DVD
Tabu : a story of the South Seas
Call Number
- DVD DRAMA (CEN)
Languages
Silent film with added musical soundtrack.
Performers
Matahi, Reri, Jean, Hitu.
Publication Information
New York, NY : Kino Classics, [2015]
Physical Description
1 videodisc (86 minutes) : sound, black and white ; 4 3/4 in.
Audience
Not rated.
Uniform Title
Series
Summary
"While the film industry was busy converting to sound, two of the silent era's most visionary artists slipped away to the South Seas to collaborate on a work of pure visual beauty untainted by Hollywood's latest technical obsession. F.W. Murnau was a supreme stylist who had crafted dreamlike fables both in Germany (Faust) and the U.S. (Sunrise). Robert J. Flaherty was a groundbreaking documentarian whose Nanook of the North and Moana defined the ethnographic film movement. Over the course of nine months, drawing inspiration from the topography and people of the Tahitian islands, they fashioned an emotionally rich story of the flowering romance between a young man and woman, as the shadow of civilization falls upon their island paradise. Initially released in a shortened and censored form, this restoration (produced by Luciano Berriatua for the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung) represents Murnau's approved version in its most complete form."--Container.
Notes
"Digitally restored from archival 35mm elements, in the original 1.19:1 aspect ratio"--Container.
Originally released as a motion picture in 1931.
Special features: The language of shadows: Tabu, a 15-minute documentary by Luciano Berriatúa on the making and restoration of the film ; "Tabu: takes & outtakes," 26 minutes of previously unseen sequences, assembled by Enno Patalas from unused footage, courtesy of the Österreichisches Filmmuseum Wien and Cineteca del Comune di Bologna ; "Tabu: a work in progress," 15 minutes of raw camera footage, with narration, produced by the Deutsche Kinemathek ; "Hunt in the South Seas," a 1940 ethnographic short compiled from unused footage of Tabu.