Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Oedipus Rex To Get UK Masters Of Cinema September Release

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s OEDIPUS REX [EDIPO RE] is to be released in the UK in a Dual Format (DVD & Blu-ray) edition as part of Eureka Entertainment’s MASTERS OF CINEMA Series on 24 September 2012. DVD edition also available! The release on Blu-Ray will mark the film's debut on the format anywhere is the world and the long successful relationship Eureka Entertainment has with the director's popular filmography with the Golden Lion nominated film (1967 Venice Film Festival) joining Accatone, Hawks And Sparrows, Pigsty, Gospel According To Matthew, RoGoPag.

Three years after The Gospel According to Matthew, Pier Paolo Pasolini resumed his series of classical adaptations with a savage, highly personal take on Sophocles' ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex [Edipo Re]. As his first colour feature, Oedipus Rex makes brilliant use of wildly alternating Moroccan landscapes to transpose collective myth into a particular vision that is at once tender, sensual, and wholly unsparing.

The film is divided into three sections set in different eras. The opening takes place in 1920s Italy, and recounts a birth that echoes that of the director himself, the product of a beautiful bourgeoise's affair with a military officer. The mid section depicts a time "outside of history" – it is here that the myth of Oedipus (portrayed by Franco Citti of Accattone and Coppola's The Godfather), one of patricide and incest, plays out opposite the young man's mother/lover (Silvana Mangano). An epilogue shot on the streets of present-day Bologna finds Oedipus playing his flute for a bustling citizenry.

With its kinetic handheld camerawork and strikingly primeval costumes, Pasolini's film rattles its art-genre framework in the enduring quest to exorcise repressive emotional forces. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Pier Paolo Pasolini's Oedipus Rex for the very first time on Blu-ray, in a Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition, released on 24 September 2012. DVD edition also available!

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:

• Gorgeous new HD restoration of the film in its original aspect ratio, in 1080p on the Blu-ray

• Newly translated optional English subtitles

• Original Italian theatrical trailer

• 28-page booklet featuring vintage writing by Pasolini, excerpts from an interview with the director by Oswald Stack about the film, and rare archival imagery

Available to pre-order from:

Amazon (Dual Format Edition) http://amzn.to/IOW9OL (DVD Edition) http://amzn.to/N6xZhA

HMV (Dual Format Edition) http://tidd.ly/488c9e4b

Play (Dual Format Edition) http://tidd.ly/ab22de13

The Hut (Dual Format Edition) http://tidd.ly/7975983a