Marcelo has devoted his life to teaching philosophy at the Public University of Buenos Aires. When his mentor Professor Caselli dies unexpectedly, Marcelo expects to become the new head of Department. However, his plans turn upside down with the unexpected arrival of Rafael Sujarchuk. Charismatic and seductive, Rafael returns from his pedestal in European universities to claim the vacant position for himself. Marcelo’s clumsy efforts to prove he is the right candidate will trigger a philosophical duel, while his life -and the country- enter a spiral of chaos.

Puan.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 50 min
Size: 	3.40 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1800x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	5:3
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 199 kb/s
BPP: 	0.090
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch MP3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/33779AEF5A6F5F6/Puan.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English here

The post María Alché & Benjamín Naishtat – Puan (2023) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A police helicopter circles over a gated community on the outskirts of a large city. Something must have happened. The very first shot of this directorial debut conveys the paranoia which shrouds this film about the fears of an increasingly detached social class. Even a hole in the fence represents a life-threatening event. The other side of their self-made barrier marks the beginning of a social netherworld where they are convinced dubious and unpredictable creatures with designs on their wealth are lurking. The camera takes a step back to capture but also to question in grotesque and absurd tableaux this diffuse anxiety and almost primeval fear. When Argentina was rocked by a severe economic crisis several years ago, politicians exploited people’s fears in order to foster a general feeling of insecurity. In his ironic portrait of a constantly fragmenting society, Benjamin Naishtat ponders this development.

Quote:
A damming portrait of a community tearing itself apart from the inside, Benjamín Naishtat’s Berlinale Competition offering History of Fear (2014) ponders the future outcome of a world governed through fear and paranoia. Opening with an aerial shot surveying the film’s gated Buenos Aires compound, History of Fear presents us with a seemingly dystopian present where neighbourhoods are fragmented in accordance with the social strata. A flimsy fence is all that separates this suburb from the horrors of the outside world, whilst also an ideological barrier that helps the bourgeois residents sleep at night.

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 19mn
Size: 	2.60 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1280x600 
Aspect ratio:  	2.133
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	
BPP: 	
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC

https://nitro.download/view/D02D5A0BAA0980E/Historia_del_miedo_(2014).mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:Hardcoded English

The post Benjamín Naishtat – Historia del miedo AKA History of Fear (2014) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
El Movimiento takes place during the first half of the XIX century, in a vast and desolated land which has fallen into anarchy. Several groups of armed men drift along the infinite Pampas demanding for support and food from the peasants. While there’s great rivalry among these groups, they all claim allegiance to the Movement, such the name of the political organization they say to represent. Among these drifting gangs there’s one led by Señor, an educated man who together with two followers intends to found a peaceful new order. While his enchanting words and manners seem appealing to the people, his methods reveal an unstoppable thirst for power.

Quote:
Visually austere and formally rigorous, Benjamin Naishtat’s 70-minute feature is a stark historical parable of frontier life on the Pampas more than 150 years ago, prior to the unification of Argentina as a nation. Defiantly non-commercial, the film could benefit from further festival play and potentially gain more exposure on digital platforms.

Naishtat signals his provocative intent from the opening scene, shot in inky black-and-white HD and framed in a nearly square aspect ratio, as it depicts a band of former soldiers entertaining themselves by harassing and then murdering a local farmer by blowing his head off with a canon. The next scene, although less violent, is equally disturbing, as a trio of ruffians help themselves to an elderly farmer’s meager harvest while they openly discuss their plans to rustle his cattle and perhaps kidnap his teenage daughter, inflicting further trauma after the recent murder of his wife at the hands of another bandit group.

The group’s leader, a middle-aged man known only as Señor (Pablo Cedron), claims to represent an emerging political organization that will help unite Argentina’s various competing factions after a prolonged period of internecine wars, banishing the wave of anarchy dominating the region during the early 19th Century. As he travels the desolate countryside with his two followers, he harangues residents to attend an upcoming meeting where he will reveal The Movement’s plans for unification, although he fails to reveal any affiliation or official status that might appease people’s concerns about his violent methods of persuasion.

Naishtat shot the film with support from Korea’s Jeonju International Film Festival, where he won an award for his 2014 debut feature History of Fear. The festival grant required him to complete a film of at least 60 minutes within a very limited budget and timeframe. Those stipulations persuaded him to select primarily handheld, black-and-white cinematography, constrain the framing of scenes and almost entirely forego artificial lighting in order to minimize expenses.

The budgetary and creative exigencies prompted some interesting creative choices, as Naishtat forces his rough-hewn characters into the center of the frame for their stagy, frequently declamatory line readings. The meager plot is frequently disjointed and performances are intentionally unpolished, resulting in a sometimes disorientingly expressionistic visual style. It’s not a particularly attractive approach, but it adequately conveys the violence and disorder of the period.

https://nitro.download/view/18654A06CA931FB/El_Movimiento_(Benjamin_Naishtat,_2015).mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:Hardcoded English

The post Benjamín Naishtat – El Movimiento AKA The Movement (2015) first appeared on Cinema of the World.