Quote:
Phirojshah (Naseeruddin Shah) and Pestonjee (Anupam Kher) are two close friends. They attempt to do everything together, and they hope that they will marry the same day as well. Unfortunately, both go to see the same young lady, Jeroo (Shabana Azmi), and Pestonjee ends up getting married to Jeroo. Phirojshah has been stricken by Jeroo’s beauty and decides not to marry, and takes a transfer away from the couple. During the years, he keeps in touch with the couple by mail. While on a visit to the couple, he finds out that Pestonjee has a mistress, and Jeroo does not know of this. How will this effect Phirojshah’s friendship with Pestonjee? Does Phirojshah stand a chance with Jeroo?

Pestonjee.1988.1080p.MUBI.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-TEPES.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 59 min
Size: 	5.02 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1440x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	5 872 kb/s
BPP: 	0.151
Audio
#1:  	Hindi 2.0ch AAC LC @ 128 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/2CBB3F071E29295/Pestonjee.1988.1080p.MUBI.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-TEPES.mkv

Language(s):Hindi
Subtitles:English

The post Vijaya Mehta – Pestonjee (1988) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Benegal’s successful feature debut is set in feudal AP and consolidated the New Indian Cinema movement. The politically inflected melodrama tells of a newly married urban youth, Surya (Nag, in his Hindi film debut), who is sent alone to his rural home to look after his ancestral property. Finding himself in the role of the traditional landlord, he has an affair with Lakshmi (Azmi, in her extremely powerful film debut), the young wife of a deaf- mute labourer (Meher), and she becomes pregnant. Her husband, believing the child to be his, goes to tell the landlord the good news but Surya, consumed by his guilt and afraid of being exposed, beats the man almost to death. Lakshmi then turns on her former lover with a passionate speech calling for a revolutionary overthrow of feudal rule. In the last shot, a young boy throws a stone at Surya’s house and then the screen turns red. Azmi and Nag launched a new style of naturalist acting deploying regionalised Hindi accents (here Hindi inflected by a Hyderabadi accent) that came to be associated with Benegal’s subsequent work. It also helped define a ‘middle-of-the-road’ cinema which adapted psychological realism and regionalism (emphasised in the fluid camera style) to the conventions of the mainstream Hindi movie. Having cherished the project to make this film for a long time, Benegal eventually found a producer, a distributor of advertising films for whom he had previously made commercials. The producer also backed Benegal’s next films.

Ankur.1974.576p.MUBI.WEB-DL.x264.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 4 min
Size: 	2.17 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	960x576 
Aspect ratio:  	5:3
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 372 kb/s
BPP: 	0.172
Audio
#1:  	Hindi 2.0ch AAC LC @ 115 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/BA41935568BAE15/Ankur.1974.576p.MUBI.WEB-DL.x264.mkv

Language(s):Hindi
Subtitles:German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish

The post Shyam Benegal – Ankur AKA The Seedling (1974) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A Western couple (played by Melissa Leo and James Wilby) working in Pakistan visit an unconventional holy shrine to harness its spiritual powers to help them conceive a child. They are lavished with the attentions of the shrine’s leader (an exceptional performance from Zia Mohyeddin – Lawrence of Arabia, Khartoum) and her followers, but their methods and motives are not all that they seem, and the couple’s lives are plunged into darkness.

This ravishing, unsettling film from director Jamil Dehlavi (The Blood of Hussain, Born of Fire) is a deeply personal work which raises questions of cultural and sexual identity, religious fanaticism and the abuses of power. The brand-new 2K restoration from the original negative was supervised and approved by Dehlavi and cinematographer Nic Knowland.

Immaculate.Conception.1992.BDRIP.2K.576p.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 2 min
Size: 	2.74 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x552 
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.221
Audio
#1:  	Multiple languages 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/2448290DE8FE44C/Immaculate.Conception.1992.BDRIP.2K.576p.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):English, Urdu
Subtitles:English (for Urdu)

The post Jamil Dehlavi – Immaculate Conception (1992) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A farmer (Naseeruddin Shah) and a weaver (Om Puri) exchange their products for goods provided by a regular passing trader (M.K. Raina). A woman (Shabana Azmi) arrives, forcing the two men’s desires but also urging them to obtain more recompense from the trader. After a visit to a village fair , the two men become more acquisitive and jealousies break out over the now pregnant woman who simply ups and leaves .As the two men fight each other, the trader’s men attack and enslave the workers again.

Here is a brief review from the New York Times:
”Genesis” is not a biblical extravaganza. The Indian director Mrinal Sen’s 1986 movie, now at the Public Theater, is a simply conceived, artfully rendered parable of love and jealousy, freedom and slavery. The tale is rudimentary, its themes a touch obvious, yet the telling, done with grave humanity, carries meanings of its own.

Rest easy. Despite the title, ”Genesis” is not a biblical extravaganza. The Indian director Mrinal Sen’s 1986 movie, now at the Public Theater, is a simply conceived, artfully rendered parable of love and jealousy, freedom and slavery. The tale is rudimentary, its themes a touch obvious, yet the telling, done with grave humanity, carries meanings of its own.

A weaver and a farmer, in flight from exploitation, settle near a desert, where they live like brothers. The weaver supports the bare and smoky household by exchanges with an itinerant trader, the movie’s one ambiguous figure. The farmer tends the land. Life goes so well that the two can delude themselves that ”we are slaves to no one, we are our own masters.”

Into their sparse Eden comes a teen-aged woman with a lantern, a needless symbol for so luminous an actress as Shabana Azmi. She proves a hard worker who scrubs the sandy floor and also scrubs away some of the men’s crudeness. She softens their lives and joins in their play.

They compete in their efforts to please her, and you will not be surprised to learn that this means trouble. As the worldly trader warns, ”There are two of them and one of you.” She tries to give fair shares -”I accepted you both because you needed me,” she tells them in pure affection – but it doesn’t do. Here, as in the Old Testament Genesis, the brothers are riven.

Although Miss Azmi has an angel-with-a-dirty-face quality, Mr. Sen, who wrote the screenplay, keeps his characters down to earth. They stand for human beings through the ages, unable to master either their own emotions or life’s circumstances. Now and then there is a frightening roar overhead, the sound of the world, that sends them cowering.

Mr. Sen’s evident intention to connect man’s inner and outer forms of slavery does not click. Even if this two-man-one-woman community could have continued amiably, it would still have been destroyed by the bulldozers brought in by the trader. The director’s final reliance on destruction ex machina stems from his politics rather than from his characters’ passions. Yet with the help of Carlo Varini’s camera and Ravi Shankar’s music, ”Genesis” brings home the sparseness, beauty and perils of existence at a basic level.

Although Mrinal Sen has made about 25 movies in India, for American audiences ”Genesis” marks a notable beginning.

1.38GB | 1h 33m | 352×288 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/867483A352B6DAF/Genesis_1.avi
https://nitro.download/view/139AD1D08B30935/Genesis_2.avi
https://nitro.download/view/FAF57FDC0AA4D09/Genesis_Part_1.srt
https://nitro.download/view/F2C086B4AC8C6AF/Genesis_Part_2.srt

Language(s):Hindi
Subtitles:English

The post Mrinal Sen – Genesis (1986) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Wazed Ali Shah is the ruler of one of the last independent kingdoms of India. The British, intent on controlling this rich country, have sent general Outram on a secret mission to clear the way for an annexation. While pressure is mounting amidst intrigue and political manoeuvres, Ali Shah composes poems and listens to music, secluded in his palace. The court is of no help, as exemplified by nobles Mir and Mirza, who, ignoring the situation of their country and all their duties towards their families, spend their days playing endless parties of chess.
— IMDb.

1.67GB | 2h 00m | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/40289A388D11C6A/Shatranj_Ke_Khiladi_(The_Chess_Players)_(1977)_–_Satyajit_Ray.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/564F4FCEFF56DCB/Shatranj_Ke_Khiladi_(The_Chess_Players)_(1977)_–_Satyajit_Ray.srt
https://nitro.download/view/5DF2326B7803E0E/Interview_–_Richard_Attenborough.mkv https://nitro.download/view/B0CD9A492BAF8FB/Interview_–_Saeed_Jaffrey.mkv

Language:Urdu,English,Hindi
Subtitles:English

The post Satyajit Ray – Shatranj Ke Khilari AKA The Chess Players (1977) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Immaculate Conception is the story of a young western couple, Jewish-American Hannah and British Alistair who are living in Karachi and desperate for a child. They visit the eunuch shrine of Gulab Shah which has a reputation for curing infertility and, sure enough, Hannah conceives. Hannah decides to convert to Islam and coaxes Alistair to do the same.

This causes a conflict with her family, while steering Alistair into a brief love affair. Meanwhile, the eunuchs from the shrine seem to think they have a share in Hannah’s baby. As tension mounts, the dangerous cocktail of clashing cultures and religious beliefs threatens to explode in the faces of everyone involved.

1.40GB | 1h 58mn | 692×461 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/6BC2E9EDD2AB7CF/Immaculate_Conception.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:none

The post Jamil Dehlavi – Immaculate Conception (1992) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The narrative pivots around the relationship of two sisters, older sister Anjali (Shabana
Azmi) is a successful professor with a powerful personality. She is the anchoring rock for
her family and carer for her sister Meethi whose progression into schizophrenia has been
speeded up by traumatic experiences. Anjali has always dominated the life of her attractive
younger sister, and jealously warded off Meethi’s handsome fiancé Jojo (Rahul Bose) with
fear of Meethi’s impending illness. Years later when Meethi and Anjali are on holiday in the
Hills there is a chance meeting with Jojo, now with his new wife and children. He is
shocked to discover that Meethi does not now recognize him, but lives in a world visited by
an imaginary husband and children of her own.

1.57GB | 2h 4mn | 640×384 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/6DDAAF8957B901F/15_Park_Avenue.avi https://nitro.download/view/3875432376EAC65/15_Park_Avenue.srt

Language(s):English, Hindi, Bengali
Subtitles:English for Non-English parts

The post Aparna Sen – 15 Park Avenue (2005) first appeared on Cinema of the World.