Quote:
Film diarist Ross McElwee (Sherman’s March) offers another personal examination of Southern history and life with Bright Leaves, a documentary tracing his own connection to North Carolina and its tobacco industry. McElwee is drawn to the subject after meeting his second cousin John, a film memorabilia collector, who shows McElwee an old Warner Bros. film from 1950, Bright Leaf, in which Gary Cooper stars (alongside Patricia Neal and Lauren Bacall) as a tobacco magnate who builds himself up from nothing only to lose everything to a rich, powerful, and ruthless Southern gentleman. The film reminds McElwee of the stories his father used to tell about his great grandfather, who built up a fortune in the tobacco business, but spent years, and tens of thousands of dollars, suing the Duke family (the most powerful tobacco growers in American history, and founders of Duke University) for stealing his famous “Durham Bull” brand. The battle ruined him and left the family bankrupt. McElwee decides to investigate the origins of the film, which leads him to explore his own connection to the tobacco industry. Even though his family is no longer in the business, McElwee feels guilty about his family’s “contribution to global tobacco addiction.” McElwee interviews cancer patients, including former patients of his late father, a surgeon. He also interviews several friends who smoke or who have ties to the tobacco industry. In focusing on Bright Leaf, he finds himself interviewing film historian Vlada Petric and actress Neal. All of this is intertwined with a very personal family history involving his relationship with his father, his son, and the whole issue of smoking. — Josh Ralske

Bright.Leaves.2003.DVDRrip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 47mn
Size: 	1.40 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	706x392 ~> 706x441
Aspect ratio:  	16:10
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 640 Kbps
BPP: 	0.247
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 Kbps (Stereo)

https://nitro.download/view/7D66C406C1E1F51/Bright.Leaves.2003.DVDRrip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Ross McElwee – Bright Leaves (2003) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Filmmaker Ross McElwee grew up in the South and always marveled at how the folks there were affected by Union general William Tecumseh Sherman’s legacy. Aiming to delve deeper into the region’s interest, McElwee revisits the path of the general’s march that took down the Confederacy. But the tone of his documentary changes when he learns his girlfriend has left him, causing him to second-guess himself with each woman he meets during the shoot.

Museum of Modern Art:
You should use the camera as a way to meet women….” What begins as an attempt to retrace the path taken by General Sherman and his Union soldiers in their devastating sweep through the secessionist South, becomes, in the words of McElwee’s sister, a brokenhearted filmmaker’s clumsy chivalrous quest to find love. In his most celebrated film, McElwee points up the paradox of the inquisitive documentarian: “He’s gotten scalded by life, his lover left him, and so he retreats into the mollusk shell of his camera and pokes his head out now and then. Winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize.

2.52GB | 2h 37m | 708×531 | mkv

<https://nitro.download/view/2F6CE48615D2DD4/Sherman’s_March_(1986).mkv
https://nitro.download/view/745E20FA8450F74/Interview_with_Mcelwee.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Ross McElwee – Sherman’s March [+Extras] (1986) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
The “wise and flamboyant” Charleen Swansea, McElwee’s friend and former high school teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina, is a born raconteur who can charm equally a classroom full of wary African American poetry students and a Bible studies group of genteel southern white women
– Museum of Modern Art

550MB | 00:53:51 | 512×384 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/40068383BA259DB/Charleen_(1980).avi

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Ross McElwee – Charleen or How Long Has This Been Going On? (1980) first appeared on Cinema of the World.