Gustave Courbet, The Origin of his World
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), painter of real life, the earth, and material things, was so much a part of his era he lost himself in it. He paid for this dearly: wealthy and famous in this youth, he was later obliged to chum out paintings to avoid starvation.
“Only an hour long, Romain Goupil’s 2007 documentary on Gustave Courbet, the great French 19th-century realist painter, still expands your mind and heightens your reactions, with the lucidity and grace of all the best art (and criticism). Courbet was a terrific character, a rebel from the bourgeoisie, who accomplished in paint the revolution that he couldn’t quite manage in life. A lifelong anti-clericist and socialist, he was an important figure in the Paris Commune, a political indiscretion for which he later paid dearly, with exile and bankruptcy.
But Courbet’s super-realist painting, with its working class, non-bourgeois and sometimes heavily erotic subjects, was less celebrated in the 20th century than he deserved, because the vogue in painting went in such a different (far more formalist and empty) direction. Yet he’s certainly a master, especially of the human form — and, in my opinion, far more deserving of critical honors than most of the abstract artists who outstripped him in favor. His paintings still live and breathe — most notably the scandalous, notorious, dangerously sensual ”L’Origine du Monde,” a sexual portrait of woman so realistic, and incendiary, that it was hidden away for more than a century by its secretive owners, one of whom was psychologist/writer Jacques Lacan.”

Extras:
The Origin of the World
Long considerated obscene, The Origin of the World is still among the most provocative convases ever painted. This film relates the story of one of the most mysterious paintings in the history of Western art.

Dead Man’s Place
In 1851, Burial at Ornans caused an outrage. This complex work, with its hidden symbolic and formal implications, is truly a metaphysical experiment in vision and perception.

Behind the Scenes of an Exhibition: The Spectacular Transfer of a Masterpiece

1.09GB | 51m 37s | 853×480 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/0F334925224CBAB/Gustave_Courbet_-_The_Origin_of_His_World_(Romain_Goupil_2007).mkv
https://nitro.download/view/26F2554E1DF7A48/Behind_the_Scenes_of_an_Exhibition_-_The_Spectacular_Transfer_of_a_Masterpiece_(2007).mkv
https://nitro.download/view/7C14260218DF9E6/La_Place_du_Mort__Palettes__(Alain_Joubert_1996).mkv
https://nitro.download/view/1BEF3765BAC9524/The_Origin_of_the_World_(Jean-Paul_Fargier_1996).mkv

Language(s):French, English, German [3 Audio Tracks]
Subtitles:French, English, German

The post Romain Goupil – Gustave Courbet, the Origin of his World [+Extras] (2007) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
This intelligent and current picture about childhood fears and understandings also serves as a damning indictment of French immigration policy under Sarkozy. Narrated retrospectively from the year 2067 by central protagonist Milana, she tells the story of her near-deportation from France at the age of ten and the plan her young classmates hatched to save her. Milana (Linda Doudaeva) lives with her Chechen family in Paris and attends the same school as her friend Blaise (Jules Ritmanic) and his younger sister Alice (Louna Klanit). After their friend Youssef is deported along with his family, Blaise’s mother (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) takes Milana into their home, hoping to protect her from the police, busy chasing deportation targets. The children hear stories of their immigrant neighbours falling to their deaths from balconies trying to hide from the strong-armed authorities and entire families disappearing and so eventually take their safety into their own hands by absconding to an underground basement as a kind of protest of solidarity with Milana. It’s a culture of fear and paranoia in which even the classroom is no longer safe for those not natively born in France, their multi-cultural community is effectively portrayed as a police state and whilst set today and grounded in reality, images of groups of officers marching down the street evoke the darkest Orwellian dystopias.
Director Romain Goupil elicits brilliant performances from his young cast, terrified for their friend yet ready to take affirmative action against laws even a child can see are destructive. That’s not to say all sides of the argument aren’t discussed, Goupil (playing Blaise’s father) occupies a reformative but more centrist position than his wife and becomes frustrated with her ultra-liberal idealism. Her argument with her politically-opposed brother (Hippolyte Girardot) provides one of the strongest scenes in the film. But it’s the time spent alone with the children that’s ultimately the most rewarding. Like Laurent Cantet with The Class (2008), Goubil directed the kids through a series of improvisations and there’s no sentimental element to any of the characters, just all the complexities, insecurities, naiveties and self-assuredness of childhood.
Shot digitally on the RED camera system, the scenes on the streets have an urgency and tangible sense of tension whilst those in the cellar where the kids hide out are candle-lit to womb-like effect. The question of immigration in France today is much more than a subtext in Hands Up, it’s the backbone to the story, and whilst never moralising or dictatorial in its’ message, it is quietly optimistic yet clear in its’ view that it’s the next generation who’ll need to implement change. Hopefully the future-set framing device of the film will prove a premonition, and the next generation will be able to tell a similar story to this one to a future audience in disbelief that this was happening in 2010.

Les.mains.en.lair.2010.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 28mn
Size:	1.62 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	716x552 ~> 1021x552
Aspect ratio:	1.85:1
Frame rate:	25.000 fps
Bit rate:	2 173 kb/s
Audio
French 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/01C9E6587EF4488/Les.mains.en.lair.2010.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language:French
Subtitles:English

The post Romain Goupil – Les mains en l’air aka Hands in the Air (2010) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

She was 18, they were in love, lived together 10 years. 20 years letter she
sends him a letter. She’s sick, does not talk much about her, but asks him
a question “When will you make a good movie ?”. He then takes his camera and
tries to speak of other things, about cinéma, their early political combats
and what became of them. Through his hesitations, his interrogations, he
draws the bitter image of an era. Moscow, Gaza, Berlin, Belgrade, Sarajevo,
Paris, Sarajavo again. A way to stay with her, to retail life.

1.32GB | 1:41:05 | 608×368 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/C9FBCC5A9FFAA0F/Lettre.pour.L.Romain.Goupil.1994.FRENCH.DVDRip.XviD-RxB.avi
https://nitro.download/view/2BECC2B53B56E47/Lettre.pour.L.Romain.Goupil.1994.FRENCH.DVDRip.XviD-RxB.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Romain Goupil – Lettre pour L… (1994) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Documentary on the life of Michel Recanati, a leading figure in the May 1968 riots in Paris. He was also involved in the Revolutionary Communist Youth movement and anti-fascist campaigns. He was imprisoned briefly in 1973, and five years later committed suicide aged thirty.

This film won the Golden Palm at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.
It often gets referenced as one of the greatest films about “1968”.

NYT Review

ACCORDING to ”Half a Life” (French title: Mourir a Trente Ans), Romain Goupil’s autobiographical film- memoir about growing up in France in the 1960’s and 70’s, the 32-year-old film maker is actually two people living in invigorating disharmony within one skin.

The first Romain Goupil is – and seems always to have been – a movie nut, partly, he says, because he found at an early age that it was easier to make movies than to learn how to spell. The other Romain Goupil has been a fiery political activist since his high school days. Unfortunately for the activist, the movie maker’s sense of irony and his ability to see life in long-shots continually interrupt the career of the would-be revolutionary.

When it is dealing with the movie- madness that erupted all over Europe and America in the late 60’s and early 70’s, ”Half a Life” is one of the brightest, funniest films of its kind since Jim McBride’s classic ”David Holzman’s Diary.” The film is also an earnest attempt to evoke the memory of Michel Recanati, Mr. Goupil’s teen-age political mentor and comrade-in-arms for more than 10 years. Recanati, whom we see in footage shot by Mr. Goupil when they were parading, speaking at revolutionary-youth rallies and discussing the future of mankind at home, seems to have burned himself out before he was 30. He committed suicide in 1978, having been unable to find a place for himself in a world after the hoped-for revolution, begun in May 1968, fizzled out.

Recanati’s life and death are just two of the elements in Mr. Goupil’s own coming-of-age, which ”Half a Life” recalls with great humor and wit through clips from his earliest home movies, newsreel footage and interviews with old friends.

There is a lot of Francois Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel in the Romain Goupil we see in ”Half a Life,” especially in Mr. Goupil’s inability to commit himself to any one cause for very long without seeing the other side. His film is the work of a talented, extremely self-aware new director.

Revolutionaries HALF A LIFE, directed and written by Romain Goupil; in French with English subtitles; camera by Sophie Goupil, Jean Chiabaut and Renan Polles; edited by Francoise Prenant; produced by Marin Karmitz; released by New Line Cinema. Running time: 95 minutes. This film has no rating. WITH: Michel Recanati and Romain Goupil

Mourir.à.30.ans.1982.1080p.MUBI.WEB-DL.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 37 min
Size: 	4.07 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1482x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	1.372
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	5 853 kb/s
BPP: 	0.146
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC @ 128 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/C5F477499F872F3/Mourir.a.30.ans.1982.1080p.MUBI.WEB-DL.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/455324BD38604ED/Mourir.a.30.ans.1982.1080p.MUBI.WEB-DL.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Romain Goupil – Mourir à 30 ans aka Half a life (1982) first appeared on Cinema of the World.