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In 1971 the audacious Jacques Rivette completed work on Out 1: Noli me tangere, the 773-minute apotheosis of the French New Wave. Few people saw it — and few have since. After its restoration in the early 1990s screenings were occasionally mounted at international festivals and generous cinematheques. There are those who still speak with hushed reverence of the time it played in its twelve-hour entirety at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, nearly a decade ago. The film remains a point of pride among cinephiles who have endured its epic sprawl: simply having seen Out 1 is a testament to the movie lover’s integrity and erudition.

Out 1 has never been available on home video in this country. Last year a German distributor released it as a five-disc DVD box set with imperfect English subtitles, but, windfall though that may be for admirers in Europe, the PAL format isn’t compatible with our North American players. So unless you were among the privileged few present for its rare theatrical presentations there has for many years been only one way to see Out 1: as a bootleg video adorned with blocky, burned-in Spanish subtitles, taped from an old TV broadcast that looks like it was strained through cheesecloth. This unsightly special edition, so to speak, has been enjoyed by hundreds, perhaps thousands. It arrived before the eyes of the world’s eager cinephiles through the same channel: Karagarga.