Quote:
This film is a portrait of the passage of one year in the lives of some San Francisco friends, circa 1988 (before the dot.coming of the city), a slow marijuana hazed story which drifts like the fabled fog, encompassing the quirks and habits of a generation that made the city theirs, if only for a while. Very obliquely REMBRADT LAUGHING sketches the time and place, encompassing the Aids epidemic, the casual sexual revolution, the debris of ’68 lingering in the air. A quiet, very San Francisco comedy of life among a small group of friends. REMBRANDT LAUGHING was improvised over the period of about a month by Jost and his friends, mostly acting non-professionals.
(Jon Jost)

Jon Jost’s ninth feature focuses rather elliptically on the everyday lives of a group of friends in San Francisco–chiefly Claire (Barbara Hammes), who works in an architect’s office, two of her former lovers (Jon A. English and Nathaniel Dorsky), who are close friends, and a recent boyfriend (Jim Nisbet). Masterfully shot and for the most part very persuasively acted, mainly by nonprofessionals (the film’s use of locals is one reason it captures the San Francisco milieu so perfectly), REMBRANDT LAUGHING is a good deal more ambitious than it might first appear. A sense of the timeless and the cosmic hovers over the seemingly casual scenes, and the uses of a Rembrandt self-portrait and Beethoven’s opus 132 string quartet are integral to the film’s overall project–to discover the universe in a bowl of miso soup. Part of Jost’s method, like Godard’s in UNE FEMME MARIEE, is to convert the dramatic into the graphic, and his various means of carrying that out are unexpected and frequently beautiful.
(Jonathan Rosenbaum)

Rembrandt Laughing.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 39 min
Size: 	3.92 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	29.970 fps
Bit rate: 	5 402 kb/s
BPP: 	0.087
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 253 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/8B1E98E02043AD6/Rembrandt_Laughing.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Jon Jost – Rembrandt Laughing (1989) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
ANGEL CITY seems to me one of my most dated works, perhaps because it is in the nature of satires, or the embracing of things-of-the-time (in order to skewer them) that one is necessarily enmeshed with just what one is out to attack, like B’rer Rabbit’s tar baby. Still it has some pretty funny things in it, even now. And as a film it is for the money, a pretty spectacular piece, with aerials, a big crane shot, EFX, all done for a measly (even back then) $6000.
Which brings up a little anecdote. ANGEL CITY was made with 3 investors, a doctor and a few professors out of La Jolla, California (UCSD), who each put up $2,000 apiece, and I guess – though they got to see the script first – they thought that for their big pot of gold they were going to get some kind of Hollywood thriller/detective story. When they saw it they were appalled and probably totally mystified, and dropped it like a hot potato. I suppose to them it was some kind of “experimental” thing, and not the potential Hollywood potboiler BO-buster they seemed to anticipate. Being utterly unaware of film realities and how much had been done for how little they scampered away in dismay. Along the way, they declined to fork over the remaining $500 which was due of the total budget, such sum which was to be my pay for it all. However, then ownership also fell in my hands, and after a nice tour of festivals, good press, and so on I was able a few years later to sell it to the new UK Channel Four, for $12,000. My first “profit,” I guess. It was my first experience with “investors” and “producers” and unfortunately was indicative of future experiences, which seems to prove I don’t learn too well from experience. At least not that kind of experience. Or maybe it is indicative of a fundamental problem of the film business.
(Jon Jost)

829MB | 1h 10m | 960×540 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/1CEBCE3E0D54195/Angel_City_540p.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Jon Jost – Angel City (1977) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Autotranslated description:
Impressions from the American Independence Day celebrations in Butte, Montana: evening mood, American flag on the veranda, barbecue, firecrackers, fireworks. A quote from Donald Trump: “Marxists, anarchists, troublemakers and looters destroy our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children and trample our freedom. Your goal is no better America, your goal is the end of America. ”A short, to-the-point comment.
(Mara Rusch)

95.9MB | 3m 24s | 1920×1080 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/888E91031CB71CE/Jon_Jost_-_July_4,_2020.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Jon Jost – July 4, 2020 (2020) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Plain Talk & Common Sense (uncommon senses) “is a complex essay-film, a follow-up a decade and some years later to Speaking Directly, and so another State of the Nation discourse, made for Britain’s Channel Four in the year 1986-87. The work involved extensive travel around the United States, and poses an examination of just what America is/was, or what do we mean when we speak of it. Done in a series of radically different sections which collide with each other in a manner intended to provoke thinking, Plain Talk, which was made by an American and intended for American viewers, was indeed
broadcast in Britain, but somewhat predictably, not in the USA. “
–Jon Jost on his website. His website blurb used to be longer

“Plain Talk and Common Sense is Jost’s most successful film yet – a movie of expansive negativity, that putting patriotism under erasure, proposes to represent America and then revels in its inability to do so.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

1.64GB | 1h 52m | 694×520 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/1E76F7683BFC008/Jost__1987__Plain_Talk_&_Common_Sense.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Jon Jost – Plain Talk & Common Sense (1987) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Slow Moves is a bluesy lyrical romance of two ugly-ducklings who meet on the Golden Gate Bridge and after a brief and awkward courtship, live together with the usual problems of money and work, take flight to an illusory freedom on the road, and dances inexorably to a drab doom. At once funny, grubby, beautiful, lyrical, tragic and sad. (Jon Jost)

Quote:

At one point, inspired by having lived briefly in a building in Emeryville (across the bay from San Francisco) in which a cryogenics company was reputed to be holding Walt Disney’s iced body, I blurted out a partial script, a vitriolic satire on all things Disney. .. Returning to SF all primed to make the film with a zero budget and my cheap stock, I found my would-be lead actor had gone south to UCSD to get a degree in philosophy. Rather wired to do something, instead of casting around for a replacement I did something else instead: replaced the idea for the film, and in short order asked a few friends if they’d be in it, layed out a few basic ideas, spent a few weeks of casual time talking with the actors, Marshall Gaddis and Roxanne Rogers, nudging them toward developing characters. I did not though let them meet each other, knowing that Marshall hadn’t been laid in a year, and thinking perhaps I’d catch a spark of actual romantic interest, or at least erotic interest.

Marshall – whom I’d met in Montana – had never acted in anything before, and had taken to a reclusive life in the Sierra foothills, caretaking someone’s house and trying to write a novel. I chose him as I wanted rather deliberately to make a film about the kind of people who in general are either simply deemed as unworthy of cinematic presentation, or, if presented are usually made to be caricatures to be ridiculed. Roxanne had worked a bit in theater (her brother is Sam Shepard), but never in film. It was my intention to shoot very quickly – about four days, to improvise off of a skeletal outline, and roll the dice. The “script” was two pages of diagrams and notes to myself, and the hatchmarks of dozens of cribbage games.

1.05GB | 1h 31mn | 624×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/0E87FA4D3DF758C/SLOW_MOVES.avi

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Jon Jost – Slow Moves (1983) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

An essay-film on language and theater, on human communication – intellectual in content, but purely poetic in terms of form: image, sound, language, cinema. Stagefright, with the exception of one shot, was all filmed in a small puppet theater space, actors against black.

Producer, writer, director, editor cinematographer : Jon Jost

Shown at Sydney and, Melbourne Film Festivals

Broadcast by SFB, Germany

829MB | 1:10:37 | 656×464 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/0B9999B7932387E/Stagefright.avi

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Jon Jost – Stagefright (1981) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

In this independently produced drama, a timbermill owner is having great difficulty sustaining a livelihood due to overcutting and peculiarities of the international trade situation. Despite the damaging effect his mill has on the local environment, he appears to be someone who really enjoys the unspoiled wilderness, because he goes fly-fishing whenever he can. His troubled life edges veers into deeper waters when his daughter sends him a letter in which she accuses him of incest. Whether her story proves to be true or not, it is certain that his life is now ruined forever, as are the lives of those around him. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

1.23GB | 1 h 56 min | 690×356 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/0E125F45412163D/Jon_Jost_-_(1993)_The_Bed_You_Sleep_In.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Jon Jost – The Bed You Sleep In (1993) first appeared on Cinema of the World.