The Village Detective: A Song Cycle Blu-ray

Arrow Video

In 2016, four reels of Derevensky Detektiv ('The Village Detective'), a 1969 Russian film starring the Soviet-era character actor Mikhail Zharov, were found in a fisherman's net off the Icelandic coast. The recovered reels lead filmmaker Bill Morrison (director of Dawson City: Frozen Time) on another cinematic odyssey of mystery and discovery. The decayed footage is combined with original music by David Lang, and interwoven with interviews and clips from Zharov's lengthy filmography to form an alchemical story of its star - and of Soviet cinema itself.

Morrison weaves another unique and mesmerising document reflecting how life, history, and art intersect, transform and forever endure on film.

"Bill Morrison, the poet laureate of lost films" Glenn Kenny, The New York Times

"Bill Morrison makes movies out of fragments of other movies, giving new life to ghostly scraps of an earlier time. Whereas most film conservationists aspire to restoring lost and degraded films to their original glory, Morrison sees beauty in the decay" Variety

"A celebration of cinema that reflects life and art and its resilience to the test of time, both metaphorically and physically" Screen Anarchy

Product Features

• The Village Detective: A Song Cycle (2021) presented from a 4K master, supervised and approved by filmmaker Bill Morrison
• New and exclusive interview with Bill Morrison
• Bill Morrison short films:
  • Beyond Zero: 1914-1918 (2014)
  • The Unchanging Sea (2018)
  • Sunken Films (2020)
  • Let Me Come In (2021)
• Trailer
• Booklet with new writing on the film by Peter N Walsh
• 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and 2.0 Stereo LPCM audio
• UK premiere on Blu-ray.
• Region free Blu-ray (A/B/C).