Synopsis:
May, 1946, in Paris young poet Jacques Prevel meets Antonin Artaud, the actor, artist, and writer just released from a mental asylum. Over ten months, we follow the mad Artaud from his cruel coaching of an actress in his “theatre of cruelty” to his semi-friendship with Prevel who buys him drugs and hangs on his every word. Meanwhile, Prevel divides his time between Jany, his blond, young, drug-hazed mistress, and Rolande, his dark-haired, long-suffering wife, who has a child during this time. Cruelty, neglect, poverty, egoism, madness, and the pursuit of art mix on the Left Bank.

My.Life.and.Times.with.Antonin.Artaud.1993.480p.NTSC.DVDRip.DD.2.0.x264-WiTCHCRAFT.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 30mn
Size:	1.33 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	706x384 ~> 706x441
Aspect ratio:	16:10
Frame rate:	23.976 fps
Bit rate:	1 728 kb/s
Audio
French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 384 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/0E61CF16680D498/My.Life.and.Times.with.Antonin.Artaud.1993.480p.NTSC.DVDRip.DD.2.0.x264-WiTCHCRAFT.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Gérard Mordillat – En compagnie d’Antonin Artaud AKA My Life and Times with Antonin Artaud (1993) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Written, directed and produced by René Féret, MOZART’S SISTER is a re-imagined account of the early life of Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart (played by Marie Féret, the director’s daughter), five years older than Wolfgang and a musical prodigy in her own right. Originally the featured performer, Nannerl has given way to Wolfgang as the main attraction, as their strict but loving father Leopold tours his talented offspring in front of the royal courts of pre-French revolution Europe. Approaching marriageable age and now forbidden to play the violin or compose, Nannerl chafes at the limitations imposed on her gender. But a friendship with the son and daughter of Louis XV offers her ways to challenge the established sexual and social order.

Nannerl, la soeur de Mozart.2010.BDRip-AVC msltel.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 0 min
Size: 	3.60 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x552 
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	3 838 kb/s
BPP: 	0.283
Audio
#1:  	French 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/55075A100EB339F/Nannerl,_la_soeur_de_Mozart.2010.BDRip-AVC_msltel.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post René Féret – Nannerl, la soeur de Mozart aka Mozart’s Sister (2010) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Sombre, as Grandrieux’s first feature film, establishes some of the important characteristics of his art: An insistence on vision, with characters beyond psychologies, driven by biology or metaphysical forces.

Love (a mix of brotherly and sexual Love, a true awareness of the other, a communion) mostly overrules all, and its discovery by Jean creates waves that emanate in every shot, every cut and every sound in the rest of Sombre.

While the movement in Un Lac is from perfect love (a paradise communion) to the loss of innocence, here the movement is reversed, not in the sense that the film has a happy ending, there are no clear conclusions (nor clear beginnings) in Grandrieux… The discovery of the other (an other?) disturbs the existing rules of behaviour.

This is also true for Claire, who have a face to face conversation with a stranger, something completely unexpected in a film of such few words. A scene that would have been ordinary in another film (except the abusively frontal camera) acquires a huge force by its contrast to the rest of the work.

What is truly impossible to describe in words is the sense of rhythm, and Grandrieux’s Brakhage-like belief in the transformative powers of vision and perception. It’s a sombre film alright, content-wise, but Grandrieux also shoots in extremely low-light situations, abstracting bodies, faces, expressions. He teaches us to care less about what’s happening, and this increases in every new film of his. Instead, we learn to care about the how, and the way, the feeling, the sense of the presence, not of the actual happenings, because the films are not realistic, but the presence of the director, filtering, flirting and dancing with the events that are taking place.

Important to note that he is the cameraman in all his films, he says there wouldn’t be a point making films otherwise. Here’s something from an interview with him in Balthazar (first in original French, then my English translation):

“Je ne pourrais pas imaginer, même avec le plus grand cadreur du monde avec qui je m’entendrais parfaitement bien… C’est le regard, c’est la vision… C’est le regard : comment moi je vous regarde là maintenant, je ne peux le dire à personne. C’est vraiment une question sur l’altérité, c’est la limite.”

“I could not imagine, even with the greatest cameraman in the world with whom I get on very well… It’s the look, it’s the vision… It’s the look: how I look at you here and now, I cannot describe anyone. It’s really a question of otherness, it’s the limit.”

The art of cinema only speaks strongly when every cut matters. In Sombre, every cut is an event, a comment about the rest of the film. Every formal choice, or everything that happens storywise have meanings that constantly expand. Grandrieux never chews on the same idea, the same feeling, he constantly looks for new ways to perceive the rest. And he doesn’t stop doing it even after everything is over.

It’s unfortunate that I had to see it in a terrible .avi version, but I would call Sombre sublime simply because I felt missing so much by not experiencing it in its true medium. It’s a film that asks us to be aware of the film grain. There lies the true expression in Un Lac. And seemingly in Sombre.

1.67GB | 1h 51mn | 921×576 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/5D7E8564FE5A1EE/Philippe_Grandrieux_-_(1998)_Sombre.mkv
https://nitroflare.com/view/64CB96976700F92/Sombre.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Philippe Grandrieux – Sombre (1998) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
“Liberally adapted,” per onscreen credits, from Joseph Conrad’s first, same-named novel, helmer Chantal Akerman’s interpretation of “Almayer’s Folly” is as eccentric as “La Captive,” her take on Proust. Unfortunately, it’s not as disciplined as that earlier work, and this tale of a French colonialist’s fraught relationship with his mixed-race daughter seems thrown together on a low budget with a too-breezy disregard for cultural specifics. After a powerful opening scene and reasonably strong first act, the pic slowly leaks air. Helmer’s rep should ensure polite interest from fests and niche distribs with a track record of releasing Akerman’s work.

Although Conrad’s novel is set in Malaysia during the late 19th century, Akerman resets the action to the present day. That’s fine, but it’s rather odd she makes no attempt to disguise the fact the pic was shot in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where the locals speak Khmer instead of Malay, even though the characters keep talking about the fact they’re in Malaysia. The dissonance is probably intentional, but it could too easily be interpreted as a sort of arrogant Western carelessness that lumps together everything in the East as one big undifferentiated place of Otherness.

A beautifully staged, luridly colored opening scene reps a high-water mark from which the pic gradually recedes thereafter. At an outdoor bar, a man named Dain (Zac Andrianasolo) miming onstage to Dean Martin’s “Sway,” is stabbed by another, Chen (Solida Chan). As he falls to the ground, the camera tracks in on one of his back-up dancers, Nina (Aurora Marion) who seemingly in some kind of trance belts out Mozart’s version of “Ave Maria.”

Turns out this is a flash-forward to the end of the story, and action rolls back to the beginning when Nina was a child, the product of a deeply unhappy marriage between local Malay woman Zahira (Sakhna Oum) and Francophone colonialist Gaspard Almayer (Stanislas Merhar, from “La Captive”). Almayer agrees to the proposal from his countryman Lingard (Marc Barbe) that Nina should be taken away and raised like a European at a boarding school. Zahira tries to run away with Nina to prevent this, but Almayer gets his way.

When she returns to Almayer’s home as an adult, Nina is an embittered, benumbed young woman who doesn’t feel at home in either culture, and eventually she runs off with Dain, much to the disgust of Almayer, whose love for his child has a creepy, semi-incestuous intensity.

That’s pretty much the nub of the story, but Akerman pads the action out of with long stretches in which the characters don’t do much of anything, leading up to a climax, if that’s the right word, that features a static one-shot. In pic’s press notes, Akerman explains that she approached the making of the film in the same way she shoots docus, with an extemporaneous attitude, but unfortunately the result is something that feels slapped together and ill-considered rather than spontaneous and light.

Perfs from Merhar and Barbe just about manage to endow some pro polish to the proceedings, but Marion reps a very weak link as Nina, and the clashing of different acting registers makes the pic feel even more bumpy and ill planned.

1.99GB | 2h 2mn | 1021×552 | mkv

http://nitroflare.com/view/2F070F8AFDCA54D/Chantal_Akerman_-_(2011)_Almayer’s_Folly.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/B437664160FCE87/Chantal_Akerman_-_(2011)_Almayer’s_Folly.part2.rar

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

The post Chantal Akerman – La folie Almayer AKA Almayer’s Folly (2011) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis

reassurance.blogspot.com wrote:

La vie nouvelle, with its schizophrenic camera and piercing audio frequency, provokes a dangerous sensation. It pulsates like a tremor, as if we’re entering a universe after some unnamed, unmentioned nuclear disaster. While it’s easy to make visual association to familiar images of horror like Night of the Living Dead when the film opens on a dark pasture with zombie-like peasants, Salò; or The 120 Days of Sodom while a group of Russian criminals strip a group of beautiful youths naked or Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me as characters malevolently scream into the air, Grandrieux’s vision is wholly unique.

Melania (Anna Mouglalis) is one of those Salò youths, stripped first of her clothes and then of her hair before entering some sort of sex trade. Seymour (Zachary Knighton) is the Yankee teenager, somehow wrapped up in this seedy world, who wants to save her, even if he can’t get an erection while they’re fucking and even if he isn’t sure why he wants to help her.

onderhond.com wrote:

I’ve seen my fair share of depressing movies but little dare come near the territory where La Vie Nouvelle resides. The closest comparison to make is Irreversible’s rectum scene expanded to a full 100 minutes.

Philippe Grandrieux - (2002) A New Life.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 40mn
Size: 	1.70 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	712x552 ~> 1021x552
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 152 Kbps
BPP: 	0.219
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/10726C854DA1AE0/Philippe_Grandrieux_-_(2002)_A_New_Life.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/13AFBF63F173F2E/La_Vie_Nouvelle.srt

Language(s):French, English
Subtitles:English

The post Philippe Grandrieux – La Vie Nouvelle AKA A New Life (2002) first appeared on Cinema of the World.