The Criterion Collection Reveals Its August Slate Of New Film Restoration Toplined By Filmmaker Matha Coolidge's Not A Pretty Picture Blu-ray and DVD Debut On Aug. 20

The Criterion Collection announced its August slate of new film restorations, which includes three new 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack selections — Albert Brooks’ Mother and Real Life (Aug. 27) and director Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 Best Picture winner, The Last Emperor (Aug. 13) — however (and this always a subjective thing), the film that caught our eye among the August new arrivals is writer/director (and producer) Martha Coolidge’s 1976 experimental film, Not a Pretty Picture.

The film is what might be called a docu-drama, which purports to detail the events surrounding Coolidge’s date rape at the age of sixteen while attending a private boarding school.   

Coolidge (played by Michele Manenti) and her roommate (actually played by her real roommate at the time of the event, Ann Mundstuk) go out on a night on town with fellow students in Greenwich Village, which ends badly when her date, Curly (played by James Carrington), sexually assaults her.

The film was screened in 1976 and then vanished.   It remained something of a mystery until being restored by the Academy Film Archive and Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation in 2022.   Thus, the Aug. 20 DVD and Blu-ray release from Criterion will be the first opportunity for the general public to view this early work from Coolidge (Valley Girl, Real Genius, Lost in Yonkers, Rambling Rose, Material Girls, etc.).

As a bonus, Criterion is also including her 1974 documentary film, Old-Fashioned Woman (screened at the New York Film Festival and Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975), so this is something of a double-feature debut.   

Also included is a video session with Coolidge and fellow filmmaker Allison Anders (Gas Food Lodging, Grace of My Heart, Border Radio).