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D.W. Griffith
Father of Film
(1993)

Filmmakers David Gill and Kevin Brownlow were nominated for an American television Emmy Award for this three-part exploration of the life and career of film’s first directorial superstar. Narrated by Lindsay Anderson, with music composed by Carl Davis.

Kino International
2008 DVD edition

D.W. Griffith: Father of Film (1993), color and black & white, 155 minutes, not rated.

Kino International, K641, UPC 7-38329-06412-9.
One single-sided, dual-layered, Region 1 NTSC DVD disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in windowboxed 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 7.0 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 stereo sound encoded at 192 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; 36 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $29.95.
Release date: 18 November 2008.
Country of origin: USA

Ratings (1-10): video: 7 / audio: 7 / additional content: 0 / overall: 7.

This three-part documentary on D.W. Griffith becomes available in this DVD edition for the first time, having been previously issued in the long out-of-print three-cassette VHS boxset from HBO Home Video. Likely transferred from the original PAL video masters prepared for British television, the results are pretty-good but not excellent. Much of the visual quality depends on the quality of the early 1990s analog video transfers of documentary footage and film excerpts.

To our knowledge, this is the only home video edition of the documentary series from Photoplay Productions. Recommended.

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