Quote:
From his first film depicting his boyhood life in the Canary Islands, Richard “Ricky” Leacock has been obsessed with capturing on film the feeling of “being there.” This curiosity led him to technological innovations and breakthrough films that fueled the emerging “direct cinema” movement. In 1948, he shot Louisiana Story with Robert and Frances Flaherty and he has worked with other cinéma vérité pioneers like Robert Drew and D. A. Pennebaker on films like Primary, Happy Mother’s Day, and Monterey Pop.

In the late 1960s, Leacock headed the film department at MIT, and with Ed Pincus, trained many talented direct cinema filmmakers. He later moved to France, where he continued to teach and make films such as Les Oeufs a La Coque de Richard Leacock.

Ricky Leacock visited Screening Room on June 15, 1973, with Al Mecklenburg and Jon Rosenfeld. He demonstrates super-8 sync technology and screens excerpts from his films Republicans: The New Breed and Queen of Apollo, as well as rare footage of Indira Ghandi.

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“Richard Leacock has an uncanny sense of where to put the camera – where to place it, how to hold it, how to position himself as he holds it – in order to capture some magical aspect of the swirling world of reality that’s unfolding before him. He helped liberate the camera, set it free to explore the world.” — Ross McElwee, filmmaker/teacher

Screening Room - 1973 - Ricky Leacock [DVD].mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 3 min
Size: 	1.06 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	706x480 ~> 706x529
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	29.970 fps
Bit rate: 	2 167 kb/s
BPP: 	0.213
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/5576F1A95DB8457/Screening_Room_-_1973_-_Ricky_Leacock__DVD_.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Robert Gardner – Screening Room: Ricky Leacock (1972) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
“Forest of Bliss is an unsparing yet redemptive account of the inevitable griefs, religious passions and frequent happinesses that punctuate daily life in Benares, India’s most holy city. The film unfolds from one sunrise to the next without commentary, subtitles or dialogue. It is an attempt to give the viewer a wholly authentic, though greatly magnified and concentrated, sense of participation in the experiences examined by the film.

In late 1984 and early 1985 I was back in Benares making Forest Of Bliss, a film about which I had pondered at length since my first unsettling visit ten years earlier. I have shaped the film so that it occupies the time between two sunrises. It stands as an exclusively visual statement resorting neither to voiced commentary nor subtitles. It is about people being and also dying.

Of the multitude at work, at play and at prayer, three individuals are seen in somewhat greater detail than others. They are: a Healer of extraordinary geniality who attends pained and troubled people both in his modest home above Manikarnika, the main cremation ground, and the Durga temple late at night; the baleful and untouchable king of the cremation grounds, who vigorously exercises his hereditary rights to sell sacred fire and grass to mourners; and an unusually conscientious priest who performs sacred rites at a small shrine he maintains near the Ganges.

Seeing Forest of Bliss completed, I am quite certain that the animals, especially the dogs, have an importance I merely glimpsed as I was shooting. The dogs and, of course, the River.” – Robert Gardner

Robert Gardner - Forest of Bliss (1986).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 28 min
Size: 	3.26 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	5 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.100
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 256 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/B160095805EFE23/Robert_Gardner_-_Forest_of_Bliss_(1986).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Robert Gardner – Forest of Bliss (1986) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Director Robert Gardner and legendary filmmaker Stan Brakhage share an in-depth viewing of Gardner’s ethnographic masterwork, Forest of Bliss. The film is shown in its entirety, with Gardner occasionally pausing to elucidate, and Brakhage brilliantly observing tonality, poetic imagery, life, death, the unconscious, and, well, just being damned insightful.

Definitely not recommended if you haven’t seen the film.

Looking at Forest of Bliss (Robert Gardner, Stan Brakhage) [Extra].mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 49mn
Size: 	1.41 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	700x478 ~> 700x525
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 616 Kbps
BPP: 	0.201
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/7A99CDD6B3E4C73/Looking_at_Forest_of_Bliss_(Robert_Gardner,_Stan_Brakhage)__Extra_.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Robert Gardner, Stan Brakhage – Looking at Forest of Bliss (2000) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Jonas Mekas – filmmaker, film critic, archivist, poet, lecturer and curator – is one of the leading figures of American avant-garde film and video. Born in Lithuania, he immigrated to New York in 1949 after spending time in Nazi forced labor camps and displaced persons camps. In addition to his many narrative and diary films that have screened extensively at festivals and museums around the world, he has worked as editor-in-chief of Film Culture, movie critic for the Village Voice and co-founder of Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films.

Jonas Mekas visited Screening Room in October 1981 to discuss the film preservation efforts of Anthology Film Archives and show and discuss his own work as well as films by other filmmakers, including Bruce Baillie, Maya Deren, and Joseph Cornell:

• All My Life by Bruce Baillie (full film, 2:35)
• Moth Light by Stan Brakhage (full film, 3:13)
• Eureka by Ernie Gehr (excerpt, 1:23)
• Midnight Party by Joseph Cornell (full film, 3:08)
• Notebook by Marie Menken (full film with commentary, 10:38)
• Paradise Not Yet Lost by Jonas Mekas (excerpt, 9:35)
• Choreography for Camera by Maya Deren (full film, 2:15)
• Choreography for Camera Outtakes by Maya Deren (footage with commentary, 4:56)
• Color Sequence by Dwinell Grant (full film, 1:58)

Screening Room with Jonas Mekas.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 14 min
Size: 	996 MiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	628x480 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	29.970 fps
Bit rate: 	1 741 kb/s
BPP: 	0.193
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 127 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/387D5520E25F1A4/Screening_Room_with_Jonas_Mekas.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Robert Gardner – Screening Room: Jonas Mekas (1981) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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This informative documentary focuses on the Dani people of New Guinea, and in particular tribal members Weyak and Pua. Weyak, an adult, protects the land his tribe lives on from other tribes and outsiders. Their territory was then one of the few places not colonized by Europeans. Pua is a young boy who cares for the village’s pigs. Battles take place frequently between the various Dani tribes. When someone is killed, the death must be avenged, and the fighting continues in a deadly cycle

1.88GB | 1h 23m | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/5D890E19F9919A2/Dead_Birds_(1963)_-_WEB_576p.mkv
or
https://nitroflare.com/view/46C25325F9BFAFE/Dead_Birds_(1963)_-_WEB_576p.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/46D68FB4E0FEC88/Dead_Birds_(1963)_-_WEB_576p.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Robert Gardner – Dead Birds (1963) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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The Experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage first appeared on Screening Room in May, 1973 to screen and discuss the films Eye Myth, Desist Film, Moth Light, and Blue Moses. Screening Room was a Boston television series that for almost ten years offered independent filmmakers a chance to show and discuss their work on a commercial (ABC-TV) television station. The series was developed and hosted by the filmmaker Robert Gardner who was Chairman of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and Director of the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Harvard University for many years. This unique television series explored genres which are rarely found on broadcast television including, animation, documentary, and experimental films.

https://nitroflare.com/view/6F0950B2C1D4974/Screening_Room_-_Stan_Brakhage_(1973).mkv
https://nitro.download/view/4191A2A8B2A8430/Screening_Room_-_Stan_Brakhage_(1980).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Robert Gardner – Screening Room: Stan Brakhage (1973 – 1980) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Bruce Baillie appeared on Screening Room in April 1973 to screen and discuss the films:

On Sundays (excerpt, 11:40)
The Gymnasts (excerpt, 6:45)
To Parsifal (full film, 15:12)
Tung (full film, 4:32)
Castro Street (full film, 9:54)

Bruce Baillie was one of the founders of the San Francisco avant-garde film movement. Born in South Dakota and educated at the University of Minnesota, the University of California at Berkeley, and the London School of Film Technique, he began making film in 1961 with On Sundays and The Gymnasts. With Chick Strand he founded Canyon Cinema, the important West Coast film distribution and exhibition collective. Baillie’s innovative films, including Mass for the Dakota Sioux and Castro Street, are renowned for their beauty and visual richness, their acute lyrical sensibility, and their invocation of myth in dealing with the commonplace world. His works are in the Library of Congress collection and are considered national treasures.

About the Screening Room series
In the early 1970s a group of idealistic artists, lawyers, doctors and teachers saw an opportunity to change commercial television in Boston and the surrounding area. It would require years of litigation up to and including the Supreme Court, but the case was won and the Channel 5 license was given to WCVB-TV. Screening Room was one of several programs offered in an effort to provide alternative television viewing. The idea behind Screening Room was to give independent filmmakers an opportunity to discuss their work and show it to a large urban audience. Nearly 100 ninety-minute programs were produced and aired between 1973 and 1980.

Screening Room was developed and hosted by filmmaker Robert Gardner, who at the time, was Director of Harvard’s Visual Arts Center and Chairman of its Visual and Environmental Studies Department. His own films include Dead Birds (1964), and Forest of Bliss (1986).

DVD Source: DER DVD, region 0, DVD5
DVD Format: NTSC, 4:3 (non anamorphic)
DVD Audio: Mono
Program: MacTheRipper
Menus: Untouched
Video: Untouched
Audio: Untouched

https://nitro.download/view/970E13A9AAE3395/BAILLIE.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:none

The post Robert Gardner – Screening Room: Bruce Baillie (1975) first appeared on Cinema of the World.