Interview with Francesco Simeoni – Owner and CEO of Radiance Films

by Jake Keet

“For me, it starts with the film. It’s got to be interesting.” – Francesco Simeoni

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Francesco Simeoni. He is the founder of the new film distribution label Radiance Films. Francesco has worked in the industry since 2001 when he began working for Mainline Pictures, a movie theater company. From that start, he worked his way into more creative jobs and eventually a job at Arrow Films where he became their Director of Content. Arrow Video has long been one of my favorite labels to cover on the site, so I was extremely excited to talk to the person directly responsible for some of their greatest releases. When Francesco announced that he was leaving Arrow and forming his Radiance Films label, my interest was piqued. I did not hesitate to purchase the Gold Package as soon as it was offered (the Gold Package was a limited package to purchase the first three years of releases.) I look forward to seeing what Francesco comes up with over the next few years. Francesco took a bold step of creating a Discord group for the label which (along with his active Twitter page) has allowed him to become one of the most transparent people working in the business. 

As a small business owner myself (restaurants,) I am fascinated by the particulars of film distribution business. Francesco was extremely generous with his time and allowed me to conduct an extensive interview about how his career began, his years at Arrow, and his passion for releasing films on his Radiance line that will delve into new genres and styles of filmmaking that other labels tend to ignore. I woke up early in the morning in order to talk to him around his lunchtime in England, and he could not have been more pleasant to speak with. We spoke for a few moments to get to know each other before the interview really began, so there are a few references to restaurant work that refer back to my profession and his father’s profession. Without further ado, here is the interview with Francesco. Enjoy!

Art House Cult: I’ve been a fan of your work for a long time, so I’m excited that you were able to make the time for our very small website.

Francesco Simeoni: My pleasure. My pleasure.

Art House Cult: I wanted to start with a few questions about your background and the start of your career from the beginning. So, first off, where were you born and raised?

0:06:56.5 Francesco Simeoni: I was born in England and raised and lived all my life just outside of London. My dad ran a restaurant in London, actually. So we were in London all the time because his restaurant was right in the center of London. Where I lived was quite a small town. We didn’t have a cinema. We didn’t have a shop that sold videos. We had a video rental shop but we didn’t have anywhere to buy films. So most of my young life was spent in the video shop, when it comes to movies, or in the cinemas in London. We haven’t got a very cinephile family, but everyone enjoys a film. Cinema trips were very regular. So that was what growing up was for me in terms of films and stuff. A lot of people sort of say, “Oh, my first foreign film was this….” That never occurred to me until I started hearing on the internet more people talking about that. I can’t for the life of me think what my first foreign film was. I think that’s because growing up in an Italian household, we had Italian TV and we would occasionally watch films or TV shows. I certainly remember seeing Bud Spencer’s TV show, I guess it would’ve been the Nineties or reruns in the Eighties going on. So foreign language for me was never like a watershed moment. It wasn’t ever this thing that was like, “Oh my God, this whole other cinema exists.” I was watching different things, but I didn’t really get into foreign language films until quite late actually. Although I’d seen some, when I really went exploring it was probably my very late teens or twenties. So, that’s how that started.

Art House Cult: Coming from an Italian family, is Italian a second language for you? Are you third generation, or…?

Francesco Simeoni: I’m second generation, sort of, because of my parents. My mom was born here. My dad was born in Italy. We did speak Italian at home when I was very, very little. But then we switched to English once we all went to school and the Italian kind of fell away. So my Italian is okay. It’s not perfect. I can watch some films unsubtitled in Italian -which I have done for Radiance – but, when they get very complex or there’s very technical language or very wordy language, I’ll sort of struggle. I can watch a kind of neorealist film, or a family drama, or something like that, but as soon as it’s a complex plot – like a kind of conspiracy or a political film – then I tend to get a bit lost. So I’m okay.

Art House Cult: I get that. I took years of Spanish, so I can speak that semi fluently, but people have to speak very slowly.

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah, yeah. And as soon as you get into regional accents as well and all that sort of thing, then it’s like…

Art House Cult: I can navigate a city, I can talk with people, but a lot of it is restaurant Spanglish It’s like I know how to tell people I need more potatoes, and ask them about their day and their children, but, not once you get into more complex things.

Francesco Simeoni: Exactly, I understand.

Art House Cult: As a kid growing up, when you’re visiting these video stores are you biking to these, walking to these, or are they sort of near you?

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah, on my bike for the most part. Yeah. I guess like most kids, my young life was spent on my bike or my skates. And yeah, that’s what it was like.

Art House Cult: Yeah. That was the same as my exposure growing up. There was a place called Premiere Video that I would ride my bicycle to every day, and end up talking to these people for a couple hours about movies, which I’m sure grew tiresome for them. But they were always nice enough to sort of steer me in the right direction or away from things. I think that sort of gets you into this sort of the communal aspect that might be a little bit harder for people to replicate now. I guess you’ll find that on online forums and stuff like that, but it won’t be the same thing as when you would walk into a movie store and hear somebody say, “Oh man, this is the one, you gotta check this out.”

Francesco Simeoni: I guess the difference is that when you went into a video shop, you were just talking to whoever was there, and they might not have been interested in what you were interested in, which meant that you might have been exposed, or, you might have shown them something they might otherwise never have looked at. Whereas, with forums you can go, “Right, I’m interested in this very specific thing, I’m gonna go and talk to that to other people.” So in a way, that chance of stumbling on things is almost a bit harder sometimes, because you can very much focus on what you choose to and not happen upon anything. That’s not an intentional digression, but I guess that’s what labels are good for in terms of having different outputs. It’s almost recommendation but through curation, I suppose.

Art House Cult: Oh, I completely agree. That’s probably what attracts so many of us to following specific labels, as opposed to just seeking out certain things that we’re looking for. I love the curation aspect of the labels, so that I can leave all the heavy lifting and hard work to you guys out there that are tracking these things down. Once you get to where you’re really trusting a label, it’s easy. When you were over content for Arrow, I never had to worry too much about the quality of the content. I would check out nearly any Arrow release. It exposed me to a lot of fun and interesting films during that time. 

I saw that you started in the industry at Mainline Pictures in 2001. Is Mainline Pictures a theatrical distribution company?

Francesco Simeoni: It was a distributor in the Eighties. When I joined it was just cinemas, but the office sort of had the relics of its distribution history. And, funnily enough, it would’ve made a great home video label in the Blu-ray era or maybe even in the DVD era, because it was very much ahead of the curve. It was buying all these films that the people running the company thought were great, but they were typical cult films, so they just didn’t work. “Eraserhead,” I think that one did well, but there were other things like “Grey Gardens” and “Over the Edge” that we released on Arrow. So there was all these kinds of films, but ultimately it just wasn’t successful enough. They killed the distribution arm of the company, and continued to run cinemas which did pretty well. So that was really an amazing stroke of luck for me, because when I left school I thought I was going to be an accountant. So I never went to university, because in the UK at least, there’s no point going to university if you’re going to be an accountant, because you just have to do a whole bunch of exams that you can’t do at university. So I was like, “Well, it’s a waste of time, to lose kind of three or four years at university to just come out and still do the same exams”. So, I thought I would do that, and I’d get experience working in finance. The first job I got was for a film company. It was the first interview I went to, and it was just a huge stroke of luck, because I was a big film fan. I never thought I could work in film. It just didn’t occur to me at all. I had a very narrow outlook on what jobs there were and that I could do. I thought later about being a filmmaker and stuff, but it was too late and I just don’t think I have the right qualities to do that. Anyway, I got into this film company as a film fan and loved the idea of it. I even turned up to my second interview with a little HMV bag because I’d been and because it was just around the corner. I’d arrived for my interview really early, so I went off to HMV and I was like, “Oh, should I get like some classic films?” in case they say, “Well, what have you got in the bag?” And I ended up just getting a load of rubbish. I think I actually got “Scary Movie” and some other Adam Sandler film or something. (Laughs) I was thinking, “Should I get proper studio era classics?” Which I wanted… but they weren’t what I wanted to watch that weekend or whatever. They never asked me what was in the bag. Once I got there, it wasn’t long before I realized that there were all these jobs with films – like film programming or even marketing – and all these different people were feeding into the company. I just sort of thought, “Well, that’s much more interesting. I don’t think I wanna be an accountant.” [laughs] So I sort of started to think then, what could I do to kind of break out? Unfortunately it was a bit difficult, because the industry doesn’t have many open avenues to bring people in for their first jobs. In a way it’s quite closed. You do need to go to specialist organizations to get training, or to get visibility. Most of the jobs go through specialist agencies. I would never have found that stuff unless someone told me, which I did find out through working there. The company ended up being bought out funnily enough, as that’s happened to Arrow. I got on really well with the new owners, and they knew I was a big film fan, so they brought me over to more creative departments. That’s when I got involved in marketing and programming and doing the website and a bit of everything really.

Art House Cult: At this point, when the company was bought out, what company did that bring you to at that point?

Francesco Simeoni: So that company was the same company pretty much – they just added one more cinema, and they had loads of money. That was Everyman Media Group. They were sort of a much more young and dynamic company, I suppose. Not many film fans though… all the film fans in Mainline as I started – they were real film fans – but as I later learned, they were a rarity. The industry unfortunately is full of many many people who say they’re film fans, but then will routinely confuse Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. It’s kind of a bit frustrating… In my earlier career it was frustrating, because I would think, “Well, you don’t know anything. You’ve got this great job, but there are people who know so much more than you, and they wish they could have this job”. Unfortunately that’s just the way it goes. People fall into jobs, and they do stuff. The real film fans are a bit of a rarity. They are much more present in the home video side of things. At the cinema level or even at the studio level it’s just a load of office drones basically. Which is a bit strange, because I think when you’re as young as I was, you have this idealized view of the industry being made up of people who are super knowledgeable and super passionate about real cinema. Most people just are interested in Cannes and box office. So that was an interesting education, in many respects about the industry, but also from the people that were there who liked things like “Over the Edge” or “Grey Gardens.” Also, one colleague who’s still a very good friend was into horror, and another person was into Argento and stuff like that. That was my first exposure to all that. That’s where I first watched “Suspiria” and “Tenebrae,” and other sort of Eighties oddities that I just missed even though I came up around that time. So, when I came into Arrow, I was only 26, so I was still quite young. Arrow at that time was very much in the kind of horror and gore ghetto. It was like a very small but very dedicated audience that Arrow was kind of building off of, and that was basically people who liked Fulci movies, and not a lot else. So, when I came in, I hadn’t heard of any of the releases. They just hadn’t tracked outside of that community so when I saw the releases, I was like “This looks really cool”. It was a nice aesthetic with the white DVD cases, and new artwork, and they were doing something that nobody else was doing. I thought, “This is amazing”. So, fortunately I got the job and I decided to take it, because I was also in the running for this job at StudioCanal.

Art House Cult: Oh, wow.

Francesco Simeoni: I decided not to do that, because it was a bigger company, and I’d just be like a very small cog. I thought with Arrow, “there’s exciting stuff happening here, and I could make a difference.” So I decided to do that, and I produced my first release before I even had the job. I went home and I wrote up the synopsis and the specs for “Rififi” which I knew they had, and I was like, “I’m sure they’ll redo it”. I got the job. When I came in, I just started thinking about all these things that could be done, but I knew nothing about home video. I’d been in theatrical for nine years, and I’d never been near a video master in my life and I was not a technical person. I’m still not a technical person. I’ve got a lot of technical knowledge now, but I don’t really know how stuff works at any level. I can talk to people about it, so that it’s done, but I’m not hands on with video masters, not that much in terms of  encoding… all that sort of stuff. That’s all very, very specialized.

Art House Cult: It takes a different breed. There are different types of thinking. There is a skill set in the way that you’re approaching things from the artistic value of the film, and whether or not it deserves to be a release and then collecting the right writers and collaborators to make sure that there’s a compelling case for the release, versus the skill set of the person working the technical aspect. That technical aspect is something that I love to view when it’s done, but I can’t imagine the difficulty of sitting there frame by frame, trying to do those type of things.

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah. I mean, that’s probably my biggest challenge. I’m not one to sit there and look at a film thirty times. I struggle to watch a film the amount of times I do have to now, which is for any release seven to ten times. But for the people who are restoring it and then encoding it and QC-ing it, they can watch it countless times. When I do QC a disc, I pause and I take a little break, just to get through it. (laughs) It takes me ages, but that’s just not the way I’m built. As you say, it’s one thing to be able to do a great encode and do loads and loads of extras, and have everything look fantastic – but – if the film’s no good, then it’s a bit like [makes a face]…. Some people will buy it and we certainly would release films I’m not a fan of at Arrow. For me, it starts with the film. It’s got to be interesting. It’s gotta have something about it. I don’t wanna rag on slashers. I’m not a Slasher fan. But, for me, as someone who’s not a slasher fan, it’s gotta be more than just like, “Oh, okay,… fetching artwork, I’m sure there are some good kills”. For me that’s just not really enough. It needs to be a bit more. That’s the way I approach things. With all the people I work with now, I’m the only one who can decide that. So that’s why the team has got the mix that it does. It works well at the moment, with the mix of skills and expertise. I’m happy with the way everything is going.

Art House Cult: With “Rififi” being the first release that you worked on, is there always gonna be a sentimental value attached to that film in particular?

Francesco Simeoni: No, not really, it’s probably the opposite. [laughs] “Rififi,” I was quite lucky to start with, because “Rififi” was easy. When you have a release that is complicated or has difficulties, you can end up working on it so much, you end up… not hating it, [laughs]… but it can take the shine off the film, because it ends up becoming such hard work that you pass the point of enjoyment. I mean, some films do stand up to being watched over and over and over again. But at Arrow, one of the early releases was “The Conformist.”

Art House Cult: Oh, I love that movie.

Francesco Simeoni: I remember we were driving to a meeting, me and the CEO, and he was on the phone to his dad. And they were talking about a deal and he was like, “Yeah, yeah, ‘The Conformist.'” And he got off the phone was like, “The Conformist.” I was like, “You have to buy that now. ‘The Conformist’ is amazing.” And I love “The Conformist” and we did end up getting it, and then it was just… not the worst nightmare I’ve ever had, but it was difficult. There were master issues, different versions of the master available. So then you’re looking at that, and then going back and trying to get the best one. It wasn’t the best master in the world. And then there was potential legal issues. “Well, did they really win against Paramount? Is it gonna be okay?” And all this sort of stuff. So I ended up watching that and living with it so much that… I’ve not seen it since actually. You sort of start to think, “Oh, it’s a bit of a chore now.” That unfortunately can be a bit of a side effect, but it doesn’t happen often. I’ve only got a few films like that. “Inferno” is another one, which I don’t like. I’m not a fan of “Inferno.” But I watched that so much, I ended up hating it. But that was a funny thing from my perspective about the business really, because I think people would put a lot of stock in what I said about films and, someone might say, “Oh, he hates Inferno, that’s why it didn’t come out”. And, it’s a new restoration. But it was never about me, or Arrow. I mean, I would’ve made the biggest effort to do a new “Inferno,” even though I hate the film, because I know how much other people love it and I know it’s such a key film for Argento. For me it was always at Arrow about the enjoyment of the work. Being able to create amazing products really is enormously gratifying. Knowing that you’ve got a great restoration, knowing that you’ve got lovely packaging and extras and you’re ticking every box off of what you can do. Being able to do that for films which are important, revered or well loved is amazing. So, while I’m not a fan of “Inferno,” that’s a great one to work on. Sometimes it’s good to work on films you don’t like. I think when people have those kind of comments online, I think, “Oh, I wish I could correct them”, but we never kind of established that kind of transparency at Arrow, so it kind of never came out. But, that’s kind of the funny thing about Radiance is that the transparency just came about naturally, because when I started the label, I didn’t have any titles to talk about. [laughs] So I just talked about the industry and people really were interested in that. I didn’t foresee that kind of blowing up as as much as it did at all. As I’ve said in other places, I absolutely will try and keep that transparency going, because I don’t mind doing it. I feel comfortable doing it because it’s my company, whereas with Arrow there’s always other stakeholders. You don’t want to kind of tread on other people’s toes because, social media – that’s someone else’s job. So as soon as you start doing it, you don’t wanna annoy them, or, the owner of the business might not be comfortable sharing certain information, so it was always a bit more difficult. With Radiance at the moment, all those jobs are mine. So it is a bit easy, it is a bit simplified, although as I’ve found this morning, some people do kind of want the whole level of resources that come with a big company. Someone’s annoyed about an order they’ve got. I said, “Look, I’m sorry, I just can’t do that, I can’t help”. And they said, “I’ll cancel all my orders”. And I’m, “Yeah, okay. I’ll cancel your orders, but I’m sorry. I’m just one person. I can’t set precedents to make huge amounts of work for me, when I’ve got to be focused on making new releases”. So, it swings around a lot.

Art House Cult: As a business owner, I say basically nothing online at any given point. I’m sure it’s the same over there, but there’s so much political vitriol that it is not worth saying things online. I would just get murdered both ways. So it’s just like…

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah, yeah.

Art House Cult: I also, have to really watch what we say in general regarding anything because, for lack of a better way of saying it, people online can be assholes. It’s just not healthy to let that negativity in. I mean, in my business, I can focus on a bad review and have it ruin an entire day you know? Trying to just not allow that sort of stuff into your space is better.

Francesco Simeoni: For sure.

Art House Cult: It’s also different when you’re signing the front of the check than when you’re signing the back of the check – when you’re in control of your own destiny and the buck sort of ends with you. I think it’s awesome that it’s allowing you to enjoy the freedom to say what you feel and do things like that.You’re already developing that rapport with fans of the label, so your transparency seems to be going well so far.

Francesco Simeoni: I think, it’s very easy for people to be assholes, as you say, online, but I think for the most part, people are reasonable. And I think the internet just does something to people when they think, “Oh, hang on now, I’m really upset about this and we’re gonna complain”. But I think for the most part it’s just a lot of hot air. I think you do kind of develop a thick skin doing this job, because with the internet it’s also instantaneous. You do kind of need to protect yourself because you can work on something for months and months and months and put your heart and soul into it, and then someone will just go, “That was shit. I hated this. I’m never buying anything from this label again”. And you sort of think, “Ugh”. It hurts. It does hurt, but the thick skin protects you a little bit. I think going into this now, I just sort of keep reminding myself that there will be these reactions because the films that I’m looking at are not easy. I think in a way that’s a good thing. I guess it’s the Tarantino quote where he said…which probably seems a bit silly now.. but at the time he said, “I don’t wanna make films for ten million people. I wanna make films for one million people”. I think that’s a good ethos to live by, because whilst you could do a film which lots of people will come away from and go, “It’s okay. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. Maybe I’ll keep it in my collection. Maybe I’ll get it on sale”. That’s for me not very interesting. I’d much rather do films where fifty percent of the audience come away and go, “That was terrible. I didn’t get it”. But then the other fifty percent go, “I thought it was amazing. I really connected with it. I thought it was so interesting what it was doing”. So a lot of the the Radiance releases are like that. Some people will just come away from the films and go, “I just thought that was just fucking weird”. And that’s fine. I’m kind of bracing myself for that. I would much rather do that and do something interesting than something which is just kind of like the same old, same old, really. There’s loads to discover out there. I mean, going back to something about “The Conformist.” While that’s a great film, I probably am not gonna do stuff like that. I mean, never say never, but I can’t really see myself retreading classics because, – “The Conformist” is maybe not a good example of this – but, let’s say, “Harakiri” or something, the Kobayashi film. That’s good. I’ve got that on Blu-ray. That’s a good Blu-ray. I don’t really need another one. I’m not interested in getting a UHD of it. So I wouldn’t do that title, although it’s a great great film. I would much rather find the film that someone watches and says, “Oh my God, I love this film. This is one of my new favorites from this era of Japanese film.” And they have the experience with that film that I had when I first discovered “Harakiri.” There are still loads of discoveries to be made like that. I’m seeing them now. I haven’t licensed all the ones I wish I could, but they’re there and I’ll be making every effort to try and get them. There’s really interesting films by directors people have never heard of, kinds of films and genres and ways of filmmaking that are just not in fashion at the moment, but I think that’s just much more interesting. I keep getting all these alerts of another Hong Kong action film, and… not to rag on other labels, I’m sure it’s going well for them, and I’m sure it has fans… I’m just less of a fan of that. For me, I’m like, “Where’s the new thing? What’s exciting?” Radiance is doing what I like, so I’m sort of more interested by my own work than I am of others, so I’m obviously biased. I’m just kind of hoping there’s gonna be enough people out there who are excited by that kind of approach. It seems to be the case.

Art House Cult: I know I joined the Gold Plan the second it showed up. That was an easy decision. I’ve started adding on the UK only ones as well. You didn’t have to twist my leg at all on any of that. In another interview you had brought up that the name for Radiance had come from reading an Italian cinema book – which is fitting. That left me curious. What was the Italian cinema book you were reading at the time?

Francesco Simeoni: It’s the “History of Italian Cinema” by Gian Piero Brunetta. It’s a good book. It’s quite a broad overview. When I knew I was going to leave Arrow, or, when I was nearly leaving Arrow, I thought, “Oh, I better do some homework”. Because it had been a long time since I’d done anything like that. I mean, before joining Arrow, I would read lots of books and polls and find films from all different places. One thing that I was always really passionate about was finding films in unusual places – films that have been released just in France or, that popped up on a poll somewhere, or, had a one off screening in London or something. I was always really interested in that. That gave me a lot at Arrow, where I had that knowledge and then could be like, “Right, okay, let’s release these Yoshida films or these Jissoji films or, this Taviani film or, whatever it may be”. I was preparing to leave and I thought, “Well, I haven’t sort of been keeping up with my homework. Maybe I should go back to it and do that”. So I did spend quite a bit of time reading that book and other books, going back over old books that I had tried to dig out – even my university stuff, because I remembered doing various sort of modules on really interesting films which I hadn’t thought about in like fifteen years or whatever. So, that’s where that came from. Finding the name in the book was just luck.

Art House Cult: I like that the name came from reading an Italian cinema book. Given the trajectory of the label thus far that just makes sense. One of the things that’s hard to understand as an outsider of the industry, for your label – just starting out – do you have any full-time employees currently? Or, do you start out working solely with contributors or part-time employees?

Francesco Simeoni: I don’t have any full-time employees. Everyone I work with is freelance. That’s not uncommon. There’s a lots of labels which are run by a very skeleton team or just a single person, because you can use agencies for nearly everything. Actually – you can use agencies for everything, as I am basically. Whether it’s a one person agency or a big agency – and there are big agencies for near enough everything. Full-time staff is not really needed. For me, in terms of the future, I don’t know. It really depends on the industry as a whole. It is getting smaller, As we’ve seen even with a big company like Criterion having to shed staff. So it really comes down to what the industry is doing and how that’s going to work. Because whilst I’m certainly interested in growing and doing more things, it does have to be propped up by the industry and by the sales. And what other things I might get into, whether that be newer films, which I’m still passionate about, or, other kinds of products – I’m working on some merch… I’d like to do more of that potentially – So who knows, what the future holds? But it can all be done as I’m doing it now forever. I’m sure it’s the same in other industries. There are amazing people who freelance and who work in agencies, so I’m working with the best people I can right now. It’s not like I feel I’m making any compromises, so as long as it stays that way and I don’t see any reason why I should change, then it’s all okay.

Art House Cult: When you’re approaching a film distribution deal, on the front end, are you trying to also negotiate streaming rights for the possibility of one day doing something similar to what Arrow did with some of their releases?

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah, I’ve got a mixture of rights, so some films will pop up on streaming from me. As to whether I will sort of go down that road, I don’t know. I wanna stay focused on what I’m doing. Anything else I do would not be at the expense of making good Blu-rays.

Art House Cult: Of course.

Francesco Simeoni: It just sort of really comes down to what the industry is doing. While I would love to keep things the same, I also need to be mindful that I’ve gotta keep a roof over my head. So, it might be a necessity. It might be something that I can’t avoid. But it’s difficult to predict the future. I think things are quite cyclical. My prediction now is that we should all be quite positive.

I think that in a way we’re gonna kind of see a bit of a bounce back for physical releases. I think I’m seeing a lot of sentiment now, for all kinds of digital -not just streaming, but all kinds of digital – as being less desirable and less interesting to a lot of people. I think a lot of people are looking at it now and sort of saying, “Well, I still want a physical copy, because while that’s on Netflix today, I know that it won’t be tomorrow”. Even I feel that pull now myself as someone with stacks and stacks of Blu-rays, more than I’ll ever be able to watch. Yeah. I still want “The Irishman,” I know it’ll be on Netflix for whenever I want it, but I really like the film, so I was like, “I wanna get that”. And there will be other examples. Another film I really like is “Under the Silver Lake,” which in the UK is on MUBI. And I’m sure MUBI will have it on their service for the next eight years or ten years or whatever. But I still want the Blu-ray.

Art House Cult: I love his movie “It Follows.”

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah. I think he’s great. And yeah, “It Follows” is another one that I’ll have to have in the collection. I think more people are coming round to that way of thinking. I think, as someone who lived through it, I’m now likening it to a film being on streaming is a film I recorded off the TV. I had “Back to the Future Part II” recorded off the TV, but I went out and I bought an official VHS. I think that’s what people are gonna come around to now. It’s like, “Yes, okay, I got it. I watched it. But when I wanna watch it again, I’ll need the Blu-ray”. So I think that’s going to hopefully prop up the industry a little bit longer, but we are kind of beholden to the studios basically, because they’re the ones who prop up the whole industry. It can’t be run on just boutiques alone.

Art House Cult: So – you’re going to move with the industry. There may be a time where some of these titles become streamable, but the primary focus will always remain on the physical releases, which makes sense. I’m a classic collector in the sense that I need to hold something in my hand and be able to open up the liner notes. Part of that is just wanting the pat on the back from somebody else who liked the film to encourage you to also like the film. I’ll always be a collector. A good example of the cyclical aspect would be that you can walk into a Best Buy now and they’ve essentially gotten rid of all their CDs, but there’s a big section of Vinyl now. That leads me to believe that there’s always gonna be room for people to continue to collect physical things.

Francesco Simeoni: I think it comes down to the product as well. I mean, I got some Blu-rays this week from another distributor that I won’t name. They’ve kind of used the nice cases, but the artwork isn’t quite right, and then there’s nothing in the case. It’s just empty. So you sort of just have this really weightless thing, and then there’s no extras, and I’m just like, “Why did I buy these?” So I think in order for people to keep going, they do need to kind of have that kind of shot when they get something that’s like, “Yeah. I’m really happy I’ve got this. This is good”. I think where quality does dip like that, it is not great, because I think it will turn buyers off to that sort of thing. “That wasn’t worth 15 pounds. Why did I do that?” So it’s a bit of a shame when that happens, but there’s enough good labels out there, so…

Art House Cult: A different example would be what Warner Archive does. I like Warner Archive. The label doesn’t typically offer any extras or anything like that, but typically the masters that they’re putting on the disc are given a really nice encode and the movie really shines on the disc. Also, they don’t kill you in the pocketbook to pick those up either. There seems to be room for both types of releases.

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah. I think as long as the price is right and it’s not pretending to be something it’s not – like the releases that I got- they kind of looked like a Collector’s Edition. They may even say Collector’s Edition, which… I don’t like that term at all. I think if it is something, you don’t need to label it that. The Warner Archive discs look like what they are even when sometimes they have the extras. I think when you’ve got someone trying to be something else and they’re not delivering, that’s when it’s disappointing.

Art House Cult: Absolutely. For the release schedule that you’re working on, do you envision a time where that’s gonna be fairly uniform? And how many releases a month you think will be coming out? Or, is it something you’re discovering along the way as you pick up titles, with some months heavier than others?

Francesco Simeoni: I can’t see it becoming too rigid. It is gonna be up and down and that’s gonna come down to how many titles I happen to have, what I need to get out in terms of the particulars of the deal, or how much time we have to QC a whole box set or whatever it is. So I think it’s always going to be different. My goal is really just to do as much as possible. That -at the moment- is limited by cash. If I had bundles and bundles of cash, I could do loads of releases, because I’m not short of titles. I mean, there’s so many things that I can move on even just now. In a way, it’s frustrating because, [laughter] I just kind of… I want it. I’m excited by it and I’m like, “I wanna do that”. I’ve got a bit of a trigger finger. But, it’s gonna be experimental for the moment. I think it really just depends on sales. The more people buy early, the more people could buy the packages, the more I’m gonna pump all of that into putting out more releases. It’s difficult to kind of say that, [laughter] I don’t wanna get sued, I don’t want to over promise, but, the idea is that the people who buy the packages get rewarded. So luckily for you, [laughs] the people who bought the three year package will definitely get the biggest reward. And the people who buy the back end of next year’s packages maybe get a slightly smaller reward. And then, the year after that we will see. We might do half-yearly, might do yearly, might do little quarterly packages. It is going to be quite reactive, and that’s the only way it can be at the moment because it is still a nascent business, basically.

Art House Cult: I was excited to see your recent pairing with Fun City Editions, I’ve been following that label since they came out. I know that you’re doing “Married to the Mob” and “Cutter’s Way” as the inaugural UK releases for that label. Will you be revisiting some of their earlier releases, like “Alphabet City?”

Francesco Simeoni: It depends on sales. We’ll review after a short time. At first, there’s not gonna be any more after “Walking the Edge.” So after a while Fun City and I will sort of review and we’ll look at other possibilities. It would be great to do more, absolutely. I’m in discussion with quite a few labels. I did have a plan to kind of do one new title or label every month, but there’s definitely been less interest in the hosted labels in comparison to Radiance. So I’m gonna kind of cool off a little bit. Because I feel like maybe people’s greatest interest at the moment is just in Radiance, I’m going to focus on that. There is one label that I will do regardless if they agree, and then there’s others that are potential. We’re in discussions so that things might still pop up. But it is just down to the enthusiasm of the audience on this side of the pond basically.

Art House Cult: With your first slate, I’ve got a few questions regarding those. The initial releases in January are “Big Time Gambling Boss” and “The Working Class Go To Heaven.” What was the thought process behind choosing those as the inaugural releases?

Francesco Simeoni: So I think with “Working Class,” it was probably because it is a film I’m passionate about for one, but also because it’s the kind of film that it is. I mean, it’s not like anything that other labels are really focused on. It’s not a poliziottescho, it’s not a horror, it’s not anything overtly genre. It’s got a political bend, which I’m really interested in. The political cinema of Italy, the Sixties and Seventies, I think was really exciting. I tried to do a box set of Italian political films with Gian Maria Volonté and had this collection of films that we could have potentially done, and no one was interested. There were a few things like that. So there were loads of projects, where I thought, “This could be good, this could be a good set”. And, it didn’t get anybody excited. I just thought,”maybe it’s just too different to what Arrow’s kind of known for, and maybe it’s just a bit too niche, a bit challenging”. Another one was an Italian neorealist collection, which I’d love to do because neorealism has kind of been reduced down to like four films, I think. But there’s loads of great ones out there. There is a really interesting way to look at that, I think, but all that stuff never sold well for Arrow, so it wasn’t a surprise that it didn’t get people excited. So, that’s why I wanted to do that. I wanted to be distinct, and “Big Time Gambling Boss” is essentially the same kind of thing. For me, it’s a good starter because it’s a Yakuza film, but it’s not a Yakuza film which sort of is sold entirely on very obvious genre tropes. It’s not a Fukasaku film, basically. So that’s why I chose to do that and not “Yakuza Graveyard” as the opening. For me that was just something that signaled a slightly different intent. Although I do have “Yakuza Graveyard” and I do really like Fukasaku, and will do stuff like that, I’m much more interested in the films like “Big Time Gambling Boss.” So that was why I sort of foregrounded that one, because when I was working on the slate of ten, I had probably about twenty five films that were constantly shifting around and changing the shape. ‘Cause I was sort of counting like these many films from the Seventies, and these many from the Sixties, and the Eighties, and, this many crime films, this many comedies, this many arthouse films, this many genre films. I kept moving it around as deals were being done and materials were being checked. And when I got to the end and chose the ten, I sort of thought I had quite a good mix. [laughter] And when everyone came back and went, “Oh, it’s all really arthouse”, I was like “Oh, I thought it was sort of a good balance”. But I guess that really says where I’m coming from, which is that, “Yes, I do like genre cinema”, but I think my frustration has always been,… I don’t even like the term “genre cinema.” I just think that’s a stupid term for the way people use it. I’ve been interviewed before, and they say, “Oh, genre films”. And my reaction to that is like, “You mean John Carpenter films? What you mean is what John Carpenter films do I like?” And, for me, when people say genre cinema, I think that’s way more complex and really rich and really exciting. All the genre films I’m looking at, many of which I’m seeing for the first time, I’m blown away by. I think some people would look at that and go,.. As they did to the reaction to the launch and say, “These aren’t genre films, these are arthouse films”. And, my reaction to that is like, “Well, this film’s about an assassination attempt, or this film’s about a kidnapping”. That’s like pretty obvious genre stuff, but to me it’s done in a way that is so much more satisfying on a narrative level. I think a lot of the trouble with genre films, is that often it’s like a few good set pieces, but otherwise,.. meh. That’s what’s the distinguishing characteristic of certainly “Big Time Gambling Boss,” and to a point “Working Class Goes To Heaven” as well.

Art House Cult: On the trailer that had leaked, right before “Miami Blues” appears, it says, “New HD Remaster”. This led me to a question, “Miami Blues” – I love that movie. I’ve bought every release of it. I’ve read the book. I’m a big, big fan. Is that a release where you’re taking the elements and bringing something else out of them in the QC for the film?

Francesco Simeoni: Well, so that film has had additional restoration done on it. It was quite a dirty master, it was otherwise a good master, but just dirty, so we cleaned it up. But I think it’s potentially worth addressing – whether or not it’s interesting or not – worth addressing that term (Remaster) and the communication and all that. If you talk about restoration with restoration people, most of what is called restoration is not really restoration at all. So I think that’s why I chose to use Remaster because, for the most part, nine out of ten people don’t even care and they’re not even looking at it. And I’m, for the most part, one of those people, because I don’t let it bother me. I’ve been to see films in the cinema where the print’s faded pink – I’ve been to the Cinema where it’s snapped in the middle and you have to wait there for half an hour for them to fix it, or what happened to me one time where you just leave and you only got to see half the film. So for me, most of my film viewing has been based on that and, I’m sure I’ve seen pie in the sky on VHSes. I still enjoyed the films. I mean, I’m always looking for the best quality and that’s what will be on Radiance. But if I’ve got the choice of releasing a really great film with maybe not a perfect master, and releasing a film that I don’t have much feeling about that has got a great new 4K, I’ll go for the good film. Someone else can release that 4K of a middling film that most people are gonna buy in the sale. [laughter] For me, it’s film first above all else. With regards to remaster or restoration, for the most part most Radiance releases are going to be remasters – they’re preexisting materials that are supplied by the producer or the licensor and they’re the best that will be available. Unfortunately, a lot of the films I’m going for don’t even make that grade. I’m having to reject films which are just too poor quality, to put it simply – HD in theory, but way too dirty or beyond repair. So it’s difficult. It’s a fine balance to strike for sure. But restorations do factor. I’ve got three titles, which will be restored next year. They’ll be restored next year, so for release within the next year. So, that’s great, but I think that’s becoming ever more challenging for labels, because the sales aren’t there. I think that is something that’s gonna be very carefully managed, because I can see from within the industry a lot less people are interested in taking on that cost, because it’s just so difficult to get all your money back. I think there’s more reliance on funding, which is also being cut back. So it’s tough, but, we’ll see.

Art House Cult: From the outside looking in, I’ve always tried to wrap my brain around, if somebody is working on, for example, Dario Argento’s movie “Opera,” the Scorpion release touted on the back over a hundred hours of restoring, remastering, and color correction, right?

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah.

Art House Cult: I was thinking to myself, if they’re only releasing 3000 units, and even if they’re $80 each, that’s only $240,000. I’m always trying to figure out how do they make a return on something that they’re putting that much time into? Because somebody has to get paid to do all this work.

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah.

Art House Cult: I bought every single one of the titles on the Radiance website that were the UK only ones after getting the gold membership. Looking at the site, I was like, “I bought ‘Miami Blues’ twice, I don’t know if this is gonna be worth it”. Then I saw the trailer that said, “Brand New HD Masters.” So then I bought it again. [laughter] So, I’m excited to see what it looks like. Speaking of new transfers, your Dino Risi box is going to feature a new 4K transfer of “Il Sorpasso.” I love that movie. I have the Criterion Blu-ray from a few years back, but, how’s that one come across in 4k?

Francesco Simeoni: I think it looks great. I’ve only seen a small part of it because it’s not coming up for awhile and there’s still plenty of work to be done on it. But yeah, it looks good. I’ve been in this situation before where it’s a newer restoration then Criterion and you’re kind of, “Okay, well let’s be careful, because newer doesn’t always mean better”. But in this case, it looks good. I come back to the same thing I said earlier where for me, it’s all about the film. How much better does it look? I’ll leave that to the people who zoom in on screen patches, which I don’t. It’s not how I watch them, but it looks good. It looks really nice. It was done by L’Immagine Ritrovata – the people who do all the Martin Scorsese restorations and everything.

Art House Cult: Oh, cool.

Francesco Simeoni: And so they’re very good and it was from the original negative, et cetera. So it should be very nice. It’s a great film. I’m really pleased to be distributing that one. And I think the set as a whole, to go back to sort of what I was talking about earlier – why these films? That’s very much the kind of thing I want to explore with Radiance. Being able to dig into a genre like Commedia All’Italiana is very exciting to me because I think, certainly in the UK, I imagine a lot of people will be watching their first sort of Italian comedies of this ilk. ‘Cause I can imagine that there’s been a bit of snobbishness maybe around some of the films… seen as lesser efforts or something. I just think these films cut a bit different, so I hope people sort of are able to dig in and explore and find a new passion. There’s loads of things like that that I want to do with Radiance. Some are in the works already. And for me that’s really exciting. I’ve got so many boxes that I can do or will do, and it just sort of remains to be seen how quickly they can come out really. Because for me that’s the most exciting thing about boutique curation is that you can have this little moment of discovery in a box where you can potentially open up something really quite big. There are other things like director’s works which is great, and I have a few of those planned, but for me when you’re opening up a potential well to a movement or a genre of films, I think that’s really exciting.

Art House Cult: One of the upcoming releases is Fukusaku’s “Yakuza Graveyard.”. I’ve got two questions on that. First off, are you working with Toei? Did they have the master for that one?

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah.

Art House Cult: Secondly, my introduction to Arrow video was actually with the “Battles Without Honor and Humanity” Box set. I was fortunate because that set popped up on a website and so I bought that. I know that was one of the inaugural releases for Arrow in the States. Were you the brains behind that set?

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That has got a very long history, because when I just started Arrow, they had just bought “Battle Royale” and we did that and I went to Japan and I met with Toei and everything. When I was there I was like, so… you have “Battles Without Honor and Humanity.” And we started talking about it there and they wanted an absolute fortune for it. So I kept pestering them for years and years until we’d launched in the US and we’re feeling sort of quite bullish. The industry was still almost easy by that point. So we went for it. We got them for UK and US and, as I predicted, it was a very big success. They’ve done really, really well. At the same time, I was working “Female Prisoner Scorpion” as well.

Art House Cult: Oh yeah. Great. I’ve got both of those.

Francesco Simeoni: Yeah, those were real passion projects for me. I produced “Female Prisoner Scorpion” in that set. But “Battles Without Honor and Humanity,” I worked with Mark Walkow on that one. He’s a real expert and there’s a great book and everything. It’s always difficult with Japanese releases because a lot of these people aren’t around or just don’t want to be interviewed. I mean, even with “Yakuza Graveyard,” we tried to get Meiko Kaji and she just said, “I don’t want to, I’m too busy”.

Art House Cult: The “Battles” set was amazing. That’s what really sparked my interest in Arrow. When that arrived, I just sat back and watched all those films. I love watching all those same stunt men arriving to get their asses whipped again in scene after scene. The whole thing is great. Another one of the titles that I was actually pretty surprised hadn’t been given a Blu-ray release until now was “Welcome to The Dollhouse” by that’s Todd Solondz. When I grew up, that used to come on TV on the Bravo Network. It was a really weird movie to watch as a young teenager. With that release, fans of Solondz are asking “Will we see ‘Happiness?’” on Blu-ray? Is that a possibility one day?

Francesco Simeoni: I don’t know. [laughs] To be honest with you, I hadn’t seen “Welcome to the Dollhouse” prior to Radiance but it had been knocking around and I didn’t think it was right for Arrow. If I even saw it at Arrow, I can’t remember. But it came my way and I’d seen the trailer for it probably five hundred times. It was on some VHS I had as a kid, and for some reason I always sort of sat through it, I dunno why. So I was really familiar with the film, but had never seen it. I’d seen Todd Solondz’s later films so I kind of knew what he was like as a filmmaker, so I kind of watched it thinking, “Oh God, what am I getting myself into?” But I loved it! I thought it was brilliant, I thought it was such a good film. I thought, “Yeah, I’m gonna do this”, because I love Nineties Cinema. I love American Nineties Cinema. This is definitely an avenue I want to explore more. But I hadn’t considered doing any more Solondz, after this one, just from the fact that I thought, “Although they’re good films, do I really wanna sit through them again?” I mean, there’s scenes in “Happiness” and “Palindromes” that are burned into my brain. They just are so dark. But, when people were so enthusiastic about it and when they were talking about it, I did sort of become convinced. I come back to the point about people just wanting to curate their own collections. And when I thought about it, I thought, “Yeah, I would buy them. I would want them in my collection. They’re great films”. So possibly I would like to, but in this case it is not up to me. I think the rights are a bit unclear and need to be worked out. I don’t know for sure. So it remains to be seen, but I would like to.

Art House Cult: One thing you had brought up in a couple interviews was there a passion project you’d been pursuing, which is “The Mattei Affair.” Is that one still in your sights?

Francesco Simeoni: I asked about it again, but, I don’t think it’s gonna happen. There’s a few films like that which are great, but have these sort of issues. I think with the way the industry is I’m not sure they’re gonna come out anytime soon, because the amount of money that it would take to clear the rights is so big that I just don’t think anyone but a studio could really afford it, really. And the studios of course, aren’t gonna do these tiny foreign films. If they can’t sell enough units of big auteur led films from the seventies, why are they gonna do foreign films from directors they probably never heard of? So unfortunately, I don’t hold a lot of hope. But I’ll keep trying. Yeah… It’s a nightmare.

Art House Cult: I’m sorry. I know that one’s been a passion project for you.

Francesco Simeoni: There’s lots of these film. I just sort of think it’d be easier if the studios sold the rights to some other entity, but they won’t. So they’re just kind of saddled with these rights that they are unwilling and unable to exploit, which is just sort of madness. The one people talk about a lot is “The Devils,” which it’s exactly the same thing. Not exactly the same thing, but similar scenario in that it could come out.

Art House Cult: I don’t think I go a day looking at the forums where, “The Devils” isn’t brought up and somebody says, “Release, “The Devils”. You know?

Francesco Simeoni: I mean, get the BFI DVD. It’s very, very good.

Art House Cult: Hey, thank you so much for your time. It was great to meet you.

Francesco Simeoni: My pleasure. And you.

A special thanks to Francesco Simeoni for lending his time for this interview. Please take the time to peruse their film collection. Their USA releases can be purchased at www.mvdshop.com, with a few also available on Amazon. Their UK releases are available to purchase at radiancefilms.co.uk

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