Magician: The Astonishing Life & Work of Orson Welles will arrive on home video on May 26.
The single-disc Blu-ray is priced at $34.98 and the DVD at $24.98. Both are available for pre-order at amazon.com
There has been no indication (yet) of extras or special features.
Directed by Academy Award winner Chuck Workman, Magician includes clips ranging from Welles’ experimental short Hearts of Age, shot when he was a teen, to the still-unfinished The Other Side of the Wind. Television appearances and commercials are also included. Magician features interviews with Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich and Richard Linklater (Me and Orson Welles).
In an interview with Wellesnet last fall, Workman said he considered Welles to be among the two or three great American filmmakers.
“What impressed me the most, and continues to, is the way Welles progressed in his knowledge of filmmaking from one film to the next. Sometimes, as with his learning of editing, it was out of necessity. One could see that he was able to pull sophisticated cinema out of several individual shots once he realized he was unable to effectively get the long single scenes he could do in Hollywood. He learned more about actors, and stars, as the films progressed and he worked with more unfamiliar actors, and about sets and production design and working with less resources but beautiful economy,” Workman said.
Magician has been included in a number of film festivals this year marking the 100th anniversary of Welles’ birth.
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