I seem to have fallen into possession of copies of Matthew Barney’s entire Cremaster Cycle, which is great since the only official release of it has been a thirty minute section of the third film. Meanwhile a handful of art collectors own the original prints and, according to Wikipedia, DVD versions and no one else gets to see them except at occasional screenings and film festivals.
My copies appear to be rips of VHS tapes, leading me to believe these emerged from a film festival. I know there were tape copies available at the 2003 Edinburgh International Film Festival for viewing by the press and industry folk in private, so some copies must have been made somewhere along the line, there or at another venue. Shame I didn’t watch the whole series there, but I doubt I would have appreciated them at the time, and given that I was seeing four or five films a day for nearly two weeks, these probably wouldn’t have engaged my mind enough to stay awake.
Fortunately, I can now check these out at my own leisure. Now I just have to decide whether to watch them in production order or numerical order…
