In St Just-and-Vacquières, Jean-Michel Burel, a schoolmaster of a multilevel class, begins his last school year before retirement. The teacher teaches tolerance and wisdom in the same way as spelling and mathematics. He leads his program with determination. He strives to support students to give them confidence and elevate them higher. Through the eyes of a former student, now a director, there is a timeless school where rigor is combined with good humor, a school where freedom begins with respect for others. A school that belongs to everyone and to the universal domain of childhood.

http://nitroflare.com/view/E0E3B4A6B21576B/Mon.maitre.decole.2015.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/ACCBE07D7DCD917/Mon.maitre.decole.2015.part2.rar

Language(s):French
Subtitles:French

Quote:
For one year, from 1944 to 1945, Georges Rouquier shared the life of a peasant family, his own, in the Farrebique farm in Goutrens, in the Rouergue region. He shows us life on a farm, marked by the rhythm of seasons, from harvesting in summer to the grandfather’s rituals of slicing the bread for dinner. The film also dwells on the hardships of life on a farm and the transformation brought on by the arrival of electricity, of modern times. Farrebique reveals the beauty of these people, their closeness to their beasts and to nature, facing an often harsh life.

Quote:
“Farrebique, or the Four Seasons,” was shot at and near the farm in the course of a year, in 1944 and 1945. Its over-all subject is the conflict between law and tradition, the impingement of modernity on the isolated lives of farmers. The nineteenth-century farm house was literally showing cracks, and the elderly patriarch’s two sons, Henri and Roch, had different ideas about how to respond. Henri wanted to rebuild the house (at significant expense) and improve the farm; Roch, the eldest son, wanted to patch it up cheaply and continue to farm for subsistence as before. The farm has no electricity (the house is lighted with flickering gas lamps); Roch’s wife, Berthe, and Henri want to install it—but Roch also refuses to invest in it. The difference between the brothers is that, because of the custom of primogeniture, Roch was anticipating inheriting the entire farm, and because, by law, inheritances were to be distributed equally among the children, he wanted to keep the assessed value of the farm low in order to avoid owing his siblings money at the time of his father’s death.

The patriarch nonetheless resents Roch’s inaction and reproaches him sharply for it, fearing that the farm will deteriorate because of his son’s conservatism. In the course of the action, Henri (who in real life was already married) courts a neighbor, Fabrette, the grandfather dies, and the division of the estate takes place. Roch becomes the proprietor of the farm; he has to pay his siblings (not just Henri but his three sisters, two of whom are nuns) off, and he will continue to run it. The legal action is significant—“Farrebique” is in large part a juridical drama in which the virtual background grid of law and custom are thrust into the foreground. But it’s integrated with a meticulous, passionate documentation of the rounds of daily work on the farm—sowing seeds, plowing fields, hauling crops with the aid of oxen, harvesting vegetables by hand, grinding wheat with a gasoline-powered machine, kneading dough and packing it under blankets to rise, baking bread in the farmhouse’s brick oven. (One minor detail that I find particularly striking is the patriarch’s use of a knife that would have to be razor-sharp to cut fine, thin slices off a boulder-like loaf of bread.)

Rouquier records the social rites and practices of the farm and its neighborhood—church services, childbirth at home, courtship, the patriarch’s funeral, singing and dancing in a café—as well as the family’s linguistic habits: the patriarch speaks not French but Occitan (in the original release, his dialogue was subtitled in French), which his children and grandchildren understand (but they respond in French). The cinematography, by André A. Dantan, is intimate yet monumental; he and Rouquier compose images of a stark and pure graphic severity that renders daily action and familiar routine dynamic, energetic, heroic.

Rouquier’s film is only superficially a documentary. He punctuates the film with time-lapse sequences that show crops growing and flowers blooming, macrophotographic sequences that show blood pumping in arteries and cellular reproduction. He blends the drama of social life in and around the farm—and the cycle of seasons that governs it—with biological analysis. The movie’s central sequence—a visual reconstruction of a century of Farrebique’s history from the family’s perspective, as narrated by the grandfather to his grandson Raymondou—is a virtual evolutionary account of the growth of a farm. A masterly editor, Rouquier brings the long, cyclical rhythms—domestic, seasonal, generational, historical—of farm life with varied and perceptible cinematic rhythms. With its grand cinematography, its built-in social science, and its sense of montage, “Farrebique” most closely resembles a film by Eisenstein; it’s almost like a work of Soviet silent cinema without the ideological obligations and overlays, in which actual social science takes the place of political dogma.

http://nitroflare.com/view/08445786156946B/Farrebiqueou.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/2DA182111F9B406/Farrebiqueou.part2.rar

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

Quote:
Nicolas Mallet (Jean-Louis Trintignant, The Conformist), a naive bank clerk, meets Marie-Paule (Jane Birkin, Je Taime Moi Non Plus, Keep Your Right Up), a beautiful but lonely young girl, in a quiet corner of Paris. She smiles at him and he offers to buy her a drink. When she agrees, he assumes that his luck has finally changed. But when later on they rent a room in a cheap hotel, he discovers that she is a prostitute. Before they make love, he forces her to tell him that she came to the hotel because she truly wanted him.

Feeling good about himself, Nicolas meets old pal Claude Fabre (Jean-Pierre Cassel, Army of Shadows), a handicapped intellectual, in their favorite bistro and immediately tells him about his experience with Marie-Paule. Intrigued and inspired by Nicolas’ accomplishment, Claude decides to transform him into the type of man women cannot resist and wealthy men would flock to do business with. When the transformation is complete, Claude will document it in his next novel.

Michel Deville directed Le mouton enrage a.k.a. Love at the Top more than forty years ago, but its visual style and very intelligent social commentary give it a strikingly contemporary identity. It is unquestionably one of Deville’s best, but as it is the case with the majority of his films, it is virtually unknown on this side of the Atlantic.

Love at the Top blends the biting sarcasm of Luis Bunuel’s classic films and the social awareness of Elio Petri’s films (without the unbridled anger) to expose the hypocrisy of a society in which everyone has a price. There is a good dose of Marco Ferreri’s cynicism in it as well, though it is far better controlled and ultimately a lot easier to tolerate.

The focus of attention is on the moral corruption of Trintignant’s character. Initially, Nicolas is a vulnerable man whose life is fully controlled by the system he serves. After his surprising encounter with the beautiful prostitute Marie-Paule, however, he is lured out of it and taught how to manipulate it. Gradually, the former bank clerk evolves into a dangerous chameleon without morals that would do whatever it takes to accomplish his goals.

During the early stages of his transformation Nicolas falls in love with the sexually frustrated wife (Romy Schneider, César et Rosalie) of a busy professor (Michel Vitold, La nuit de Varennes) with a serious drinking problem. For a while Deville allows the lovers to enjoy their affair, and by doing so relaxes the film quite well, but eventually they are separated and the film shifts gears dramatically. Around the same time, Nicolas also meets the strikingly elegant Flora Danieli (Florinda Bolkan, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion), but Deville uses their short-lived relationship only as a litmus test. (Flora is a far more experienced chameleon that can instantly recognize ambitious contenders like Nicolas).

The film ends with a type of moral lesson Hollywood loves to avoid. It is hardly surprising, but because it is honest and fair, it feels fresh.

http://nitroflare.com/view/F33FBA5F963A897/LoveattheTop.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/195A17252F9831C/LoveattheTop.part2.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/85E2FA0B9B397A2/LoveattheTop.part3.rar

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The adventures and the exploits of notorious English thief and prison-breaker Jack Sheppard in 1720s London.

http://nitroflare.com/view/1C78891D5BE1E7E/WheresJack.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/A25BCB96CBD13B8/WheresJack.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

Quote:
“The entire town knows that I want to be a train dispatcher for the simple reason that I don’t want to do anything?just like my ancestors?but stand on the platform with a signal disc and avoid any hard work, while others have to drudge and toil.” – Milos Hrma

Director Jiri Menzel made an auspicious feature film debut with his 1966 Closely Watched Trains (Ostre sledovane vlaky), claiming only the second ever Best Foreign Language Film Oscar? won by a Czechoslovakian, following Jan Kadar’s The Shop on Main Street (Obchod na korze), which took the first, two years earlier. A graduate of the Czech film school FAMU, Menzel was instrumental the the 1960s Czech New Wave, both as a director and as an actor in films by his contemporaries. His films focus on the “nobody,” examining the paradoxes that make up the common man, with a wry wit and tragic humor; but unlike some of his fellow graduates such as Jan Nemec, Milos Forman, and Ivan Passer, his tone was much less cynical. His film career was suspended in 1969 after the Soviet invasion, and Menzel was forbidden from making films until 1975, when he was forced to renounce the “mistakes” of earlier films. The cause, his Larks on a String (Skrivanci na niti) and its anti-communist theme, was banned by the authorities for 21 years. Menzel would come to the attention of the Academy again in 1985 with another Best Foreign Language Film nomination for My Sweet Little Village (Vesnicko ma stoediskova).

Based on the novel by Bohumil Hrabal, who would become his frequent collaborator, Closely Watched Trains takes place in 1944, at a remote country rail station in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Here, young Milos Hrma (V?clav Neck?r) takes a job as a rail guard trainee, following a long family tradition of avoiding laborious work. His father was a conductor, retired early and now living off a pension; his grandfather was killed when he, single-handedly, tried to stop the German advance into Prague through hypnotism. Now, Milos will learn the trade of train dispatcher, making sure the trains don’t crash, and being especially careful with the “closely watched” trains carrying troops and munitions to the German frontline.

Despite his country being entrenched in war, the concerns Milos has are centered around his unsuccessful relationship with women. Though Milos has the attentions of a young conducteress (Jitka Bendov? as Masa), he is fascinated by the ability of train dispatcher Hubicka (Josef Somr) to seduce and behave around women, as much as this behaviour vexes the stationmaster, Max (Vladim?r Valenta). Milos is at a loss to understand how he should perform in the presence of the opposite sex, especially after a particularly embarrassing incident that leaves him quite distraught. His awkward attempts to rectify the situation result in a series of mishaps, engaging all around him, who themselves are absorbed in their own personal business, seemingly unaffected by the global conflict being waged only a few miles up the tracks. The outside world fails to derail the young boy’s focus on losing his virginity, which is the only cause with any significance in his existence.

Menzel does a fantastic job of maintaining a credible yet incredible plotline intact (look for his cameo as Dr. Brabec). V?clav Neck?r’s innocent involvement in the events in his life are portrayed without flaw, as are those of his accomplices. The black & white cinematography is wonderful, despite being limited to scenes mostly in and around the station. The film’s music perfectly underscores the mood on screen. The pace is very easy going, and the editing maximizes the comic potential, without over doing it. Closely Watched Trains is littered with humor, from the local German authority, Counselor Zednicek (Vlastimil Brodsky), explaining the brilliance in strategy of German retreat from all fronts, to an incident involving office supplies and a young telegrapher at the station?surely a first for seduction cinema. The deceptive cheekiness of the film belies what will eventually unfold, but we are witness to the absurdities of daily life from which Milos hopes to extract the rules of being an adult. Where his journey will take him is not obvious from the start, but the getting there makes for some very amusing cinema.

http://nitroflare.com/view/823F255393C73FA/CloselyWatchedTrains.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/B641F60D85A4D40/CloselyWatchedTrains.part2.rar

Language(s):Czech, German
Subtitles:English

Quote:
The movie begins with a startling, intimate sex scene. A hefty middle-aged man is making love with an attractive middle-aged woman. He is avidly concerned with bringing her to orgasm, each one worries that the other is worried that the other is taking too long—“I feel good. I’m good,” insists one of them— the sex ends in resignation. What’s startling about the scene is not its explicitness, which is not inordinate. It’s the way the characters are framed, in medium closeup, in compositions that emphasis the space between their faces as much if not more than their faces. (One is reminded of Elie Faure’s writing on Velasquez, quoted by Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Pierrot Le Fou.”)

This is the touch of a cinematic master. Claire Denis is the writer and director of this film, and she surely is this thing, as is her collaborator, the cinematographer Agnés Godard. “Let The Sunshine In” (the title is a horrifically bad translation/transposition of a pertinent phrase that is uttered in the last scene of the film) soon puts these characters into clothes and in conversation. The woman is Isabelle, a successful visual artist and divorced mom, played by the always astonishing Juliette Binoche. The man is Vincent, a married banker who’s got his stubby piggish fingers in the art world, and enjoys baiting Isabelle with who-slept-with-who gossip about gallery owners and former lovers. Vincent, incarnated with spectacular relish by Xavier Beauvois (the actor and filmmaker best known here for directing 2010’s “Of Gods And Men”) is a real piece of work, arrogant without end, a grotesquely pedantic and condescending whiskey snob (they’re worse than wine snobs if you can imagine such a thing) who in one scene requests a bartender bring him “gluten-free olives.” He is the first in a series of lovers whom Isabelle contends with in this.

Like Muddy Waters, Isabelle can’t be satisfied. The viewer is perhaps meant to drop their jaw at seeing this attractive woman stuck on a contained boor such as Vincent, but her reason, which she lets on late in the movie, makes perfect if perverse sense. After establishing some distance from him, she has a frustrating drinks-and-dinner session with an unnamed stage actor with whom she wishes to collaborate on an unnamed project. Even after he admits his alcoholism to her, she engineers an awkward seduction; their post-coital relationship feels more like boxers in a ring refusing to approach each other rather than a romantic or sexual affinity.

The film continues to chronicle Isabelle’s struggles. This isn’t a story of a smart woman making bad decisions; Denis’ mind isn’t as simplistic as that. The director has treated a pretty wide variety of topics over the course of her long and wonderful career. Female desire, as it happens, is not one she’s looked into often. 2002’s “Friday Night” was the last time she took it on quite so directly. In that film, a young woman on the verge of entering a permanent union found herself in circumstances that allowed her a brief escape that could also have been an epiphany. In this film, Isabelle, as beautiful and smart as she is, feels herself constricted by forces she can’t even confront. Is it the most appropriate thing for her, at her age, to live, as she puts it, a “life without desire?”

Clearly no. But the film does confront the fact that particularly for women, pursuing desire in middle age is a fraught path. To add a twist to this demonstration, Denis breaks it off late in the movie, and jumps briefly into someone else’s storyline, someone who had been a stranger up to this point. Then the filmmaker wraps it up in a final shot that’s both cerebral, whimsical and wry in its wisdom. The film’s confidence comes in part from the acceptance of the things that can’t be known.

http://nitroflare.com/view/31D92E1FF2D3102/LettheSunshineIn.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/891E849FD17237A/LettheSunshineIn.part2.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/820084D0844AF93/LettheSunshineIn.part3.rar

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

Complete 7-part, 290-minute BBC miniseries plus BBC interview – John Le Carre – The Secret Centre

Complex but compelling, this miniseries is based upon one of John Le Carré’s greatest works and serves as a grand summing-up for the late Sir Alec Guinness, one of Britain’s greatest actors. Guinness literally is Smiley: Le Carré said that Guinness served as a template for the character’s cunning and mournful rectitude. In anyone else’s hands, Smiley might have seemed a blank and lifeless character, but Guinness’ matchless ability to play within a scene while seeming to think well beyond it is magnetic. Guinness was the great everyman and underplayer of the generation that gave us such great British Shakespearean actors as Olivier, Richardson, and Gielgud. He’s helped, too, by sharp dialogue lifted almost word-for-word from the book and terrific supporting performances (particularly an entirely silent but amazingly communicative Patrick Stewart, who has a cameo as Karla), which almost entirely obscure the fact that the miniseries largely consists of people sitting in rooms talking. It’s a literate treat that brings to life the gray morality and conflicting loyalties of the Cold War. Be advised: viewers can get lost in the intricate plot if they don’t pay close attention.
— Nick Sambides, Jr.

Living a premature and somewhat humbling retirement, elderly British spy George Smiley (Alec Guinness) is abruptly resurrected by his former boss Lacon (Anthony Bate) with an ultra-secret mission: find the double agent in the ranks of the British Secret Service. Is it the pompous head of service, Percy Alleline (Michael Aldridge)? The blowsy Bland (Terence Rigby)? The shifty Toby Esterhase (Bernard Hepdon)? Or perhaps the urbane Bill Haydon (Ian Richardson)? Pushed into retirement by a scandal caused by the now-deceased head of service, Control (Alexander Knox), and because he suspected that there was a spy, Smiley journeys through the labyrinthine world of the British spy service layer by layer as he hunts the mole controlled by the mysterious Russian spymaster Karla (Patrick Stewart). Taken from a best-selling novel by internationally famed novelist John Le Carré, this nearly five-hour miniseries was first broadcast by the BBC. The story is loosely based on the infamous Kim Philby spy scandal of the early ’60s.
— Nick Sambides, Jr.

http://nitroflare.com/view/F261AD81A04C51F/TinkerTailorSoldierSpy.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/4D68971999BAC46/TinkerTailorSoldierSpy.part2.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/C4911549272BCBE/TinkerTailorSoldierSpy.part3.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

Quote:
Hailed as one of the masterpieces of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, Bashu, the Little Stranger opens during an Iraqi air-raid on a small Iranian village bordering the war-front in Khuzestan. When 10-year old Bashu’s loses his home and his entire family in the raid he takes refuge in a truck that unexpectedly drives north, close to the Russian border. There he is assumed to be ‘wild’ because of his incomprehensible dialect and dark skin; only Nai, a mother of two whose husband is away for work, takes pity on him. Soon she and Bashu weave a relationship strong enough that Bashu’s traumatic experience with the war makes way for hope and trust.

http://nitroflare.com/view/9CD7A6B28473127/BashutheLittleStranger.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/446DC8D806F8A87/BashutheLittleStranger.part2.rar

Language(s):Persian
Subtitles:English

Quote:
Koreyoshi Kurahara adapted a novel by Yukio Mishima for Thirst for Love (Ai no kawaki), a tense psychological drama about a young woman who is widowed after marrying into a wealthy family, and becomes sexually involved with her father-in-law, while harboring a destructive obsession with the family gardener. Kurahara’s atmospheric style is a perfect match for Mishima’s brooding sensuality.

http://nitroflare.com/view/F76F2814A9A2D24/TheThirstforLove.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/2C2571365171D68/TheThirstforLove.part2.rar

Language:Japanese
Subtitles:English

Once again, Travis Wilkerson (take a look at the credits) has worked (almost) by himself on his last film. Using the quest for a lost love as an excuse, this extremely generous film casts a wide net over History, from Maïakovsky to a certain L. Schapiro, from Bonnie & Clyde to Ulrike Meinhof, from the 1871 Paris Commune to the here and now. Despite its stunning economy of means, this playful and ironical film with a beautiful soundtrack always remains elegant. FIDMarseille catalogue.

http://nitroflare.com/view/54F7C12391DFDDA/Machine_Gun_or_Typewriter.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:nONE

Plot:
It’s wartime, and young people are rushing into hasty –sometimes unwise – marriages. But not pretty, level-headed Alice. Then she meets Joe, a G.I. on a two-day pass, and falls heart-over-level-head in love. Judy Garland and Robert Walker are sweethearts for the ages in this glowing valentine of a movie directed by Vincente Minnelli (who, to add another layer of radiant romance, was about to marry his leading lady).

http://nitroflare.com/view/E913E3CEF21F4DF/TheClock1945.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/C2908F4B083B489/TheClock1945.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

A young man, Jens, gets a job in a Copenhagen factory. He lives with his mother and has been without a job for a while. One day he meets Kirsten, who works at the library, and asks her out. He meets her parents, and soon they are married. They move into a house, Kirsten stops working, and they prepare their lives together. But Kirsten soon starts to feel a discontent that turns into depression and detachment. Jens fights to stay close to her, but eventually he must decide if he is suited for the respectable life he has built for himself. (IMDb)

http://nitroflare.com/view/B00BE403671C082/InMyLife1978.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/634F1A6D5E762EF/InMyLife1978.part2.rar

Language:Danish
Subtitles:English, Turkish,

Overview
Finye / Le vent/ The Wind (1982) continues Cisse’s examination of internal African problems. This film examines the sources of student unrest and the relationship between postcolonial and traditional authority under a military regime. It opens with a statement about the wind awakening man’s thoughts. Batrou, the daughter of the governor, Sangare, falls in love with Bah. The students become involved with a protest against the repressive government. Batrou must confront her father, who is both a parental as well as military authority figure. Sangare faces resistance on many fronts in addition to the conflict with his daughter. His third wife confronts his abuse of authority as does Kansaye, Bah’s grandfather and traditional leader who has been overthrown by the governor. While Cisse presents these stories, he is really concerned with the larger concerns of society. This film also won the FESPACO Grand Prize in 1983.
Sharon A. Russell, Guide to African Cinema

http://nitroflare.com/view/ACF8E998513F1D0/Finye1983.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/A428B8C5A792CCD/Finye1983.part2.rar

Language:Bambara
Subtitles:English

Quote:
What I have the honor of reviewing here is something totally unique and probably ranks quite high on the worldwide list of obscure Sci-Fi/horror movies. “The Afterman” is a Belgian post-apocalyptic thriller, but even in its own country of release (which is really small) it only received a minimal distribution and finding a decent copy on VHS is about as rare as encountering a salsa-dancing elephant. Fortunately – or unfortunately if you wish – there are not many people on the lookout for this film and that’s mainly either because they don’t know it exists or because the reputation of writer/director Rob Van Eyck isn’t exactly favorable around here. His most famous film “Blue Belgium”, inspired by the infamous Mark Dutroux pedophilia scandal, is generally considered as one of the worst Belgian movies ever and doesn’t really stimulate viewers to check out the director’s other works. Too bad, actually, since “The Afterman” is a truly special and deeply intriguing cinematic experiment, accomplished with an absolute minimum of financial means yet with a massive amount of controversial themes and downright shocking ideas in the screenplay.The rudimentary plot outline is somewhat reminiscent to “The Omega Man”, with a sole man trying to stay alive in a post-nuclear wasteland and the constant threat of other bewildered survivors trying to take advantage of him or even to kill him. Only the concepts of the two films are similar, as the elaboration of “The Afterman” is completely different. There’s no dialog in the film and – mostly due to budgetary restrictions – no use of special effects or impressively staged action sequences whatsoever. At the beginning of the film, the nameless main character is still safely entrenched in a nuclear bomb shelter. He has been there since the bomb, or whatever caused the apocalypse, and fills his days eating maggots and making love to a frozen female cadaver. When a short circuit forces him to leave the hideout he’s initially enthusiast to learn he’s not the only remaining human being left on the planet, but he quickly learns that it’s every man for himself now. His first encounter with a group of drifters results in a painful male rape scene, and perverse sexual satisfaction remains the leitmotiv throughout the entire movie. The man subsequently encounters a murderous lesbian millionaire, a couple of farmers that keep a girl locked up in a cage, a sect of fellatio-practicing monks and a sleazy type of society that imprisons women and throws food and sex orgies. The girl that the man freed following a deadly encounter with the farmers stays with him and a strange relationship develops between them, exclusively revolving on – you guessed it – sexual intercourse.

The strongest aspect about “The Afterman” is that writer/director Rob Van Eyck clearly realized what his weaknesses were, so he successfully came up with imaginative ways to work around them. For example, there wasn’t any budget to build any genuine apocalyptic-styled sets & scenery like demolished remnants of civilization or futuristic vehicles. Van Eyck worked around this by never really specifying the actual date of the nuclear catastrophe. The protagonist only comes out of his hideout when he’s forced to, so far all we know he has remained there for decades whilst the ecology outside had the chance to repair itself. Out there on the surface there are birds singing and crops growing, so maybe the actual apocalypse happened ages ago. Another obvious obstacle was that there aren’t any professional actors in the cast. That’s okay, though, since their acting duties are limited to stripping off their clothes and walk around with terrified faces. Seeing they don’t have any lines to speak, there’s also no risk of coming across as bad or incompetent actors. If you manage to overlook the poor production values, you might conclude that “The Afterman” is a really worthwhile and provocative Sci-Fi gem. There are copious of depraved undertones and insinuations in the screenplay, like male rape and necrophilia, and the film approaches all these controversial themes in a very nihilistic fashion; like its human behavior of the most ordinary kind. Through the ensemble of loathsome characters and the total lack of dialog, director Rob Van Eyck often manages to create an intense atmosphere of hopelessness and morbidity. The sex sequences are a bit numerous and, in some cases, terribly overlong (like the lesbian footage near the beginning) but that’s hardly something to complain about much.

http://nitroflare.com/view/5A0EA20C63C3799/The_Afterman.1985.dvdrip.x264.avi

Language:No Dialogue

Plot Summary
In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse he/she would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.

NEW DIRECTORS/ NEW FILMS; ‘BALLAD OF NARAYAMA’ BY SHOHEI IMAMURA
NATURE is so rich and the life force so rampant in Shohei Imamura’s ”The Ballad of Narayama” that, after a preview screening, I was almost relieved to walk out into the man-made pollution of Times Square. Nature, thus prettified by Mr. Imamura, is almost as artifical as a world in which a virgin forest has been removed to make way for a cement-paved parking lot.

The new Japanese film, based on the same Shichiro Fukazawa stories that inspired Keisuke Kinoshita’s 1958 film of the same name, means to be an ironic but life-affirming commentary on our so-called civilization by contrasting it with the manners and customs in a primitive Japanese mountain village 100 years ago.

Existence is not easy in the mountain village. Famine always threatens. The population is controlled mainly by tossing out newborn male children to die in the rice paddies. Female babies are retained for potential childbearing. If, by chance, a village elder has not died by age 70, the eldest child must carry the old person to a secret place near the summit of Mount Narayama, where the ancient one is left to die of starvation and exposure. In this fashion the community makes sure that there will be enough food for the survival of the rest of the villagers.

Like the Kinoshita film, Mr. Imamura’s is concerned mainly with a hard-working, tough, 69-year-old woman named Orin, whose family includes two grown sons, one a widower and one a possibly simple-minded bachelor, and assorted grandchildren. Though she’s in remarkably good shape, Orin feels that it’s time she made the journey to Narayama.

She’s lived long enough and she’s tired. Once she has found a new wife for her widowed son, as well as a woman who will consent to make love with the other son, she insists that Tatsuhei, the widower, carry out his obligations to her, the family and the community by making the trip up Narayama.

This is the principal story of ”The Ballad of Narayama,” which also includes subplots about the villagers’ merciless punishment of a family of thieves – they are buried alive – and a somewhat more light-hearted one about a young woman whose dying father insists that she sleep with every man in the village to atone for his own incestuous indiscretion.

Mr. Imamura is not a subtle film maker. He attempts to shock the audience into the realization that though this life order is harsh, it is beautiful in an efficiency that’s prompted as much by love as by material needs. At one point, we watch old Orin as she systematically smashes out her teeth to be able to convince Tatsuhei that her years of usefulness are over.

The director puts great store by visual repetitions that emphasize the oneness of all nature. When a young man and a young woman are making frantic love in a field, he shows us snakes, frogs, grasshoppers and birds engaged in similar pursuits. Unfortunately, an image of frogs, even in an amorous condition, evokes less wonder than amusement. In this world, it’s not dog-eat-dog but snake-eat-rat and then, to balance things, rat-eat- snake, all seen in tight, nature-movie close-ups.

He’s also fond of sequences that announce the changing of the seasons. The winter landscape melts toward spring and climaxes in an explosion of buds and grass, accompanied by the chirping of birds and the babbling of brooks containing frisky trout.

Though the performances are good, especially Sumiko Sakamoto’s as Orin and Ken Ogata’s as Tatsuhei, ”The Ballad of Narayama” is too picturesque to reflect the simple austerity of the story it tells.

The sophisticated photographic techniques, including the long, lovely helicopter shot of snow-covered mountains that opens the film, have little to do with the primitive lives contained in the movie itself. The ultimate effect is not to celebrate nature, or to shock us out of our civilized lethargy, but to exploit nature in a manner designed to impress jaded audiences without actually disturbing them.

I’m not at all surprised that the movie won the grand prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival where, as I see it in my imagination, the audience applauded it madly and then went off to dine at three-star restaurants.
Vincent Canby, NY Times, April 9, 1984

http://nitroflare.com/view/FCE28DDAFD6FCBA/Narayama-bushi_ko.avi
http://nitroflare.com/view/322D023ED98C457/Narayama-bushi_ko.srt
http://nitroflare.com/view/29015C7FF04B9D8/Extras.rar

Extras :
Exclusive new video interview with Tony Rayns.
Four original Japanese theatrical trailers.

Language:Japanese
Subtitles:English

Quote:
The 24 avant garde shorts of the 1920s and ’30s chosen for this Kino set from the collection of curator Raymond Rohauer span the gamut of movements and styles—dada, surrealism, city symphony, environmental terrarium, direct exposure. The diversity already makes the proposition of plowing through the pair of discs from start to finish not only daunting but perhaps ill-advised. Especially when lurking among the unassailable landmarks of silent avant garde cinema like Joris Ivens’s Regen (an evocative socio-environmental replication of the civic reaction to a rainy downpour on city streets) and Fernand Léger’s Ballet Méchanique (a rhythmic Parisian melange that’s kaleidoscopic in both its prismatic cinematography and its undulating circles of repetition) are at least two (possibly three) works that aim to take the piss out of the concept of non-narrative art cinema. The Hearts of Age, Orson Welles’s fraternal collaboration with William Vance (made when Welles was a mere 19 years of age), is a backyard farce that Welles later admitted to Peter Bogdanovich was made in benign mockery of the Buñuel/Dali collaborations that were inescapable in the day, though it scarcely owes any tangible debt to the style of Un Chien Andalou.

On the other hand, Even—As You and I contains an explicitly irreverent reference to the infamous cloud-bisects-moon/razor-dissects-eye sequence of the surrealist landmark. A trio of directors—Roger Barlow, Harry Hay, and LeRoy Robbins (the latter two instrumental in the gay rights movement decades later)—are stuck for ideas while attempting to enter a short film contest and end up reenacting the surrealist meme after running across an issue of Time magazine in praise of the movement. It sure looks easier to them than coming up with yet another “boy meets girl” scenario, which coyly suggests the queer subtext of art films and, paradoxically, the skewed level of commitment they see in many young avant directors. Downright bitchy (when it’s not prefiguring Three Stooges shorts), Barlow, Hay, and Robbins appear to be arguing that if Buñuel, Dali, and company were really up for a challenge, they’d try crafting a mainstream ditty.

Made four years before Even, Lot in Sodom is another collaboration between James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber and it almost provides the premonitory answer to that challenge, as it’s not only a fairly straightforward (pun not intended) retelling of the Old Testament story (Lot’s valiant attempt to keep one virgin ass untapped, much like Rock Hudson rescuing Dorothy Malone’s snatch from any possible excitement in Written on the Wind) but also a startlingly erotic series of muscular tableau. Like the warden’s dream sequences in Genet’s Un Chant D’Amour, homosexual sensuality goes hand-in-hand with brute tension and the post-coital impulse to destroy, which, considering how this particular story ends, makes God zee biggest bitch of zem all. Or at least in the running for the title with the Hollywood machinery, as portrayed in one of the seminal American avant garde shorts: Slavko Vorkapich and Robert Florey’s The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra, a Gregg Toland-lensed, silouetted-and-backlit fantasia on a starry-eyed man’s doomed stint in La-La Land, which portrays his failure to attract the attention of casting directors in shadowy noir close-ups and his daft resurrection and ascension to heaven as a gauzy Hollywood showstopper. Unlike Welles and Hay, et al’s vaguely smarmy (if still accomplished) burlesques on avant garde, Lot in Sodom and Hollywood Extra straddle the line between irony and impressionism that puts them in good company with many of the other uncontested greats included in this set: Man Ray, Ralph Steiner, and, perhaps above and beyond all else, the two astonishing films by Jean Epstein.

http://nitroflare.com/view/0D684129B880038/Avant_Garde_Disk02.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/D16684BFDED9738/Avant_Garde_Disk02.part2.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/132C88653423FF2/Avant_Garde_Disk02.part3.rar

Pass:www.worldcinema.org

Language(s):Various
Subtitles:English

Quote:
In the latter half of the 20th Century, Raymond Rohauer was one of the nation s foremost proponents of experimental cinema. This two-disc collection continues Kino s tribute to the Rohauer Collection, including the early works of Stan Brakhage and influential films by Willard Maas, Gregory Markopoulos, Marie Menken, Dimitri Kirsanoff, Jean Mitry, Sidney Peterson and others.

Quote:
the major pioneers of the period that came before the American avant-garde crested in the late Fifties to mid Sixties are all in attendance on the collection’s first disc: Willard Maas, Marie Menken, Sidney Peterson, James Broughton, Gregory Markopoulos, and Stan Brakhage. That period’s two seminal achievements—along with nearly the entirety of Deren’s oeuvre—are accounted for in Maas’s Geography of the Body (1943) and Peterson’s The Cage (1947). The former brings to cinema an unconventional depiction of the nude figure, with Maas’s extreme close-up photography transforming familiar parts into exciting, undiscovered terrains of flesh, an erotic revolution in vantage point that would inform everything from Carolee Schneemann’s Fuses to Brakhage’s entire film philosophy.

http://nitroflare.com/view/8FDF468591F0DF6/Avant-Garde_V2_DVD1.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/7427AB1277E1E37/Avant-Garde_V2_DVD1.part2.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/301C5C68A7A5486/Avant-Garde_V2_DVD1.part3.rar

Pass:www.worldcinema.org

Language(s):English
Subtitles:No subtitles.

Quote:
Makimono is an Asian roll painting depicting a landscape. The subject of the film is the language of film itself, its mutability and its influence on the viewer’s vision and thinking. While the film gradually progresses the viewer is gently invited to reflect on the development of the film in its expressive potential.

Quote:
“The title refers to Japanese landscape painting on rolls. Furthermore it indicates the film’s theme, the balance of colors (blurred tones of blue, green and grey) and the type of montage that gives priority to continuity of development rather than to disruption and contrast. This continuity is achieved by dissolvings and double exposures and by extremely long pans. The rhythm accelerates: a meditation on landscape, which unfolds before the eye or is visually paced out, gives way to fluidity and pure motion, to a feeling of dizziness, the result of two contrasting camera movements. The world resembles a reflection in the water; then, however, rapid montage creates a calligraphy consisting of the quick and sharp black strokes of a Hartung painting, until one finally arrives at the glittering simplicity of an early movie where each frame still retains the weight of its individual tracks, of earth and of the world. Anthony Moore’s Soundtrack strikingly agrees with the images presented and by means of three consecutive modulations bestows unto them the structure of a concerto.”
Helmuth Fenster

http://nitroflare.com/view/366EB330549E47A/MAKIMONO.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/5DE59323ADBCC95/MAKIMONO.part2.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/A79C9A2426467E4/MAKIMONO.part3.rar

https://publish2.me/file/5ea590e71898b/MAKIMONO.part1.rar
https://publish2.me/file/f47847d9becb0/MAKIMONO.part2.rar
https://publish2.me/file/e3e186954305c/MAKIMONO.part3.rar

no pass

DVD Source: Werner Nekes, Region 0, DVD5
DVD Format: PAL
DVD Audio: No language
Program: DVDShrink
Menus: None
Video: Untouched
Audio: Untouched
DVD extras: None

Length: 36 mins
Image: Color
Aspect Ratio: 720×576 (4/3)
Language:None

Juli (Ilona Schuetz) is a 17-year-old student who takes a summer job in a local chemical factory.
She is befriended by Piri (Adit Soos), a girl with an unsavory reputation who has worked there
before. The two friends are ogled by male workers who have overactive libidos and imaginations.
Juli spurns the advances of a deluded Romeo while Piri continues to work and endure open hostility
from the older female workers while her slothful parents sink deeper into alcoholism. The title
is taken from a popular Hungarian song.

http://nitroflare.com/view/CE500519C94FE8D/Ismeri_a_Szandi_Mandit_.avi
http://nitroflare.com/view/19BD4EA11B7BBB8/Ismeri_a_Szandi_Mandit.English.srt

Language: Hungarian
Subtitles: English (.srt )

Quote:
Disc two travels back in time for two late-Twenties American shorts before heading off to France for three late-Forties/early-Fifties films, including the epic Lettrism manifesto, Jean Isidore Isou’s Venom and Eternity (also known by the far better title Treatise on Slime and Eternity, 1951). From the former group only James Watson and Melville Webber’s expressionist adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) is of any note, while two of the three later films, Jean Mitry’s Pacific 231 (1949) and Dimitri Kirsanoff’s Arriere Saison (1950), serviceably employ techniques that had reached their fulfillment thirty years prior. Venom and Eternity is supposed to be the cherry on the cake—a rarely seen controversial feature with 34 minutes of restored footage.

http://nitroflare.com/view/910ED0082E8C033/Avant-Garde_V2_DVD2.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/869D18A185675DD/Avant-Garde_V2_DVD2.part2.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/1ED69FA1C2997E7/Avant-Garde_V2_DVD2.part3.rar

Pass:www.worldcinema.org

Language(s):French (for “Venom and Eternity”)
Subtitles:English (for “Venom and Eternity”)