Belorussia, summer 1942. The war has moved on, far off to the east. The life of a small town where the German authorities of the region have set themselves up is getting back to “normal”. The Germans study Russian, flirt with the local girls, the women wash their clothes and feed them. They have to carry on somehow… But suddenly the teenage son of the film’s heroine decides to run away to the partisans and blows up a German train so that they could accept him. He gets caught and the Germans have to execute him in order “to teach others a lesson”. That’s the order and it can’t be disobeyed. The Germans know that this execution will bring an end to their peaceful lives. The local commandant understands this better than anyone as he is already involved in a close relationship with the boy’s mother. But he can’t ignore an order from his commanders …

1.19GB | 1h 18m | 1024×436 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/DCAC2CC1CD8CFF6/Vragi_2007.mkv

Language(s):Russian,German
Subtitles:English,French,Russian (hardcoded only for German parts)

The post Mariya Mozhar – Vragi AKA Enemies (2007) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Two buntings—small, sparrow-like birds—sit in a cage on the back of a bike in the opening moments of Aleksai Fedorchenko’s Silent Souls. The man peddling the bike (and narrating the film from beyond the grave) is Aist (Igor Sergeyev), a factory worker and photographer who descends from the Finno-Ugric tribe known as the Meryans. After work one day, Aist agrees to help his boss and friend, Miron (Yuri Tsurilo), perform the last Meryan rites for Miron’s recently departed wife. The two buntings are brought along, flittering and chirping in their cage, on the duo’s trip, while Miron reminisces about the erotic moments with his wife and Aist drifts on to think about rituals he had once indulged in with his father.

Folklore, rituals, and the past weigh heavily on Silent Souls, which is somewhat endemic of films from Fedorchenko’s home country of Russia. Yet, ironically, there is a sense of liberation in the aesthetics of the director’s third feature, which was adapted by Denis Osokin from Aist Sergeyev’s novel The Buntings; a breaking from the Tarkovsky school and an embracement of something, though similarly beautiful, far more anchored with the human process of mystic rituals rather than the metaphysical implications of such acts. Miron and Aist are shown performing the ritualistic steps of death, climaxing with the burning of the wife’s body on a beach, but Fedorchenko makes a point of also tending to other ritualistic processes, such as the rather hypnotic image of threads being tied to a bride’s pubic hair.

Fedorchenko’s chief fascination seems to be with the dichotomies inherent in the modern rehashing of rituals based in folklore and mysticism. On their travels, Miron admits that he knew his wife was meant to be with Aist but it seems to mean very little to Aist, who returns to an image of his father and him rowing on the water. The images and the dialogue work to call upon another Meryan belief, that of a diptych of gods: One representative of water and the other representative of love. In fact, one could see Silent Souls as a visual dialectic between those two gods, but clarity of meaning is (rightly) not a facet of storytelling that Fedorchenko is expressly interested in. Silent Souls, like a great deal of folklore, is ultimately meant to remain something of an elliptical enigma, conveying an odd exhileration punctuated by the closing image of the buntings inexplicably finding themselves freed from their cage.

1.31GB | 1 h 17 min | 1024×444 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/FE7BC0669FE1AE2/Aleksey_Fedorchenko_-_(2010)_Silent_Souls.mkv
http://nitroflare.com/view/DD44D87CFAB184A/Ovsjanki.2010.O.DVDRip.srt

Language:Russian
Subtitles:English

The post Aleksey Fedorchenko – Ovsyanki aka Silent Souls (2010) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The film was shot in Mari language and tells 23 different tales influenced by the Mari folklore. Each of these stories represents the specific approach to sexuality of “the last authentic pagans in Europe”. In view of this, the film could be considered a Mari “Decameron”.

Comprised of 23 vignettes illuminating the pagan-influenced mores of western Russia’s Meadow Mari, the latest film from director Alexey Fedorchenko (Silent Souls) is a beguiling, painterly portrait of a culture driven by a ritualistic appreciation of female beauty and feminine sexuality.

Pagan folklore is alive amongst the Meadow Mari, a Finno-Ugric ethnic group in western Russia. Alexey Fedorchenko’s latest film comprises twenty-three vignettes that centre on the sexual lives of a collection of Mari women, recreating an idiosyncratic world of magical realism in which female fertility, beauty, and, ultimately, happiness is the driving force.

In Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari, all the women’s names begin with the letter O. There’s Okanay Oshanyak, whose aunt rubs her naked body in order to help its development. There’s Oshtylech, who picks through a bucket of phallic mushrooms in order to help select her ideal husband. And Onya, who, at the advice of a friend, smells her husband’s private parts to confirm her suspicion of his infidelity. Each story takes an endearing approach to love and sexuality as it exists within Mari culture. But the film does not shy away from the folklore’s darker undertones: witness the tragic consequence of Oropti succumbing to a forest spirit’s curse, or preteen Ormarche witnessing the older girls perform a naked dance at the whim of male ghosts. These fables exalt femininity, and the power it holds within — and beyond — Mari customs.

Collaborating once more with scriptwriter Denis Osokin, Fedorchenko continues his concern with the fading Mari culture. Abandoning the resigned and elegiac approach of 2010’s Silent Souls, here he employs an uplifting colour palette of rich blues, and casts pale-skinned actresses (both professional and non-) to deliver his painterly tableaux of rural life untouched by secular modernity. At times grotesque, but never vilifying, the film is a tender, beguiling portrait of a culture preserved within its folklore, inviting us to celebrate it alongside the Mari.

4.72GB | 1 h 46 min | 1280×720 | mkv

http://nitroflare.com/view/F41FC51D6A76E1E/Aleksei_Fedorchenko_-_Celestial_Wives_of_the_Meadow_Mari_%282012%29.mkv

Language:Mari
Subtitles:English

The post Aleksey Fedorchenko – Nebesnye zheny lugovykh mari AKA Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (2012) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Contemporary Russia. A high school student becomes convinced that the world has been lost to evil, and begins to challenge the morals and beliefs of the adults around him.

3.92GB | 1 h 53 min | 1920×720 | mkv

http://nitroflare.com/view/CAF04B9B5F75059/The.Student.2016.1080p.WEB-DL.Rus.HDCLUB.mkv
http://nitroflare.com/view/3D4920AFF20531D/The.Student.2016.1080p.WEB-DL.Rus.HDCLUB.Eng.srt

Language(s):Russian
Subtitles:English

The post Kirill Serebrennikov – (M)uchenik AKA The Student (2016) first appeared on Cinema of the World.