking at you Criterion Collection / Arrow Films). If we could see films like Belladonna Of Sadness and Hausu become cult sensations overnight from home video restorations, I feel that this film will be no exception. Oh, and Ken Russell’s The Devils too. Warner Brothers, get off your asses and have it where all of us don’t have to buy a region-free player to watch the ye olde censored BFI DVD.
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