Silently, a woman wakes on a beach as the tides go in reverse. Her dreamscape unfolds as she tries to locate a chess piece traveling from the beach to a party to a country road and then back.

At Land is first and foremost a dream projection. Meaning that, while if it’s either surreal or not, what we see is a not the narration of a dream or even the interpretation of a dream; it’s the shared experience of a dream. Like, in dreams, you change from one location to another, or the person you are talking to suddenly become somebody else, or a Walt Disney look alike in a bed may be creepy, without any logical reaction to the strange nature of it because while you are dreaming you are just experiencing it, not trying to understand it. I strongly suggest that with this film, in fact, most of Deren’s films, to let got to the rational function of “understanding” and just flow with it.

I don’t think that most of Lynch or Buñuel’s films are really onirical, maybe they are surrealistic on an absourdist level or rich on Jungian symbolism, but in the end, they have a basic narrative structure and usually bring a closure to whatever the film is about. Maya Deren’s At Land is not based on rethorical figures or a discernible point; I don’t even think there is no explicit symbolism to it (maybe Deren has explained it in some essay, but I haven’t read her yet). It’s experiencing the whole thing as if we are in Deren’s head while she is dreaming. Of course, this implies the alienation of most viewers who may be in need of closure. Few films are successful as shared dreams, Malle’s Black Moon or Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet come to mind.

Comercially, Kubrick tried and achieved to some extend the share dream with Wide Eyes Shut, but it’s only last year’s blockbuster Inception the one which has nailed it. Of all the references that are to be found about the excellent Inception, At Land it’s the most clear influence, from the beach opening to the dream experience to the search of the totem and getting back to the first “dream layer”.

So, even 60 years and something later, Deren is still a truly influential filmmaker.

	
At.Land.1944.1080p.BluRay.FLAC.2.0.x264-KoMI.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	15 min 29 s
Size: 	1.32 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1420x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	12.0 Mb/s
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Audio
#1:  	zxx 2.0ch FLAC @ 134 kb/s
#2:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 43.6 kb/s (Commentary by film curator Thomas Beard)

https://nitro.download/view/5B948AA1F609E18/At.Land.1944.1080p.BluRay.FLAC.2.0.x264-KoMI.mkv

Language(s):Silent, English (commentary)
Subtitles:None

The post Maya Deren – At Land (1944) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

AMG plot
It makes sense that an offbeat director such as Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Prospero’s Books) would be attracted to a project such as 4 American Composers, a 1983 British television special profiling John Cage, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass, and Robert Ashley, four U.S. musical artists who haven’t been content simply to entertain, but feel compelled to “push the envelope” of music.

Meredith Monk episode chronicles the career of the award-winning artist, a composer and singer who also works in film and dance. Monk is the fourth generation in her family to become a singer, and pioneered “extended vocal technique.” Greenaway here provides viewers with performance sequences from Monk’s multimedia pieces “Dolman Music,” “Travelling,” “Ellis Island,” and others.

Robert Ashley episode chronicles the work and career of the distinguished composer , an innovator of opera who has worked to make it American in subject matter and idiom, writing opera for television. Greenaway here provides viewers with performances excerpted from Ashley’s seven-part television opera Perfect Lives. The opera was co-produced by Britain’s Channel Four television network in August of 1983.

Philip Glass episode chronicles the career of the award-winning artist , a composer trained in mathematics and philosophy, who in his twenties had a musical epiphany when he discovered the techniques of Indian music while transcribing Ravi Shankar’s music for a French filmmaker. Glass eventually applied techniques from India, North Africa, and the Himalayas to his seminal work. Greenaway here provides viewers with excerpts from performances of Glass’ compositions

John Cage episode centers on a concert performed in England on Cage’s 70th birthday. Featured are partial performances (sometimes overlapping) of a number of pieces, including “Roaratorio” (with Cage as narrator), “Forever and Sunsmell,” “Double Music,” and others. Highlights include a performance by Marcel Duchamp and interview commentary by Cage and others.

Four American Composers Meredith Monk 1983 PAL DVD DD2.0 x264-nosferato.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	52 min 9 s
Size: 	1.58 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	700x576 ~> 994x576
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Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	3 948 kb/s
BPP: 	0.392
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#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 384 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/10AE6D89F3EB278/Four_American_Composers_John_Cage_1983_PAL_DVD_DD2.0_x264-nosferato.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/4294D722E9E783E/Four_American_Composers_Meredith_Monk_1983_PAL_DVD_DD2.0_x264-nosferato.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/15068E940B7261A/Four_American_Composers_Phillip_Glass_1983_PAL_DVD_DD2.0_x264-nosferato.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/0449690446F2CD7/Four_American_Composers_Robert_Ashley_1983_PAL_DVD_DD2.0_x264-nosferato.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:French

The post Peter Greenaway – Four American Composers (1983) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

AMG plot
It makes sense that an offbeat director such as Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Prospero’s Books) would be attracted to a project such as 4 American Composers, a 1983 British television special profiling John Cage, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass, and Robert Ashley, four U.S. musical artists who haven’t been content simply to entertain, but feel compelled to “push the envelope” of music.

Peter Greenaway - John Cage.avi

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Container:	AVI
Runtime:	54mn 16s
Size:	600 MiB
Video
Codec:	XviD
Resolution:	592x448
Aspect ratio:	4:3
Frame rate:	25.000 fps
Bit rate:	1 152 Kbps
Audio
2.0ch AC-3 @ 384 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/0E47BA5EC630502/Peter_Greenaway_-_John_Cage.avi
https://nitro.download/view/943AF3FB3CAC6F1/Peter_Greenaway_-_Meredith_Monk.avi
https://nitro.download/view/7C0C0F00CEB40AC/Peter_Greenaway_-_Philip_Glass.avi
https://nitro.download/view/8B1ABE77A276087/Peter_Greenaway_-_Robert_Ashley.avi
https://nitro.download/view/AB88C87BA00D544/four.zip

Language(s):English
Subtitles:French

The post Peter Greenaway – Four American Composers (1983) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

PLOT: This documentary by Oscar-winner Allan Miller and Emmy-winner Paul Smaczny pays tribute to the most fascinating American avant-garde composer John Cage. Shot in America, Germany and Japan, the program premieres rare archival footage; presenting concert excerpts and a set of short episodes, featuring associates of Cage and contemporary artists, playfully delineating different aspects of John Cage. The documentary features interviews with Yoko Ono, David Tudor, Christian Wolff, Steffen Schleiermacher, Irvine Arditti, Toshio Hosokawa, Mayumi Miyata, Calvin Tomkins and many others. “John Cage – Journeys in Sound“ will delight and enthral both Cage novices as well as die-hard fans.

John.Cage.Journeys.in.Sound.2012.576p.BluRay.AAC2.0.x264.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 0 min
Size: 	1.56 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x576 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	3 420 kb/s
BPP: 	0.242
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 229 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/839644C9421D571/John.Cage.Journeys.in.Sound.2012.576p.BluRay.AAC2.0.x264.mkv

Language(s):English, German, Japanese
Subtitles:English, French, German, Japanese, Korean

The post Allan Miller & Paul Smaczny – John Cage: Journeys in Sound (2012) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

This rare documentary, simply called “John Cage”, was made in 1966 for the German TV station NDR and is one of the earliest films devoted entirely to the work of Cage and his collaborators. It was made on the occasion of the Cage and Cunningham European tour in that year, and instead of fully explaining the music and philosophy of the composer, we get a fascinating glimpse at the work process of the dance troupe and of Cage himself. Most of the film is concerned with showing us how they set up a performance for the Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, and there is a lot of interview and everyday material with Cage, Merce Cunningham, David Tudor, Gordon Mumma and Carolyn Brown, to name just the best known artists here. It’s also nice to see a rather youthful looking Cage (though he was 54 at the time!), still wearing the famous tie that had been cut off by Nam June Paik a few years earlier. There’s also some archival footage from Tudor’s and Cage’s very first German performance in Darmstadt in 1954.

839MB | 55m 59s | 696×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/EE45CB32D314548/John_Cage_(Klaus_Wildenhahn_1966).mkv

Language(s):German,English
Subtitles:English

The post Klaus Wildenhahn – John Cage (1966) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Silently, a woman wakes on a beach as the tides go in reverse. Her dreamscape unfolds as she tries to locate a chess piece traveling from the beach to a party to a country road and then back.

1.06GB | 15m 29s | 946×720 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/7604CF0912E0448/At.Land.1944.720p.x264.mkv

Language:English commentary from film curator Thomas Beard
Subtitles:None

The post Maya Deren – At Land (1944) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Description:
Turning the camera on himself and his 10,000-page FBI file, radical documentary filmmaker Emile de Antonio skewers the legacy of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover while offering up a fascinating self-portrait in his final film. A lengthy conversation with the composer John Cage, a discussion with a college crowd about McCarthyism and numerous witty observations by de Antonio himself also contribute to this discursive yet sharply observed documentary.

“Before seeing Mr. Hoover and I (1989), my attitude toward the work of Emile de Antonio was always a bit confused and uncertain. I admired his first film, Point of Order–a remarkable reorganization and distillation of 188 hours of kinescopes of the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings into about 90 minutes that reinvented the meaning of Joseph McCarthy for subsequent generations. But my spotty sense of de Antonio’s later work led me to view him as a courageous radical and intellectual who was more a polemicist and invaluable 60s gadfly than an artist. I knew that some of my non-American friends whose politics and aesthetics I highly respected regarded him as the greatest and noblest living American documentary filmmaker, but having seen only Point of Order, Millhouse, and Underground (directed with Haskell Wexler, 1975), I found it difficult to see precisely what they meant. Millhouse had the nerve to shower Nixon with abuse and scorn when he was at the height of his power as president–de Antonio was the only filmmaker on Nixon’s notorious “enemies” list–and Underground performed the valuable and audacious service of interviewing the Weather Underground at a time when they were the FBI’s most sought-after radical fugitives. But both of these films seemed more meaningful as potent contemporary gestures than as lasting works of art that genuinely explored the possibilities of the medium. Having lived abroad for almost eight years, I’d managed to miss such films as In the Year of the Pig, America Is Hard to See (1969), and Painters Painting, and after I returned, I hadn’t made it to In the King of Prussia (1982) either.

Seeing the fascinating and hugely entertaining Mr. Hoover and I at the Toronto film festival last fall, about three months before de Antonio died of a heart attack at age 70, made me seriously rethink my ideas about him. I’ve seen the film several times more recently, and encountered for the first time on tape some of the de Antonio films I had missed. In the Year of the Pig is the first and best of the major documentaries about Vietnam, infinitely superior to the better known Hearts and Minds–and perhaps the only one that’s truly about Vietnam, not this country’s national ego. I also saw the (to me) disappointing and relatively conventional Painters Painting. I can’t pretend to assess his career as a whole here because I’m still discovering or rediscovering parts of it, but I can at least say that Mr. Hoover and I, a singular and remarkable testament, has made me realize the importance of forming this acquaintance. ” Jonathan Rosenbaum
Read the complete Rosenbaum essay.

https://nitro.download/view/32A744180C5E646/Mr.Hoover.and.I.DVDRip.avi

no pass

The post Emile de Antonio – Mr. Hoover and I (1989) first appeared on Cinema of the World.