By Cole Smithey
Sure, giving a copy of this year’s breakout documentary hit "March Of The Penguins" to your parents will fill the bill for a much-needed stocking-stuffer, but what about your well-read friends who do and see everything. For them you’ll want a DVD gift that they will cherish and watch with amazement at your canny ability to cut through the Hollywood crap and come up with an alternative cinematic gem.
Kino Video is an equivalent DVD label to the much-worshiped Criterion brand of venerable movie excellence. Kino’s "Krzysztof Kieslowski Collection" is a thing of such weighty magnitude that even your amigo with the 180 I.Q. will be dazzled at the set of six films from the Polish director famous for his "Blue," "White" and "Red" trilogy of films based on France’s credo of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. "Camera Buff," "No End," "A Short Film About Love," "The Scar," "Blind Chance" and "A Short Film About Killing" are deeply absorbing films that operate on more levels of narrative possibilities than you can digest in a single viewing.
If you want to challenge your art student comrades with something especially spicy, you might consider Kino’s 2-DVD set "Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema Of The 1920s and ’30s." It’s a fascinating group of experimental black & white short films from the Raymond Rohauer collection. Imaginative works from such remarkable directors as Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Orson Welles grace the provocative set.
For the knowledgeable music lover in your life there’s "The Right Spectacle: The Very Best Of Elvis Costello – The Videos," which features over an hour’s worth of archive footage of Costello at the height of his angry young man phase. The bulk of the DVD contains 27 Costello music videos that mock the art form while supporting songs like "Oliver’s Army" and "Good Year For The Roses."
"Made In Sheffield. The Birth Of Electronic Pop" (from Plexifilm) fills an essential period in modern music that linked Punk to the British New Wave with bands intent on destroying rock music. Interview subjects like the late John Peel, The Human League’s Phil Oakey and Ian Craig Marsh, and music critic Andy Gill shed light on the indispensable influence of Sheffield’s electronic music scene.
The musical piece de resistance is "X: The Unheard Music." It’s a rarely seen documentary about the best damn punk band to come out of L.A., and filmmaker W.T. Morgan captures the superlative group at the height of their exceptional musical powers in this 1985 assemblage of the social environment, ideas and charismatic personalities of X.
If your goal is anointing an artistic line of erotic dialogue with your beneficiary then an anime title like "Temptation" (on Anime 18) carries on the traditions of the carefully coded Japanese art form with a sexual punch.
Maria Beatty’s "Ecstasy In Berlin 1926" presents a more fetishistic angle on the erotic with Sonya Sovereign and Paula Rosengarthen exploring vintage exotic experiences under tinted black & white film that embellishes their costume-correct passions.
Under the category of forbidden films, Peter Watkins’ "Punishment Park" (New Yorker Films) fulfills its status as "one of the most controversial films ever made." The docu-drama is set at once in America’s past, present and future where a group of civilians are charged with suspicion of intent to engage in future, possible acts of sabotage. The group are brought before a civilian tribunal and sent to a desert detention camp where they are tortured by brutal police guards. "Punishment Park" is a masterpiece of political satire.
Documentarian Ross McElwee’s homespun movies have a disarming flare for touching on shared personal experiences while sticking to his uncompromising vision. "The Ross McElwee DVD Collection" features "Sherman’s March," "Time Indefinite," "Six O’Clock News," "Bright Leaves," "Charleen" and "Backyard." Each movie embodies McElwee’s deeply humanistic take on his subjects, and makes us richer for the experience.
Sports aficionados will appreciate the determination and athleticism of riders in the Tour de France as the classic race is shown in all of its brutal glory in Pepe Danquart’s documentary "Hell On Wheels" (First Run Features).
For the retro-thinking kid on your list there’s the "Killer Cult Classics" box set (Goodtimes Entertainment) of ’50s horror B-movies including "The Brain That Wouldn’t Die," "The Wasp Woman," "Teenagers From Outer Space," and "The Killer Shrews."
If you need a more mainstream retro gift, "Three’s Company: Season Five" (Anchor Bay) or "M*A*S*H: Season Nine" (20th Century Fox) carry the trademark wit and charm of ’70s television sitcoms.
Werner Herzog’s box set of seven audaciously original films is a quirky DVD gift certain to strike enthusiasm in the eyes of the beholder. "The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser," "Even Dwarfs Started Small," "Lessons Of Darkness," "Fata Morgana," "Heart Of Glass," "Little Dieter Needs To Fly" and "Strozek" are movies that will live on in the dream-life memory of their viewer. With his dark intellect, keen eye for composition and uncanny instinct for narrative, Herzog is as "alternative" a film director as you can hope to find.
