Quote:
Deploying masterful Steadicam and ominous sound design, Kerr’s enigmatic and disquieting feature debut takes place one summer day on an idyllic estate in Texas. A large family gathers to take a group picture, only for the matriarch to disappear and the rest of the clan to drift away, leaving daughter Katy (Deragh Campbell) to try to salvage the gathering in a world where reality is increasingly untrustworthy.

Family.Portrait.2023.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-TEMHO.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 12 min
Size: 	1.89 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1620x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	3:2
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 451 kb/s
BPP: 	0.082
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 253 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/B025EF12EC6D796/Family.Portrait.2023.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-TEMHO.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/6EF9F9708D28967/Family.Portrait.2023.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-TEMHO.srt

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Lucy Kerr – Family Portrait (2023) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Isolde, a social worker in a poor district in Toronto, is on her first case assignment; the administrative procedures she follows have us feel the burden of an action that is nonetheless professionally codified – that of helping someone. Her “client” is still behind bars and at first, he only appears in their correspondence and the phone calls she makes on his behalf. Behind its legal meaning, the title underlines this absence: Eric Edwards is averse to appearing in court and seems equally impervious to Isolde’s solicitude. Besides, where does this vague desire to help strangers who are sometimes mentally unstable, lie or are in a permanent state of denial, come from? Isolde brings an answer when she mentions her literary studies to her colleague: she likes novels because of their characters; her profession transfers this empathy onto real people. Her colleague’s irony shouldn’t fool us: Antoine Bourges may well deliver here the key to this original re-enactment, which continues his short film, East Hastings Pharmacy, screened at Cinéma du Réel in 2012. The actors re-enact scenes that he has seen in reality or improvise “on existing protocols”, as the filmmaker says. Some profile shots of Isolde, silent and concentrated facing Eric, or the shot of him alone at his place, with his head on the table, take on an iconic force. They belie the title by having these beings actually appear.

2.81GB | 1h 7m | 1920×1080 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/EAC250DFAE621D6/Fail.to.Appear.2017.1080p.MUBI.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H264-CMYK.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, French, Spanish

The post Antoine Bourges – Fail to Appear (2017) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
A psychiatric patient with a brain implant that allows her to relive her dreams finds her reality being encroached upon in unappetizing and surreal ways.

335MB | 9m 37s | 1920×1080 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/3540552658935F1/Please.Speak.Continuously.and.Describe.Your.Experiences.as.They.Come.to.You.2019.1080p.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Brandon Cronenberg – Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You (2019) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Never Eat Alone is an unorthodox, feature length docu-fiction that subtly explores an expired romance. Constructed with minimal narrative, the film follows an elderly woman’s interest in connecting with an ex-lover from long ago.

1.47GB | 1h 07mn | 1280×720 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/460292F8DB252FA/Never.Eat.Alone.2016.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H264.mkv
or
https://nitro.download/view/9DB72A5E93AA411/Never.Eat.Alone.2016.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H264.part1.rar
https://nitro.download/view/C3CF946ACF772C8/Never.Eat.Alone.2016.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H264.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Sofia Bohdanowicz – Never Eat Alone (2016) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A woman who has trouble articulating herself finds a place of her own in researching the letters of her great-grandmother in this entrancing character study.

Quote:
NOVEMBER 17, 2019 6:41 AM
by STEPHEN SAITO

There’s a throwaway moment in “MS Slavic 7” that shows a wonderfully mischievous mind at work as a librarian at Harvard University can be seen playing with a label he’s just printed out, saying “Property of the Houghton Library.” Like a fickle god, the sticker is flicked from one finger to another, presumably to be affixed to a book that will forever belong to the library that may be able to loan it out, but no one that reads it can ever feel as if it’s truly theirs no matter how intimate a relationship they forge with the words inside. Fortunately, the moment is interrupted by Audrey (Deragh Campbell), who has made her way south to Massachusetts from Toronto to read letters penned by her great-grandmother Zofia, and this small but permanent decision is brushed off to the side with the sly inference that Audrey has inadvertently created an opportunity for her to call something her own.

“MS Slavic 7” was inspired by a real-life revelation for director Sofia Bohdanowicz, who uncovered the relationship between her great-grandmother and Jozef Wittlin, a one-time Nobel laureate nominee, both poets and survivors of the Holocaust whose correspondence is romantic, even if it remains undetermined if they indulged in a proper romance, and Campbell, credited as a co-director, essentially is playing a version of her as Audrey, though after appearing as the character in two other of Bohdanowicz’s films, it is clearly a combination of them both. Yet even if both filmmakers have imbued Audrey with certain qualities, she is largely undefined when she first appears, unpacking her luggage in an anonymous hotel room with the lone extravagance – a bottle of wine – accompanying the essentials to suggest anything about her life.

That some spirit is never far from her reach can be read as needing something to soothe her soul in the present moment, and becomes the strongest hint early on why Audrey is so intent on uncovering her great-grandmother’s letters, but Bohdanowicz and Campbell, who co-edited the film together, gradually reveal why such a such a seemingly innocuous request turns into an epic ordeal when her aunt Anja, who looks after the family’s affairs, and even the librarian at Harvard who controls access to the archive, assert authority where they can in an effort to feel as if they hold power in a world where they often clearly don’t. Left unspoken but looming large over the proceedings is the fact that Zofia’s letters are only valued by the Houghton for their connection to a celebrated man, but as Audrey begins to dig into them, this inequity is rectified as the back-and-forth correspondence between Zofia and Josef carries equal weight and the text becomes as gripping for Audrey as she opens up the letters as when their original recipients did.

The words leap off the page for those off-screen as well, thanks to the truly inspired ways that Bohdanowicz and Campbell allow an audience into Audrey’s mind formally. The letters themselves are presented in tactile fashion, occasionally translucent to elevate the bold black ink of the text over the opaque paper it was written on, and a mere image of Audrey laying hands on one can set off a trail of subtitles that unveil their content, racing across the screen to be unpackaged at the same rate our heroine is piecing things together. There are some surprises tucked in, with a few as a result of the film’s subtly anachronistic structure, and the cut backs to a conversation that Audrey is having in a cafe with what appears at first to be no one in particular is especially clever as she works out her thoughts about what she’s discovered in stunted bursts, reflecting how frustrated she can be with what she’s able to articulate from what she knows to be true and the responsibility of doing so in relation to people who were once able to express themselves so eloquently is treacherous. These moments can be as funny as they are terrifying and for a film steeped in the experience of reading and the internal emotions it can stir, “MS Slavic 7” is unexpectedly visceral and engaging, summoning all the vitality that can be hidden within the margins, sometimes with entire lives falling into the crevices that deserve to be brought to light. With their latest collaboration, Bohdanowicz and Campbell offer up the pleasure of that discovery.

Ms Slavic 7 (2019, Sofia Bohdanowicz, Deragh Campbell).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 4 min
Size: 	1.38 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 930 kb/s
BPP: 	0.059
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 137 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/C61DF5E878E45C9/Ms_Slavic_7_(2019,_Sofia_Bohdanowicz,_Deragh_Campbell).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Sofia Bohdanowicz & Deragh Campbell – MS Slavic 7 (2019) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
The film follows a young woman named Audrey Benac who delves into the archives of the New York Public Library in search of a rare recording produced in 1909 titled Veslemøy’s Song. Shot on hand-processed black and white 16mm, the film takes a docu-fiction approach to investigate the faded legacy of the once celebrated Canadian musician, Kathleen Parlow.

Its tone playful, despite its melancholic subject of a woman personally important to Bohdanowicz’s family and culturally important to her country, but lost (for now) to history, the form of the film delightfully and adroitly mixes things up. We hear Bohdanowicz in voice-over narrate her discovery, and see objects like the book, the poem, and a concerto dedicated to Parlow, that form the director’s research. Yet we also see casual reenactments where Campbell walks through the hallways of the library, the at-once amusing and horrifying futurist conversations with the unseen basement librarian, keeper of missing history, and her listening to and quietly weeping over the music. Not everything here is exactly factual, as Deragh Campbell’s presence clues us to—underlying the likelihood that Bohdanowicz’s quest to learn about this woman has its own mysterious and elusive qualities, lost to history. Shot in 16mm black and white, Veslemøy’s Song is a very handsome film that, because it has been hand-processed, has an archival, imperfect, battle-scarred texture that furthers the sense that we’re discovering part, but not all, of a larger picture. Its own little story of finding this woman and tracking down a recorded trace of her talent is satisfying and touching in its own right. But with the cleverness that is common to all of Bohdanowicz’s movies, the form her film takes suggests there is more work to be done, more history and more stories to tell, more cinema to make. (MUBI)

599MB | 8 min 32 s | 1440×1080 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/2BAD74694A82FE3/Veslemoys.Song.2018.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-TEPES.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:French, Turkish

The post Sofia Bohdanowicz – Veslemøy’s Song (2018) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Young filmmaker Julian, ironically played by director Julian Radlmaier himself, falls for a young expat and offers her the leading part in his wannabe Communist fairy tale film.

Mubi wrote:
Communism, filmmaking, and the male gaze—Julian Radlmaier’s fantastical debut entirely lives up to (and delivers on) its astounding title. With welcome flourishes of humor, unreality and an incisive critique of political filmmaking, it resembles what a young Buñuel would have made of today’s Europe.

3.27GB | 1h 39mn | 986×720 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/84F1F17DBF1B9EC/Self-Criticism.of.a.Bourgeois.Dog.2017.WEB.720p-SaL.mkv

Language(s):German,English
Subtitles:English hardcoded

The post Julian Radlmaier – Selbstkritik eines buergerlichen Hundes AKA Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog (2017) first appeared on Cinema of the World.