Friday, April 17, 2020

Impossible To Find Films

In the wake of archives (and individual collectors/hoarders, I assume) making some holy grails finally available (Lupe! The Wind Is Driving Him Toward the Open Sea! Stop!), I felt it was time to revisit a list of impossible to find films I compiled from a Facebook thread started by the great film critic Adrian Martin and some other source I can longer remember/find. And below that is my own want list. Some notes:

1. No, of course, these aren't the only impossible to find films. Far from it.
2. * means they've been found. No English subs means they've been found but don't have English subtitles.
3. Some phrasing is not mine but copied and pasted from wherever.
4. Forgive the garbled formatting. It was time-consuming enough italicizing all the titles.

Against the Grain: More Meat Than Wheat (Tim Burns)
El alimento del miedo (1996) Juan Lopez Moctezuma
Andy (Richard Sarafian, 1965) (rough, out-of-sync copy on YouTube)
Appunti per un romanzo dell'immondezza (Pasolini)
Aspern (1985) Eduardo de Gregorio
Asphalt (Kim Ki-young, 1964)
Bastien, Bastienne (Michel Andrieu, 1979)
Batman Dracula (Andy Warhol)
Benares (Barlen Pyamootoo, 2005)
Berlin (Grandrieux)
Beyond the Ocean (Ben Gazzara, 1990)
Blue Movie (Andy Warhol, 1969)
Brandy in the wilderness by Stanton Kaye
BREAK THE NEWS (Rene Clair, 1938)
The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple (1928) Zhang Shichuan
Canzo Empyrean (Baron Ambrosia, 2008)
Cinéastes de notre temps: Pierre Perrault -L'action parlée (Jean-Louis Comolli, 1968)
Crystal Gazing (Laura Mulvey)
Dead End (Emerson Bixby) (may be a hoax)
Deathwalkers (Joe Ford, 1989)
The Diary of Anne Frank Part II (Harmony Korine)
Dios los cria 1 & 2 (Jacobo Morales)
The Doll's Breath (Stephen & Timothy Quay, 2019)
Do Not Throw Cushions Into The Ring (Steve Ihnat)
Drift (Paul W. S. Anderson)
EISENHANS (Tankred Dorst) 
L'estate breve (Raoul Ruiz)
É tudo invenção nossa (Pedro Costa)
An Experience Worth Dying For (Kim Ki-young, 1995) 
Female Kilink (1967)
La femme intégrale (Claudine Guilmain, 1979)
Flooding in the time of Draught (Sherman Ong)
Flying Fish (Sanjeewa Pushpakumara)
FUJIWARA YOSHIIE NO FURUSATO (Mizoguchi, 1930)
Georg (Stanton Kaye, 1964)
A Girl on Her Own (Philippe Nahoun, 1976)
The Girl Who Picks Flowers and the Girl Who Kills Insects (Hitoshi Yazaki, 2000)
Gone, Gone, Forever Gone (1996) Ho Quang Minh
Hashi (2009) Sherman Ong
Him (Ed Louie, 1974)
Inside Looking Out (Paul Cox, 1978)
Der Januskopf (Murnau)
Je ne suis pas morte (Jean-Charles Fitoussi)
The Joys and Sorrows of Youth (Chor Yuen, 1969)
Kutsukake Tokijiro (Kichiro Tsuji) (1929?)
Kalyi: Age of Darkness (1993) Fred Kelemen
Lanton Mills (Malick)
The Loner (Abel Ferrara)
Lost Angels (2000) Kaizo Hayashi
Love of Blood Relations (Kim Ki-Young, 1976)
Maldoror (1977, Alberto Cavallone)
Mamma, pappa, barn (Marie-Louise De Geer Bergenstråhle)
Marry Me Again (Frank Tashlin)
UN MONDE NOUVEAU (Vittorio De Sica, 1966)
Motive (Michael McClard)
My Kingdom For… (Budd Boetticher)
Nevelésügyi sorozat I. (György Fehér, 1989)
News From Nowhere (Paul Morrissey, 2010)
Les noces de sable/Desert Wedding (Andre Zwoboda)
ONNA NO SAKA aka A Woman's Uphill Slope (Yoshimura Kozaburo, 1960) I could've sworn this was available at one point.
Parajanov, the Last Spring (Sergei Parajanov & Mikhail Vartanov, 1992)
Peasants (Kim Ki-Young, 1978)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Meyerhold)
Porch Glider (James Herbert)
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (uncut) (Billy Wilder)
Promises Written in Water (Vincent Gallo)
Provocation (Du gamla, du fria) by Öyvind Fahlström
Queen of the Castle (1991) Derrick Louw
Queensland (John Ruane, 1976)
Rainbow Farm (Rod Bishop, 1973)
Rare Floating Dreams (Eizo Sugawa)
Le Regard (Marcel Hanoun, 1977)
Rejtekhely (György Fehér 1978)
Rote Fahnen Sieht Man Besser (Gallehr and Schubbel, 1971)
Run Across the River (Everett Chambers, 1961)
Salt aka Sogum (1985) Shin Sang-ok
Shadows (Cassavetes) [alternate version]
Sleepwalker on the Second Floor (Leo Berkeley, 1978)
The Somali Dervish (1983) Abdulkadir Ahmed Said & Said Salah
Sophie and the Scales (Julien Pappé, 1963)
The Story of Adrien (Jean-Pierre Denis, 1980)
Sunshine City (Albie Thoms)
Il suicidio di Elsa (Bruno Pischiutta)
Time in Summer (Ludwik Dutkiewicz, 1968)
Tofalaria (1986, Sharunas Bartas)
Transfiguration (Ludwik Dutkiewicz, 1964)
2000 Weeks (Tim Burstall, 1969)
Turkish Batgirl (1972)
Véronique, or The Summer of My Thirteenth Year (Claudine Guilmain, 1975)
Volpone (György Fehér, 1974)
Words of Mercury (Jerome Hiler, 2011)
Yackety Yack (Dave Jones, 1974)
Year without a Summer (2010) Tan Chui-mui

Adolf and Marlene (Ulli Lommel, 1977)* no English subs
Agnes (Egill Edvardsson, 1995)* no English subs
Alertez les bébés (Jean-Michel Carre)* no English subs
Barnförbjudet (Marie-Louise De Geer Bergenstråhle)* no English subs
The Breath (1996) Kaizo Hayashi* no English subs
Calixto the Landlord (Sami Kafati, 2003)* no English subs (but French subs!)
A certain day, I . . . (ある日わたしは/Aruhi watashi wa) directed by Okamoto Kihachi (1959)* no English subs
Compagne nude (Bruno Pischiutta)* no English subs
Crossroads (La croisée des chemins) (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 1976)* no English subs
The Destiny of Juliette (Aline Issermann, 1980)* no English subs
Dora and the Magic Lantern (1978) Pascal Kane* no English subs
Film sur Georges Perec (Catherine Binet, 1990)* no English subs
From Somalia with Love (Frédéric Mitterrand, 1982)* (no Eng subs)
Giltrutt (1957) Jónas Jónasson* (no Eng subs)
I Remember (Sami Frey, 1990)* no English subs
The Italian of the Roses (Charles Matton, 1972)* no English subs (but French subs!)
The Kiss Thief/The Dangerous Kiss/Seppun dorobô (Kawashima Yuzo, 1960)* no English subs
The People in White (Bae Yong-Kyun)* no English subs
Rainbow’s end (1983, Kristin Johannesdottir)* no English subs
Return to Sarajevo (Philippe Grandrieux, 1996)* no English subs
III. Richárd (György Fehér, 1973)* no English subs
Search Two (1981) Amir Naderi* no English subs
Spring Night (Erik Solbakken, 1976)* no English subs
The Stigma of Death (Peter Handke, 1985)* no English subs
Terirem (1987) Apostolos C. Doxiadis* no English subs
Vincent Put the Donkey in a Meadow (Pierre Zucca, 1975)* no English subs
The Wastrel (1961) Michael Cacoyannis/Mihalis Kakogiannis* no English subs
What Makes Frau B Happy? (Erika Runge, 1968)* no English subs
White Journey/Weiße Reise (Werner Schroeter)* no English subs
Les yeux brûlés by Laurent Roth* no English subs

Films by
Abdellatif Abdelhamid Abdul-Hamid except for Our Hands, Nights of the Jackal, and Verbal Letters
Maroun Baghdadi/Bagdadi
Noémia Delgado
Antonio de Macedo
R. Bruce Elder
Dr. Bhupen Hazarika
Teo Hernandez
James Herbert
Med Hondo
Tyler Hubby
Mark LaPore
Anastasia Lapsui & Markku Lehmuskallio
The early Jerry Lewis directed shorts, which I think were only screened to friends and collaborators
Anne-Marie Miéville
Peter Nestler
Kenji Onishi
António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro
Kinuyo Tanaka

Acht Stunden sind kein tag (Eight Hours Don't Make a Day) (Fassbinder, 1972)*
Adam 2 (Jan Lenica)*
Afternoon Breezes (Hitoshi Yazaki, 1980)*
The Age of Success (Sun-Woo Hang)*
Appunti per un film sul jazz (Gianni Amico)*
The Bath (Sergei Yutkevich)*
The Beloved Child, or I Play at Being a Married Woman (Chantal Akerman, 1971)*
Les 'bicots-Nègres' vos voisins (Med Hondo)*
Broken Glass (Kristín Jóhannesdóttir, 1988)*
El cadaver exquisito (2011) Victor Ruano*
The Contest (dir. Bulat Mansurov, 1963)*
Cruelties of Cheriyachan (John Abraham, 1979)*
Cyber Palestine (Elia Suleiman, 1999)*
Dawn (Miklos Jancso, 1986)*
Degree of Murder (Volker Schlöndorff)*
Le Déménagement (Akerman)*
Demi-Tarif (Isild le Besco)*
The Dinner (Bernie Casey, 1997)*
East Side, West Side (Allan Dwan, 1927)*
Ek Dhakar Jiwan (Phurba Tshering Lama, 2015)*
The Enchantment of the Blue Sailors (Tabea Blumenschein & Ulrike Ottinger, 1975)*
The Falconer (Chris Petit, 1998)*
Une femme coquette (Godard)*
Firefly (2000) Naomi Kawase*
The Firm Man(John Duigan, 1975)*
Five Year Diary by Anne Charlotte Robertson* (Incomplete)
Four Moods (King Hu, Li Han-Hsiang…)*
Fuga for cello, trumpet and landscape (Jerzy Kucia)*
Ganga Bruta (Humberto Mauro)*
Gravity & Grace (1996) Chris Kraus*
Guns (Robert Kramer)*
Hallo Baby by Johan Bergenstråhle*
Hope and Pain (Yoji Yamada)*
A Ilha dos Amores (Paulo Rocha)*
In The Country (Robert Kramer)*
In This Life’s Body (Corinne Cantrill)*
ITSUWARERU SEISO aka ’Clothes of Deception' (Yoshimura Kozaburo, 1951)*
Jaune le soleil (Duras)*
The Kiss (Everett Chambers, 1958)*
Kentucky Pride (John Ford)*
Lady Ogin (Ogin-sama aka Love and Faith) (Kei Kumai, 1978)*
The Last Boat (1990) - Béla Tarr (City Life segment)*
Letters Home (Chantal Akerman, 1986)*
Liebe Mutter, mir geht es gut (Christian Ziewer)*
Litan (Jean-Pierre Mocky)* The Mad Fox (1962) Tomu Uchida*
Magino Story: Raising Silkworms (1977) Shinsuke Ogawa*
Malkat hakvish (Menahem Golan)*
Mania (1974) Renato Polselli*
Mano destra (Cleo Üebelmann)*
Mukundo aka Mask of Desire (2000) Tsering Rhitar Sherpa*
The Master Spearman (1960) Tomu Uchida*
Memories of a Burning Tree (Sherman Ong)*
LA MESSE DOREE (Beni Montresor)*
The Ministries of Art (Philippe Garrel, 1989)*
The Monkey Talks (Raoul Walsh)
The Mystical Rose (Michael Lee, 1976)*
Nag van Vrees (1986) Stanley Roup* 
NAINSUKH (Amit Dutta)*
Nightmare Angel (1987) Zoe Beloff & Susan Emerling*
Nightslave (1988) John H. Parr*
Not a Pretty Picture (Martha Coolidge, 1976)*
Numéro zéro (Jean Eustache, 1971)*
Onna Gokakucho/ Naked Ambition aka. Notebook of Heinous Woman (Ikehiro Kazuo -1970)*
On the dune of solitude (Timite Bassori)*
Orchard Street by Ken Jacobs*
Org (complete version) (Fernando Birri)*
Palm Beach (Albie Thoms)*
O Pão by Manoel Oliveira*
People’s War (Robert Kramer)*
The Plains of Heaven (Ian Pringle, 1982)*
Prin to telos tou kosmou (1996) Panagiotis Maroulis*
Protozoa (Darren Aronofsky, 1993)*
The Removalists (Tom Jeffrey)*
Rose of Kentucky (D.W. Griffith)*
The Sands of Kurobe (Kei Kumai)*
Sasuke and his comedians (Tai Kato)*
70’erns Folk (Watkins)*
Shirak (1988) Dariush Mehrjui*
The Sign of Leo (Rohmer)*
Stage Struck (color version) (Allan Dawn)* Not 100% certain about this one.
Stop (Bill Gunn)*
STRANGULATION BLUES (Carax)*
SZÜRKÜLET (Twilight, 1990) by György Fehér*
That Chink at Golden Gulch (D.W. Griffith)*
Towers of Silence (1975) Jamil Dehlavi*
O Viajante (Paulo César Saraceni)* 
Wide Angle Saxon (1975) Owen Land*
Xavier (Manuel Mozos)*

My Want List:
Chances (Australian TV 1991) - I know some episodes are on two DVDs but I'm keeping it here to remind me to buy them!
Corpse (James Clayden, 1982)
Divine (Arturo Ripstein) El evangelio de las Maravillas - no English subs
The Eternal Prayer (Ad Mosay) (Sidney M. Goldin, 1929) - I think this was on YouTube at one point.
The Festival of Fire (Holi) (Ketan Mehta, 1984) - no English subs
Fucking City aka Verdammte Stadt (Lothar Lambert, 1982)
Hole (John Writer) - Tell me you don't want to see this!
Incontinence: A Diarrhetic Flow of Mismatches (Manuel de Landa)
Kunst Life (Roger Jacoby, 1975)
Manhole/Manhold (David E. Durston, 1978)
Noghteh Zaf (The Weak Point) (Mohamad Reza Aalami, 1983)*
Patakin (Manuel Octavio Gomez, 1985) - no English subs
Paydirt (Penny Allen, 1981)
El Pecado Original (Jose Rodriguez-Soltero, 1964)
Plainsong (Ed Stabile, '82) -Ten or so minutes were on Vimeo a while back.
The Rise and Fall of the World As Seen From A Sexual Position (Arthur Meyer, '72)
Spying (Joe Gibbons) - This DVD has a shortened version (I think).
The Story of Chaim Rumkowski and the Jews of Lodz (Peter Cohen)
Troika (Fredric Hobbs, 1969)
Valley of the Dolls (1994 TV series) - Some episodes are on Dailymotion but dubbed in Russian.
You've Got To Walk It Like You Talk It Or You'll Lose That Beat (Peter Locke, '71)

The Child and the Soldier (Seyyed Reza Mir-Karimi)*
Johnny Minotaur (Charles Henri Ford, 1971)*
The Last Outlaw (Christy Cabanne, 1936)*
The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean (Juleen Compton 1965)*
Stranded (Juleen Compton 1965)*
Transes--Rider on a Dead Horse (Clemens Klopfenstein)*
Roger Jacoby

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11 Comments:

Blogger EMP said...

I reallllly want to try to get someone to translate subtitles for Hayashi's The Breath. I've seen a bunch of his other films and love them all (all tragically tough to find), and I have a grody VHS rip, but I'm not sure I wanna watch a mystery movie without... knowing the mystery.

4:37 PM  
Blogger EMP said...

Also, the BAMPFA library has a full print of Troika - http://oskicat.berkeley.edu/search/o624226940

I couldn't make an appointment to see it when i was last in the bay area... because BAMPFA was closed for the holidays. Maybe once the pandemic clears up they'll let people rent a screening room there and watch it?

4:46 PM  
Blogger EMP said...

De Landa's Incontinence is hysterical. Saw a screening of a bunch of his works in February. REALLY hope Anthology Film Archives does something with their restored prints.

6:16 PM  
Blogger Kevin John said...

It's crazy that films from the 1980s and 1990s can be so difficult to find. But voilà!

If you get to see Troika, bring a recording device and make a wall copy for the film geeks of the world. Shhhh. We won't tell.

12:00 AM  
Blogger ian said...

My great impossible to find film is the 1982 short "The Cottage", which I saw before some enjoyable piece of fluff like Airplane 2 in the cinema when I was a teenager. It scared the bejasus out of me, partly because it was so unexpected and so out of synch with the film I was actually in the cinema to see. I only know one other person who has seen it and it had a similar effect on him.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3187854/

9:30 AM  
Blogger ian said...

Also "Osobisty pamietnik grzesznika przez niego samego spisany", as far as I know the only big screen adaptation of James Hogg's "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner". I think it is on YouTube but only in Polish. Given that the novel is seen as a key work in the history of gothic and Scottish literature, it is odd that an English subtitled version of the film is not available.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091697/

9:40 AM  
Blogger Kevin John said...

An English-subtitled version of Osobisty pamietnik grzesznika przez niego samego spisany has been available for at least a decade. But no go on The Cottage. Color me intrigued!

1:19 PM  
Blogger ian said...

Thanks for the pointer re an English subtitled version of Osobisty pamietnik grzesznika przez niego samego spisany - when I was looking the closest to a language I can read I was able to find was with French subtitles.

I wonder sometimes if The Cottage works best as something mysterious I remember seeing 40 years ago.

2:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There's 5 Kenji Onishi films on that weirdo private tracker with art films. Burning Star and Northern Lights are especially good.

7:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

May I ask where you found Firefly (2000) dir. Naomi Kawase?

12:59 PM  
Blogger Kevin John said...

A private tracker

7:38 PM  

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