Passage LE Slipcover (Blu-ray) ***Preorder*** 12/31

• Limited to 1250

PASSAGE, 1997, Czech TV, 102 min.  An incredible rediscovery from Czech / Slovak master filmmaker Juraj Herz (THE CREMATOR, MORGIANA, BEAUTY & THE BEAST), PASSAGE is one of the most obscure works in his filmography – until now.  The very definition of a Kafkaesque / Escher-like / cinematic Moebius strip, PASSAGE follows a businessman, Michal Forman (Jacek Borkowski) caught in a blinding rainstorm, who seems to witness his doppelganger being hit by a car.  He takes refuge in the Lucerna Palace, a labyrinthine early 1900s entertainment complex in Prague where he encounters an increasingly surreal, Fellini-esque carnival of characters:  an enigmatic woman (Małgorzata Kożuchowska) in spiked heels who apparently screws men to death (!) in a filthy bathroom; homeless punks and harried shoppers, night watchmen and beefy sauna operators; a mysterious film crew who may be making the movie we’re watching unfold … Forman finds himself frustrated in every attempt to leave the maze-like Lucerna, which resembles a sunken luxury liner or the Paris Opera, with endless passageways and workers and prostitutes all jostled together.  Comparisons abound, to Scorsese’s AFTER HOURS, Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL, Shakhnazarov’s ZEROGRAD, Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE – all labyrinthine narratives about worlds that follow their own twisted logic – but PASSAGE stands on its own as one of Herz’s finest undiscovered gems, the film as strangely lost as Forman himself.  (It’s worth nothing that PASSAGE and THE CREMATOR were Herz’s two personal favorites from his filmography.)  Newly restored after an exhaustive archival search by Deaf Crocodile and Comeback Company for its first-ever worldwide Blu-ray release.  In Czech with English subtitles.

Special Features

• Limited edition slipcover artwork by Marc Aspinall

• New commentary by film historian Peter Hames and Czech film expert Irena Kovarova of Comeback Company

• New visual essay by experimental filmmaker and film scholar Stephen Broomer

• “On Location, Then and Now: Lucerna Palace”: New featurette on the Lucerna Palace, the main location for PASSAGE, shot by Irena Kovarova and edited by Ryan Verrill of Someone’s Favorite Productions

• 48-page illustrated booklet

• New essay by film critic Walter Chaw

• New essay by film historian Jonathan Owen

• Interview with producer Eve Vercel

• New artwork and graphic design by Beth Morris