Updated 4.2.15: B2MP hopes to release the set later this year.
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By RAY KELLY
The list of Orson Welles films coming to Blu-ray keeps getting better and better.
The California-based B2MP Inc. will release all six episodes of Around the World with Orson Welles, which he wrote and directed for Britain’s ITV channel in 1955. It will feature the once-lost Revisiting Vienna, which was uncovered in 2011 in the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in Madison. The Blu-ray/ DVD collection will also offer French filmmaker Christophe Cognet’s 2000 documentary The Dominici Affair, which assembled footage from an unfinished seventh episode entitled The Tragedy of Lurs.
“All of the 35mm film elements have been transferred and color corrected,” B2MP President Bruce Venezia told Wellesnet. “I am just beginning the process of removing the dirt and debris. This will actually release either sometime in the summer or fall. There is a lot of work that needs to be done.”
Welles tackled Around the World with Orson Welles shortly after the filming of Mr. Arkadin. He was initially signed to produce 25 episodes. He took on the task while at the same time staging Moby Dick – Rehearsed.
The six completed episodes are:
- Pays Basque I – October 7, 1955
- Pays Basque II – October 21, 1955
- Revisiting Vienna – November 4, 1955
- St.-Germain-des-Prés – November 18, 1955
- Chelsea Pensioners – December 2, 1955
- Madrid Bullfight – December 16, 1955
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Special thanks to Wellesnet veteran Roger Ryan for tipping us off as to B2MP’s plans.
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