Muhammad Ali The Greatest

[J.A.F._Doorhof]

From: Facets Video

For Immediate Release September 10, 2002

Facets Video Presents A Film By Acclaimed Photographer / Filmmaker William Klein: Muhammad Ali The Greatest With Special Appearances By The Beatles, Malcolm X, Norman Mailer, Sonny Liston, George Foreman

"Riveting! Revealing!" -NY Times

"Fascinating!" -NY Post

The Best And Truest Film On Muhammad Ali
The First Ever U.S. Video Release Of A Film By William Klein

Catalog# DV67676 -UPC# 156580323X -ISBN# 736899 040826 All Zone NTSC DVD

Facets Video releases Muhammad Ali The Greatest, the best and truest film on Muhammad Ali, on DVD on January 14, 2003. DVDs retail for $29.95 each.
Raw and explosive, sweet and tender, here is the real Muhammad Ali - the Greatest -up-close and in-the-ring - a living legend. This legend is captured raw by one of the world's greatest photographer / filmmakers: William Klein. In this incredible, almost-never-seen film, Klein projects his gritty, glamorous style onto Ali's sheer awesome charisma. We see Ali at the height of his career -from the 1964 Liston Fight to the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle. Klein was there, and now you are, too.

Muhammad Ali The Greatest is a magnificent achievement -a must-have for sports fans, and film and photo buffs everywhere.

Muhammad Ali was one of the most vibrant and iconoclastic figures of the 20th Century.

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Clay in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1942. He grew up in the Jim Crow South. Clay became a boxer in his adolescence, in part as a way to channel his anger. At the 1960 Rome Olympics, Clay won the Gold Medal for light-heavyweight boxing. Soon after returning to the U.S., he threw his medal in the Ohio River after being refused service at a whites-only restaurant and fighting a white gang. Clay then became a professional boxer.

Clay's professional career was equally politically charged. In 1964, Clay defeated Sonny Liston, and became Heavyweight Champion of the World. After the fight, Clay announced he had become a Black Muslim, and had changed his name to Muhammad Ali. He continued fighting. In 1967, however, Ali refused to be drafted into the U.S. Army. This was the era of the Vietnam War, and Ali famously remarked, "No Vietnamese ever called me nigger." Subsequently, Ali was stripped of his title and his boxing license. His license was later reinstated, but he had to fight to regain his title. In 1974, he had his first chance. Ali fought George Foreman for the title at the famed "Rumble in the Jungle," in dictator Mobutu Sese Soko's Zaire -and won. For the next several years, Ali alternately defended his title and went in and out of retirement.

Muhammad Ali retired from boxing for good in 1981. In 1984, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He has, however, remained a visible public presence. In 1996, he lit the cauldron beginning the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. He was given another Gold Medal, to replace the one he threw in the river.
Today, Muhammad Ali lives in Michigan.

William Klein is a fascinating and acclaimed photographer and filmmaker.

William Klein was born in New York City in 1928. In his youth, he submerged himself in the city's cultural life, including its museums, movie theatres, and 42nd Street burlesque theatres. He ran wild with such friends as future Newsweek critic Jack Kroll, and wrote and drew prolifically. Klein also worked as a runner for the powerful law-firm of Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, and Krim, which represented the Hollywood studios. The Phillips of the firm was Klein's uncle. Klein's experiences there left a bad taste in his mouth, and he developed an antipathy toward the business of American movies.
A few years later, Klein enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was stationed first in Germany, and then in France. Among other duties, he drew cartoons for the Army magazine Stars And Stripes. In Paris, both before and after his discharge, he studied painting and French culture, including with Fernand Léger, a multimedia artist who is clearly one of Klein's own forebears. Klein also met his future wife and artistic collaborator Jeanne, and painted Paris' street life.

At the same time, Klein began to shoot photos. He became a contract photographer for Vogue magazine. However, his images were so unorthodox -perhaps subversive -that they often went unpublished. Klein simultaneously explored the world of photo-montage, assembling acclaimed books on New York City (published in 1956), Rome (1959), Moscow (1964), and Tokyo (1970).

Klein's early explorations in photo-montage coincided with early explorations in filmmaking. He made films about cityscapes (e.g., Broadway By Light, 1958), fashion models (Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, 1965-66), the Vietnam War (an episode in the omnibus film Far From Vietnam, 1967), the May 1968 Paris uprisings (Maydays), and other topics. As years went by, he also made several films about black culture. These included Pan-African Festival (1969), Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther (1970), and The Little Richard Story (1980), as well as Muhammad Ali The Greatest (1964-1974). Still more films have been about tennis, American arrogance, photography, and other subjects.

Klein and his work have been featured in exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Cinematheque Québécoise in Montréal, the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Forum in New York City, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Cinematheque Ontario in Toronto, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and elsewhere. A film retrospective has traveled across North America over the last decade.

Today, William Klein still lives in Paris, France.

ARTE Video with the participation of Facets Video and the CNC presents:

Muhammad Ali The Greatest. 1964 / 1974 - USA / France - black and white and color - 110 mins - A9 Films Paris New York Delpire Advico.

DVD A9 2002 ARTE France Développement. DVD total running time 135 mins (110 mins feature + 25 mins scene commentaries).

In English.

Muhammad Ali The Greatest is presented in a pristine 1.33:1 transfer respecting the original 16mm format. Early scenes are in black and white; later scenes are in color. The All Zone NTSC DVD also features Dolby Digital sound, full-chapterization, and scene commentaries by William Klein himself.
The release of Muhammad Ali The Greatest continues the collaboration of ARTE Video and Facets Video. Previous ARTE / Facets titles have included Melies The Magician and Giacometti.

ARTE Video is a division of ARTE, the acclaimed European television channel that creates, promotes, and releases cultural programs on television, film, and video.

Facets Multimedia is based in Chicago, Illinois. In addition to housing a cinematheque, a children's film festival, and an exclusive video and theatrical distribution line, Facets is the world's unique, largest collection of foreign, classic American, independent, experimental, documentary, cult, fine arts, and quality children's videos and DVDs. Through extensive national marketing to consumer, institutional, and retail markets, Facets is a primary source of films on DVD and VHS. The general Facets collection represents over 55,000 individual titles.