Synopsis:
The project originated from two novellas of J.-H. Rosny, the joint pseudonym of the Belgian brothers Boex who wrote on natural, prehistoric and speculative subjects—sci fi before it was a genre. The film takes up their pluralist vision of evolution, where imagining prehistory is inseparable from envisioning the future. Also central are Roger Caillois’ writing on stones, Robert Hazen’s theory of Mineral Evolution, Clarice Lispector’s Hour of the Star, the Symbiosis theory of Lynn Margulis, multi-species scenarios of Donna Haraway, Hazel Barton’s research on cave microbes and Marcia Bjørnerud’s thoughts on time literacy. In one way or another, these thinkers have all sought to displace humankind and human reason from the center of evolutionary processes. Passages from Rosny and interviews with Bjørnerud form the film’s science-fictional / science-factual spine. Stones are its anchor. To touch stone is to meet alien duration. We trust stone as archive, but we may as well write on water. In the end, it’s particles that remain.

Container: Matroska
Runtime: 49 min 33 s
Size: 5.61 GB
Video Codec: x264
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33
Frame rate: 24 fps
Audio: 2.0ch AAC (Stereo)

https://nitro.download/view/5499829CF87C9F0/(2023)_Last_Things.mkv

Language(s):English & French
Subtitles:Burned in English subtitles

The post Deborah Stratman – Last Things (2023) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis
An experimental documentary about resistance, balance and fame, Kings of the Sky follows tightrope artist Adil Hoxur as he and his troupe tour China’s Taklamakan desert amongst the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people seeking religious and political autonomy. The film gracefully hovers between travelogue, ethnographic visual poetry, and an advocacy video for preserving a traditional art form.

This project was shot over four months with Adil and his troupe as we toured Chinese Turkestan, performing nightly in tiny oasis villages. Adil descends from a long line of Dawaz (tightrope) performers, and is now teaching his daughters the craft. Since he first broke the Guinness World Record in 1997, Adil’s fame has eclipsed anything achieved by his forbears. He has become an inadvertent national icon for his people’s struggle, bearing uncanny resemblance to the Dawaz hero of an old Uyghur myth who once freed his countrymen from an oppressive reign of invading ghosts, an apt metaphor for the ongoing tension between the Uyghurs and the Han Chinese.

Despite years of government repression, nationalist sentiment amongst ethnic Uyghurs quietly boils under the surface. Recent separatist demonstrations in the 1990s resulted in the government’s “Strike Hard” policy to incarcerate, and in some cases execute, outspoken Uyghur nationalists – a policy being exacted in increasingly harsh ways since September 11th. Throughout Xinjiang there is a heavy police and military presence. News is controlled, travel and mosque attendance are restricted and public meetings are forbidden. One can be jailed for years on mere suspicion of subversion. In this environment, resistance tends to happen in smaller ways.

By portraying the intimate details of everyday life amidst the Dawaz troupe, Kings of the Sky reveals to those unfamiliar with Uyghur culture the small truths which together form a sense of national and political identity. Kings of the Sky is a film about seeking balance: balance between minority separatist yearnings and Han Chinese rule… balance between ancient cultural traditions and modern technologies… balance between an American filmmaker and a remote Muslim community… and balance between our flightless bodies and the eternal laws of gravity.

1.11GB | 1h 07m | 640×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/32A077202B12FB1/Kings_Of_The_Sky.avi

Language(s):English,Mandarin
Subtitles:Mandarin parts with English hardsubs

The post Deborah Stratman – Kings of the Sky (2004) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis: An experimental documentary about the street drag racing scene on Chicago’s near West Side.

This is a rambling, textured film about obsession. It is about the mythos of speed for its own sake, and it is about waiting. While waiting, The BLVD exposes community, inner-city landscapes and nomadic experiences of place. The film treats storytelling as a living medium for determining history. And it commands respect for those who transform cars, or anything else, through passion.

364MB | 1h 03m | 640×480 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/CB5F8D8906AF41D/The_BLVD_(1999)_-_Deborah_Stratman.mkv
or
https://tezfiles.com/file/564e05e3b3395/The_BLVD_%281999%29_-_Deborah_Stratman.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Deborah Stratman – The BLVD (1999) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

[B]The Magician’s House[B] 2007, 5:45 Both a letter to a cancer stricken, alchemist-filmmaker friend, and a quiet tribute to the vanishing art of celluloid, “The Magician’s House” is full of ghosts. Including that of Athanasius Kircher, inventor of the Magic Lantern or “Sorcerer’s Lamp”. The music, La lutte des Mages (The Struggle of the Magicians), was composed by Armenian mystic Georges Gurdjieff and Thomas De Hartmann. Gurdjieff thought of man as a kind of “transmitting station of forces.” To him, most people move around in a state of waking sleep, so he sought to provide aural conditions that would induce awareness.

71.1MB | 5m 50s | 640×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/AEA0266A198665D/The_Magician’s_House_(2007)_-_Deborah_Stratman.avi
or
https://tezfiles.com/file/df3895470317c/The_Magician%27s_House_%282007%29_-_Deborah_Stratman.mp4

Language(s):None
Subtitles:None

The post Deborah Stratman – The Magician’s House (2007) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis
An uncompromising look at the ways privacy, safety, convenience and surveillance determine our environment. Shot entirely at night, the film confronts the hermetic nature of white-collar communities, dissecting the fear behind contemporary suburban design. An isolation-based fear (protect us from people not like us). A fear of irregularity (eat at McDonalds, you know what to expect). A fear of thought (turn on the television). A fear of self (don’t stop moving). By examining evacuated suburban and corporate landscapes, the film reveals a peculiarly 21st century hollowness… an emptiness born of our collective faith in safety and technology. This is a new genre of horror movie, attempting suburban locations as states of mind.

Original electronic music by Kevin Drumm.

568MB | 34m 01s | 624×480 | avi

https://nitroflare.com/view/377D876CE9E00E4/In_Order_Not_To_Be_Here.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Deborah Stratman – In Order Not to Be Here (2002) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

An experimental and haunting collection of vignettes, Deborah Stratman’s O’er the Land weaves several picturesque and arresting strands into an evocative essay on freedom as defined by The American Way. At once contemplative and jarring, the film quietly ricochets from one emblem of patriotism and of the American experience to the next: football, recreational vehicles, Civil War re-enactments, and war stories, to name a few. A recurring motif in the film is the story of Colonel William Rankin, a Marine pilot who in 1959 ejected from his F8-U fighter jet and parachuted into a thunderstorm 48,000 feet above Virginia. Incredibly, Col. Rankin remained aloft for nearly an hour, tossed by air pockets and electrical fields, before crashing to the ground and, miraculously, surviving. One might say O’er the Land keeps the viewer aloft for a turbulent and rapturous hour as well. TM

https://nitroflare.com/view/B55B7CFBEFC6323/O’er_the_Land_(Stratman,_2008).avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Deborah Stratman – O’er the Land (2009) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

An experimental documentary comprised of regional vignettes about faith, force, technology and exodus. Eleven parables relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism and resistance, all occurring somewhere in the state of Illinois. But the state is a structural ruse, and its histories are allegories that ask what belief might teach us about nationhood. In our desire to understand the inscrutable, whom do we end up blaming or endorsing?

Quote:
Shooting on 16mm, Stratman has produced one of the most quietly radiant movies of recent memory, working in the Midwestern palette of gray, green, and brown, relieved by the occasional snowfall. From these sections, which breathe in the aura at scenes of historical import in a manner that recalls the Straubs of From the Clouds to the Resistance or Itinéraire de Jean Bricard, Stratman moves on to other diverse techniques, incorporating archival footage and audio collage to revisit the devastation of the Tri-State Tornado, undertaking a reenactment of a reenactment of the death of Black Panther Fred Hampton at the hands of the FBI and Chicago police, and even seeming to sprout wings to view landscape sculptures by Michael Heizer from on high.

Nick Pinkerton for Film Comment

Quote:
Accrue mythic histories of violence, martyrdom, atomic breakthrough, failed utopias, vigilante justice, telekinesis, expulsion. Let them comprise a suite of Midwestern parables.

https://nitro.download/view/E49BB8C10782BA6/Stratman,_Deborah_-_The_Illinois_Parables.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Deborah Stratman – The Illinois Parables (2016) first appeared on Cinema of the World.