Quote:
Cleopatra situates itself in the same relationship to Hollywood as the Warhol/Morrisey films of the
period. It corresponds to Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1963 Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and
Richard Burton which Auder’s cast watched and used as the starting point for scene by scene
improvisation Auder drew his cast from Warhol’s ensemble – including not only Viva and Louis
Waldon, but also Taylor Mead, Ondine, Andrea Feldman, Gerard Melanga and others.
The film revels in epic excess like Mankiewicz’s cinematic debacle which succumbed to vast length,
a bloated budget, multiple revisions and a scandal occasioned by the extramarital escapades of its
co-stars.

In Auder’s Cleopatra, Viva is the queen, shrieking with an authority different from the languorous
speech patterns she had perfected in Warhol’s films.
The (newly invented) snowmobile substitutes for horses; the industrial setting of a factory becomes
a showplace of armaments, and the whole Egypt section takes place in upstate New York. The
streets and parks of Rome, where Waldon lived at the time, are the staging ground for his role as
Caesar.

In a wonderful display of Waldon’s charm and skills as an improviser, he begins a dialogue with
local police who are then conscripted into the film as Roman soldiers.
Auder shot the culminating orgy and gladiator scenes in the famous Cinécita film studio in Rome
where Mankiewicz filmed. Due to a fight with his producers, Auder never edited the film which was
lost for many years. It survives as an uncut degraded copy of the original.

Cleopatra (1970) - Michel Auder.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 6 min
Size: 	2.41 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1280x720 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 500 kb/s
BPP: 	0.109
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 235 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/192F64BC4ACCE9D/Cleopatra_(1970)_-_Michel_Auder.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Michel Auder – Cleopatra (1970) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
This video is an ensemble piece that contains a collection of experimental performance art pieces by various performers. The entire video takes place in The Kitchen, an enormous artist’s loft in the midst of New York City. All the performance pieces are what could be considered Avant-garde in nature, though that term has fallen out of use today in order to make way for the more pedestrian and commonplace whitewash term of alternative; however, when this video was created, the style and feel of each of these pieces was more intentionally risk-filled and groundbreaking than what we see today as is the nature with the ideals of the avant-garde–I don’t think the term alternative had been coined and/or abused as yet, people were still saying New Wave or Punk or using terms even more inaccurate and less flattering. Don’t get me wrong, these differing pieces are new and experimental concepts in art but all are carefully rehearsed and well scripted, there is some, but very little improvisation on the whole. The highlights of the Two Moon July video are performances by Laurie Anderson, a manic, running commentary on newspapers, media and film by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, and a rare performance of an absolutely beautiful piano piece entitled Mad Rush by Phillip Glass. Lastly, yet least importantly, the video quality of the actual video footage is clear and crisp but rather glossy overall, it’s hotlit in places and resembles the tone and texture of a daytime soap opera, it looks low budget and probably was produced for very little money but this can easily be overlooked when considering the rarity of some of the performances contained within; many of these artists and performers had made a name for themselves in New York before the release of this video and many others were known worldwide by people who have followed the avant-garde scene but it is the rarity of some of the performances on this documentary-style video and the sheer number of artists involved that should make it appealing to anyone who would like to experience an interesting amalgam of artistic sound and vision. I believe that Two Moon July, eventually, will be considered an avant-garde video classic to be much emulated yet never matched.

Two Moon July (1986) [LDRIP].mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	53 min 46 s
Size: 	767 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	698x480 ~> 698x523
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 800 kb/s
BPP: 	0.224
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/D4F3CE62C2B468F/Two_Moon_July_(1986)__LDRIP_.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:none

The post Tom Bowes – The Kitchen Presents Two Moon July (1986) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Jonas Mekas’ BIRTH OF A NATION (1997) continues the filmmaker’s investigation into the possibilities of film-as-diary to offer glimpses of key figures of experimental cinema, including Stan Brakhage, Tony Conrad, and Michael Snow, compiled from footage shot over four decades. As far back as the masterpieces WALDEN (1969) and LOST, LOST, LOST (1976), Mekas has been turning his roaming camera on those around him, eschewing conventional documentary in favour of a more impressionistic, subjective engagement with his friends and surroundings. If Griffith’s film is often held up as marking the consolidation of Hollywood narrative cinema as the dominant film form both home and abroad, here Mekas proposes an alternative tradition of American filmmaking, the birth of another nation, another national cinema. Fred Camper describes this “nation” as “a network of almost invisible human connections,” while Mekas himself asks, “Why BIRTH OF A NATION? Because the film independence IS a nation in itself. We are surrounded by the commercial cinema nation the same way as the indigenous people of the United States or of any other country are surrounded by the Ruling Powers. We are the invisible, but essential nation of cinema. We are the cinema.” Additional cameos by P. Adams Sitney, Ken Jacobs, Harry Smith, Henri Langlois, Annette Michelson, Hollis Frampton, James Broughton, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Chantal Akerman, Kurt Kren, Amy Taubin, Gregory Markopoulos, Ernie Gehr, Leni Riefenstahl, Paul Shrader, Peter Bogdanovich, Roberto Rossellini, Bruce Conner, Carolee Schneemann, Jacques Tati, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Jack Smith, and scores more.

Music by Wagner and Hermann Nitsch. Voice by Jean Houston.

1.19GB | 1 h 20 min | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/B42F04AF06DDAE1/Birth.of.a.Nation.(1997.Jonas.Mekas).PAL.BGRip.x264-Critterior.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Jonas Mekas – Birth of a Nation (1997) first appeared on Cinema of the World.