Deaf Crocodile was founded by two experienced arthouse veterans, Craig Rogers and Dennis Bartok, with nearly 30 years’ experience in specialized exhibition, programming, distribution and restoration services. Together, they bring an eclectic and passionate sensibility to their slate of films, collaborating with a network of like-minded curators and filmmakers from around the world.

They’re also one of my favorite physical media labels.

I didn’t want to keep all their amazing work to myself and hope that with this interview, I can get you excited about what they’re doing and buying — and most importantly, watching — the movies that they release.

B&S About Movies: How did you guys decide to start Deaf Crocodile? Did you work on past films?

Dennis Bartok: Craig and I worked together at two previous boutique distribution and restoration companies, Cinelicious Pics and Arbelos, where we licensed and he restored a number of films including Eiichi Yamamoto’s psychedelic animated witchcraft movie Belladonna of Sadness, Toshio Matsumoto’s transgender drama Funeral Parade of Roses, Leslie Stevens’ long-lost California noir Private Property, Bela Tarr’s Satantango, Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie and others.

We launched Deaf Crocodile together three years ago to explore a wider range of films we love including animated movies like The Pied Piper,  Delta Space Mission, The Son of the Stars and Heroic Times, amazing lost DIY crime films like Sal Watts’ Solomon King and epic fantasies such as the three Aleksandr Ptushko films we’ve released (Ilya Muromets, Sampo and The Tale of Tsar Saltan).  We’re also great fans of new World Cinema and particularly independent filmmaking from South Asia and Iran…although not exclusively from those areas!

Craig Rogers: As Dennis said, we both worked together previously at Cinelicious Pics and were co-founders of Arbelos. I was working as the lead restoration artist for Cinelicious when Dennis came aboard to launch the distribution arm of the company. Prior to that I worked for over a decade at IMAX. We both have long histories of working in “the industry.”

B&S: What is the perfect release for your label?

Dennis:  I don’t think there’s a “perfect” release because Craig and I love so many different kinds of movies, and there’s honestly tens of thousands of films out there waiting to be rediscovered.  Most of our releases have a kind of arthouse / genre crossover vibe, and we really like movies that mix up different genres and styles of filmmaking like Jean-Louis Roy’s superspy / Cold War / sci-fi satire The Unknown Man of Shandigor and Karen Shakhnazarov’s surreal, Kafkaesque Zerograd. The Ptushko films seem to have really struck a chord with people — he’s been one of my favorite fantasy filmmakers for many years, and I organized a retrospective of his films in the early 2000s when I was programming for the American Cinematheque in L.A. So it’s great to be able to release beautiful blu ray editions of his films through Deaf Crocodile.

Craig: We do have a reputation of releasing films that no one has ever heard of before, but once folks see them, they love them. We’re very proud of the trust we’ve gained in the blu ray community and how many people “blind buy” our titles. That said, as much as we love bringing these lost and forgotten films to people, we don’t want to limit ourselves really in any way. A good film is a good film and if we find something we both love and it’s in need of a proper restoration and/or release that’s really the only bar for us.

B&S: Is it difficult to release non-genre or difficult material to boutique physical media buyers?

Dennis: I’d say most of our films are genre movies but in strange and surprising ways, like The Assassin of the Tsar starring Malcolm McDowell which is a sort of time-traveling psychodrama mystery about a mental patient convinced he killed two Russian czars.  We’ve been really fortunate that pretty much all of our blu ray releases so far have done well.

Craig: Genre stuff certainly has a built-in audience. The budgets and margins are so tight for small labels that risk reduction becomes somewhat imperative. That’s why you see so much genre product coming out of the boutique labels on disc. As I said before, we don’t want to limit the types of films we release, but there is definitely a reason you see so much genre material being released from all the boutique labels.

B&S: What’s a dream project for you guys?

Dennis: The ones that we’re still working on!  Honestly, many of our releases take years and years to happen — probably two to five years on average.

Craig: A dream? I know there is a lot of film material in Prince’s vault in Minnesota. Restoring any of that material would most certainly qualify as a dream project.

B&S: What’s the hardest part of what you do?

Dennis: Being patient and persistent.  There are deals that seem to evaporate after many months of negotiations — then we’ll wait a while, and approach the rights holders again, and sometimes we get lucky and things fall into place.  But it takes a hell of a lot of patience!

Craig: No lie…lack of time. As a two-man operation we have to wear ALL the hats. Restoration is only a fraction of my day. With each new title we add to our catalog, that’s just more items added to the “to do” list. Long after the restoration work is done on a title there’s still so much more to do. Digital outlets all require different files, formats and artwork. Producing the trailers, blu ray extras, managing the Kickstarter projects, bookkeeping. It’s a lot. Also, being as small as we are, we need to keep active on social media. Podcasts, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram — interviews like this. There’s sooo much great content being announced daily at this point – it’s a struggle to make our little brand heard. It’s a good thing we love it as much as we do. This is the definition of a passion project.

B&S: Other than your work, what’s one of your favorite physical media releases?

Dennis: That’s a tough question because Craig and I are both huge physical media fans and really admire the work of a lot of smaller and mainstream labels. A few that come to mind: Scream Factory’s Paul Naschy Collections I and II and Scorpion Releasing’s Assignment Terror. Vinegar Syndrome’s Santo vs. Dr. Death. Kino Lorber’s The Golem, Arrow’s Mill of the Stone Women. Universal’s Alfred Hitchcock – The Masterpiece Collection. Criterion Collection’s release of Franju’s Judex. Indicator’s set of Night of the Demon. The recent Kino Lorber Blu-rays of the Technicolor 1940s Maria Montez films like Cobra Woman, Ali Baba & the 40 Thieves and others are wonderful additions.

Craig: For me it’s really all about the movie. A terrific restoration and authored disc of any of my favorite films always makes me very happy. Bonus features and nice packaging are welcome gravy, but it’s all about the film itself for me. Off the top of my head…the recent Scorsese 4K discs (Raging Bull, After Hours and The Irishman), Arrow’s The Thing and Ronin, Second Sight’s The Changeling…I could go on all night.

B&S: Of all your releases which one best sums up the label?

Dennis: For me I’d say Sal Watts’ Solomon King because the film was lost for so many years, and it’s such an entertaining movie and a great time capsule of Black culture, music and fashion in Oakland in the early 1970s. It was something of a miracle that we were able to connect with Sal’s amazing wife and partner Belinda Burton Watts, and an equal miracle that we located the only known complete print of the film at UCLA Film & TV Archive who loaned it for the restoration. The restoration itself was even more of a miracle, restoring color and vibrancy to a badly faded and scratched print. The interview with Belinda on the disc where she talks for over two hours about her and Sal’s childhoods and lives and careers is just as important, maybe more important, than the film itself. So that’s one I’m incredibly proud of.

Craig: Hmmm…maybe our first? The Unknown Man of Shandigor. Completely unknown in the US before our release. GORGEOUS photography, high quality restoration and encoding. Insightful commentary, essay and interview. The film itself is a parody that’s played so straight it also works as a terrific spy/thriller of its own. I like that you don’t quite know what to make of it. I think that can be said of a number of our releases. It’s important to go into a film -hell life, without expectations. Accept and enjoy things for what they are. Putting your expectations on things too often leads to disappointment.

B&S: What’s a country underserved and unseen for their films?

Dennis: There are too many to mention, but I’d dearly love to restore some rare and classic Bollywood films from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Croatian cinema from that same period is also astonishing: filmmakers like Vatroslav Mimica and Krsto Papic really deserve to be rediscovered.

Craig: Too many to name. We’re doing our best to try and help with that problem though. If I’ve learned anything over the past decade it’s that there are far more amazing films than I ever could have imagined. Countless stories from countless voices. It’s really easy to go into the hobby of watching films and have blinders on. “Oh, I don’t watch black and white movies” or “I hate subtitles,” you’re only hurting yourself, closing yourself off from some absolutely astonishing films. Be a sponge…soak it ALL in. The more diversity of films you see, the more your overall enjoyment of cinema will grow. I guarantee it.

To find all of these amazing movies…

Learn more about Deaf Crocodile at their official site.

To keep incredible movies coming, the best thing you can do is order directly from them. Their online shop has all of their latest releases, including The Pied Piper, Heroic Times, Prague Nights, Time of Roses, The Assassin of the Tsar, The Son of the Stars, Solomon King, Zerograd, Sampo, The Time Bending Mysteries of Shahram Mokri, Ilya Muromets, Delta Space Mission and The Unknown Man of Shandigor. 

Thanks to Craig and Dennis for sharing their valuable time and for giving us such challenging and gorgeous films to discover.