The next Sight & Sound is out, with my name adorning the following pieces:

Cinema reviews of:

• Esma’s Secret (d. Jasmila Žbanić, Bosnia/Austria/Croatia/Germany)
• Lives of the Saints (d. Rankin/Chris Cottam, UK) – also available online

Short DVD reviews of:

• Blind Husbands (d. Erich von Stroheim, US, 1919)
• The Cranes Are Flying (d. Mikhail Kalatozov, USSR, 1957)
• Ballad of a Soldier (d. Grigori Chukhrai, USSR, 1959)
• The Star (d. Nikolai Lebedev, Russia, 2002)

But the real labour of love was a full-page survey of virtually all the DVD releases currently available of Sergo Paradjanov’s films. Not that the job wasn’t frustrating at times – despite three separate editions of The Colour of Pomegranates, none manages to be entirely satisfactory (the Japanese one has the best picture by far, but no subtitles and is of the Soviet cut, while the others have significant visual and aural flaws). But the new French edition of Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors is the best I’ve seen it since my enraptured discovery of the film nearly twenty years ago (coincidentally, in a French cinema).