Fons Rademakers - Because of the Cats (1973)

From IMDB:
A gang of six wealthy, well-dressed and well-spoken hoodlums break into a married couple's house and rape the wife while forcing the husband to watch. Thus begins a dogged investigation by a determined detective who quickly finds that their cult-like solidarity can be a serious obstacle to breaking them.






Single Link
http://www.filesonic.com/file/61201009/Because_Of_The_Cats_(1973).avi
1.45Gb
or

http://www.filesonic.com/file/61201011/Because_Of_The_Cats_(1973).part01.rar
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http://www.filesonic.com/file/61201027/Because_Of_The_Cats_(1973).part09.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/61201029/Because_Of_The_Cats_(1973).part10.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/61201031/Because_Of_The_Cats_(1973).part11.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/61201033/Because_Of_The_Cats_(1973).part12.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/61201035/Because_Of_The_Cats_(1973).part13.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/61201037/Because_Of_The_Cats_(1973).part14.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/61201039/Because_Of_The_Cats_(1973).part15.rar

no pass

Jos Stelling - De Vliegende Hollander aka The Flying Dutchman (1995)

The saga, which unfolds over several years, kicks off in Flanders in 1568. Peasants, rebelling against Spanish rule, are sacking churches. One such gang, carrying the huge head of a statue taken from a church, stumbles onto land owned by a farmer, Nettelneck, when it's attacked by Spaniards. Only one Dutchman escapes, and after he and Nettelneck's wife make love, the result is a son, who is raised on Nettelneck's farm (for some reason dominated by a huge cesspool) but who is always an outsider. Some years later, a wandering Italian minstrel, Campanelli, who witnessed the massacre and the coupling, returns to tell the boy his father is alive and sailing at sea on his ship (though he's actually long dead); he also reveals that his father is able to fly. Later still, the boy, now a man, leaves the farm with his sweetheart, Lotte, in search of his flying father. The film paints a muddy and dark picture of medieval times, alternating between grim and crass (and gross) realism and almost pythonesque farce. People are mostly ugly, stupid and mean, everything from the farm to a grounded ship or an asylum/prison is covered in mud and excrements. An uncompromising, ambitious and probably very personal film.







http://www.filesonic.com/file/41966179/De Vliegende Hollander.avi
http://www.filesonic.com/file/41960211/De Vliegende Hollander.srt
1.37Gb
no pass

Hartmut Bitomsky - Playback (1995)

Playback is a documentary film about a workshop that took place at the Nederland Fimmuseum in Amsterdam in 1995, and which was supported by the Goethe Institute. The subject of the workshop was the early documentary cinema between 1910 and approximately 1920 - and also making of this video.

The participants included film students, filmmakers, visual artists, film historians and archivists from the Filmmuseum, and surrounding them was a crew of cinematographers, sound technicians and camera and production assistants, who recorded almost everything that was going on.

During the two weeks of sessions more than 30 films were reviewed, a few times in a movie theater and additionally on TV screens, and in discussed in general group sessions, in which reports were prepared and presented by individual participants. Later on, various video installations were set up, which were then again recorded by cameras. Finally, the workshop was presented to the public at the Rotterdam Film Festival, where the films were shown and the first results of the workshop discussed with the festival audience.

What are these old and seemingly old-fashioned films able to tell us today? Do they still convey to us a meaning, and if not, does the difficulty in understanding them lie with us or them?

And is there any need to preserve films if they are no longer capable of communicating to us in a manner that corresponds to our contemporary way or perceiving and understanding reality?

While we are working on coming to terms with these kinds of questions in the workshop, the following quotation from Umberto Eco appeared, who was visiting Amsterdam at that time: 'Creativity is not so much the inventing of new materials as it is the rearranging of materials that are old'. This rearranging of old materials is exactly what the video Playback does. It conjugates, so to speak, old films by using various media and by offering interpretations, and through forms of perception and experimenting with ideas in order to find out how much we are alienated from our (even recent) history and how much work is involved in showing it again.

"Playback" is a documentary of workshop in Amsterdam, for studying films which was made in 1910�`20s.It's important that this film is also a documentary of people studying 'media literacy'.For example there is a sequence that people discuss with each other while they watch fragments of silent films called 'beauty contest'.One says 'They're called 'beauty contest' but they're all beautiful',one says,'No,they might have been forced to face the camera like Pasolini's "Salo",and they look sad.',and another one says,'But there is a part that a boy stands close to a girl as if he protect her'...Probably "Playback" is influenced by the sequence of Rouch's "Chronique d'ete" that people who were filmed comment after projection of the film,but it is a great documentary of the meeting between people and images that separates the time of 80 years,and of inventing an idea and discourse from there. And we can imagine someone makes a documentary of people who discuss while they're watching "Playback" in future.It's a rare documentary opening to the future.

Bitomsky says the collapse of the direct relation between image and reality because of digital image's appearance and disappearance of images in war, are challenges to documentary.It may lead falling down of truth of image,and our judgment under presence and consumerism is submit itself to 'official announcement'?Will it become impossible for us to persuade a trace in an image?If we could be liberated from prompt reaction and secure the space and time to think,we can have something that was potential surface to view. He says "the task of the future documentary will be to create doubt. You could say, the more sophisticated literacy that could read not only images but also the method of working images." Cinema is the only place because it lost position of the mass media. The circulation of preservation, criticism, and creation of image can offer us how to defend ourselves.





http://www.filesonic.com/file/40730005/hartmut bitomsky's playback.avi

Or

http://hotfile.com/dl/88392511/777add6/hartmut_bitomskys_playback.part1.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/88392510/a62753f/hartmut_bitomskys_playback.part2.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/88392512/55a1378/hartmut_bitomskys_playback.part3.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/88392509/24c2c4d/hartmut_bitomskys_playback.part4.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/88393080/4e387f7/hartmut_bitomskys_playback.part5.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/88393082/a69f65e/hartmut_bitomskys_playback.part6.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/88393089/4f339f1/hartmut_bitomskys_playback.part7.rar.html

no pass

Mannus Franken & Joris Ivens - Regen AKA Rain (1929)

Quote:
Rain is a film poem (Cine Poème) about the rise and demise of a rain shower in Amsterdam, as many capitals were filmed by avant-garde filmmakers in the 1920's (a.o. Moskow, Berlin, Paris, New York). The film is impressionistic and composed following musical guidelines. It took Ivens over two years to shoot enough rain showers on different locations in the city to be able to compose this film.
In 1932/33 Helen van Dongen made a sound version of Rain with music from Lou Lichtveld (alias from Albert Helman). Afterwards more composers would be inspired to write music to this film, like Hanns Eisler in 1941 with Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben.




http://www.fileserve.com/file/q5gVnHv/REGENji29.rar
or
http://www.filesonic.com/file/32341955/REGENji29.rar

no pass

Frans Zwartjes - Living (1971)

"Living (1971), Zwartjes' own favourite film is the much praised climax of his series Home Sweet Home, in which he explores the rooms of his new house in The Hague. 'Living has this weird, indefinable atmosphere', Zwartjes said in an interview. 'The strange way people move around and the whining music with it...' The film is a demonstration of Zwartjes' virtuoso camera work. He plays the main character and at the same time operates the camera, which is hand-held while he films himself. Zwartjes: 'I was strong as a horse in those days.' Two persons, Zwartjes and his wife Trix, move aimlessly through the house. Living was filmed with an extremely wide-angle lens (a 5.7) that suggests a powerful atmosphere of alienation."




http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0MKRN9SX
pass:www.worldscinema.com

Frans Zwartjes - Pentimento (1979)

Description: This film is dominated by an icy blue. In a monumental building a group of scientists submit women to obscure and inhuman experiments, in which sexuality and cruelty constantly merge into one another. When the film was released, this horrifying game of power and powerlessness was condemned severely by a militant group of feminists. The criticism was undeserved. After all, 'Pentimento' is an art-historical term for a hidden image underneath the actual image giving an indication of how the latter evolved to its current state. The film does not endorse the lopsided power relations in our world but actually challenges them.

These afflictions are created by the imagination of a Japanese surgeon. Perhaps there is a connection to the past as soldiers were involved in torture practices. Zwartjes invites us into his films world: war, concentration camps, authority, oppression, power lust, sex, torture. Yet the film does not comment on that world, but - as Gerry Waller, in a review described in NRC Handelsblad - is an instinctive expression of Zwartjes' experiences. Pentimento is a painting in which images in the film are exposed but where its truth lies is behind the images.







http://rapidshare.com/files/209275613/_1979__Pentimento.avi.001
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http://rapidshare.com/files/209356799/_1979__Pentimento.avi.007

no pass

Frans Zwartjes - Visual Training (1969)

Description: "Visual Training" is a short 1969 experimental film from the Netherlands. The film looks so ahead of its time, with its goth makeup and gritty look. I wonder if Marylin Manson or the band the Misfits have ever seen Visual Training? A man and two topless ladies sit at a table and eat. They grotesquely smear food on one another. The one girl is blindfolded and covered with baking powder by the guy. The screen sometimes turns black, as the camera cuts fast between shots. When the camera zooms in on the actor's face, it looks as if he's staring right at the viewer. The one girl's nude body is used as a canvas for body food art. Frans Zwartjes has a created a rare short film that's unique for viewers. It's like a mild version of the "Vienna Aktionists" for the surreal at heart.




http://rapidshare.com/files/33872400/visualtraining.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/33871142/visualtraining.part2.rar

no pass

Frans Zwartjes - Anamnesis (1969)

Description: A major new talent in international avant-garde cinema, Zwartjes creates hermetic, obsessive, and "decadent" universes, in which desperate, dissociated males and females, though inextricably bound to each other, never "connect". Here an impassive, Keaton- like figure engages in a sexual, ominous food orgy with voluptuous, half-nude women whom he paws impotently. A mysterious, powerful tension informs the action. Despite non-communication and mutual defilement of the grossest kind, a profoundly humanist statement emerges; compassion for these victims, "partners" in loneliness. Expressionist style, make-up and lighting as well as complex montage heighten the effect of the tragic tableaux, in which tortured non-heroes operate impotently in hostile space, facing us blindly, nakedly, with all defenses down; compelling us, perhaps, to confront ourselves in like manner.

http://rapidshare.com/files/176748182/ZwarAnamne69-a77-bj7.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/176763157/ZwarAnamne69-a77-bj7.part2.rar

language:no
no pass

Børge Ring - Anna & Bella (1984)

Description: Two sisters look back on their life together.




http://rapidshare.com/files/29767339/Anna_and_Bella__1985_.rar

Language: Dutch
Rar Password: None

Nothing Personal

Not an easy movie to explain but wonderful to watch in so many levels that honestly I'm wordless when trying to write about it. So I will ramble. An extremely beautiful to watch pas-de-deux between Stephen Rea and Lotte Verbeek that maybe is a non-traditional love story or maybe is a quiet, slowly, peaceful expression of human relationships told in this story by two lonely individuals that find each other. One chooses to be lonely, the other is a widow. One doesn’t want to be found, the other doesn’t want to be alone. In the end is all about irony. See, no matter what I write it really doesn’t express what you will see in this movie as I believe everything I wrote above is in this movie but doesn’t really explain the story or what you will see.

For the first time I’m going to cheat and write an excerpt of the synopsis as written in the movie official site that surely will describe better what this movie is all about, if you want to read more go here.

A young female rebel and an old sage challenge each other in a story about personal freedom and attachment. She is a young Dutch woman, who after throwing away all her possessions becomes a vagabond by choice and finds the solitude she was looking for in an austere landscape of Irish Connemara. He is an old man who lives a solitary life in a secluded house in Ireland. She is radical and uncompromising. He is wise and ironic. What connects them is solitude they both see as freedom.

Alright that’s what the filmmaker intended but I’m sure that some of you after watching will discover other meanings, story and/or interpretation. I did but I’m not speechless, I’m wordless. Since writing here is the first time it happens to me. I also suggest if you want to learn more that you read an interview with director and writer Urszula Antoniak that’s here as will give you some insights about her film.

As a movie is almost perfect. Extraordinary landscapes of Irish Connemara, great cinematography, silences, very little dialogue, more actors expressions, very-slow pace, and a very attention grabber story told in five acts via words in black screens: Loneliness, The end of a relationship, Marriage, Beginning of a Relationship, and Alone but the words tell nothing about what follows or better, tell everything in a tangential way.

As you can tell I’m absolutely perplexed by this film that’s absolutely (cacophony on purpose) a work of art with a very-intriguing story told in the most unconventional possible way.

This extraordinary film collected major awards at 2009 Locarno fest including Best First Film for Urszula Antoniak and Best Actress for Lotte Verbeek as well as more awards and nominations in festivals around the world.

I strongly recommend the film to those that appreciate Art and European cinemas, but as the film has a clearly told story maybe some of you that don’t like this type of cinema could enjoy it too. To close a photo of one scene that I need to have here.

Big Enjoy!!!

Watch trailer @MOC

Altiplano

I was really looking forward to watch a film that has been called "unusual" because "narrative style combines realism, symbolism, almost mystical lyricism, and strong visual approach with superb cinematography". A mix of documentary and narrative. Alright the movie has all the above plus an intriguing cast with two actresses I've been following, very exotic Magaly Solier and also exotic Jasmin Tabatabai, BUT (and is a big but) I didn't like it!

I find it an absolutely pretentious mix of many styles -some from many of my favorite directors- to tell a tale that's more serious, down-to-earth, simple yet complex, and never a dream (like filmmakers say) as tells something that really happened in Peru. But actually what this film absolutely lacks is great storytelling and great filmmakers, which -in my opinion- both directors and co-writers absolutely are not.

This is the third role where Magaly Solier plays a Quechua and can't be more different to her previous two roles in Madeinusa and La Teta Asustada (The Milk of Sorrow). So different that while watching I think I discovered what was really missing in this movie was a great director and a superb storyteller like -for example- Claudia Llosa that in her movies explores almost same Peruvian mysticism and symbols with realism but she does it with a magical narrative and is able to extract true awesome performances from her actors.

In Altiplano Magaly Solier doesn't have an awesome performance as she looks and feels woody, theatrical, underused and sometimes performing the absurd; the same happens with Jasmin Tabatabi, just add that she's distant and never feels inside her character. True shame that such good actresses were subjected to an underuse of their respective capabilities.

The film tells two stories, one about a small village in Peru where an US company discovers gold, contaminates with mercury the town of Turubamba, and inhabitants start to die. The other about a war photographer (Tabatabi) suffering from depression that loses her Belgian, humanitarian doctor husband to the hands of the Turubamba inhabitants rage against foreigners and leads her to initiate a redemptory journey to the small Peruvian village. The two stories never merge according to me, unless you consider that the "symbiotic/symbolic" merge of Grace and Saturnina makes the story merge at the end. I don't.

I don't recommend this very pretentious film unless you have never seen the beauty of Peruvian (and sometimes thought was the Chilean) Altiplano. But then, you better rent a National Geographic documentary or watch the NatGeo TV channel and will be able to watch the Altiplano beauty without all the nonsense in this film.

The film really upset me for under-using great actresses; but most of all, for so unsuccessfully copying -or trying to copy- styles that belong to great master filmmakers.

Sigh.

Watch trailer (at your own risk) @Movie On Companion

Jennifer Lyon Bell - Matinée (2009)

[rate:3.8] 19 votes

Stage actors Mariah and Daniel play lovers every night, but their onstage romance lacks spark. One slow afternoon, they discover that today's matinée performance will make or break both their careers. Daniel wants to make big changes, and Mariah starts to wonder: are Daniel's suggestions reasonable? Or has he lost track of the boundary between actor and character? Rushed to the stage, in front of a live audience, they must figure it out together.

http://www.filesonic.com/file/45315653/Matinee.avi
481MB
no pass

Guido Pieters - Ciske de Rat (1984)

plot summary taken from imdb, written by kabouter:
Lovable Amsterdam street urchin, 11 year old Ciske is nevertheless much in need of love as the German 1955 title suggests. He is a scamp with a heart of gold. He causes havoc in the classroom pouring ink over his teacher yet when a polio-crippled boy joins the class Ciske is one of the only children to befriend him and is bullied as a result. His mother works in a bar and Ciske helps out often late into the night - his father is at sea and his mother supplements her income with prostitution. Ciske is also a very angry young man and he smoulders with rage at life's injustices.

comment taken from imdb, written by ninoguapo:
Much more than another coming of age movie – Ciske the rat is a fine example of the Dutch cinema. If you are found of the treble music you will definitely notice the song at the beginning performed by the Danny De Munk (famous singer from Netherlands) who plays the role of the troubled young lad – Ciske.

The childhood of Ciske in not easy – his father is sailing away and his mother does not really care about him. With rebellious spirit the young Ciske spends most of his time on the streets of Amsterdam. No one pays attention to the lonely boy. Trying to cope with the harsh live and attract some love and sympathy he has troubles with the law and even spends some time in prison. I really admired the way he protected himself there – if only all people were as strong as he turned out to be. Ciske has generous heart and when his teacher notices that he tries to help the young lad to take the right path.

Ciske the Rat is powerful and graphically brutal drama which is sure to leave a long lasting impression to anyone who had a chance to see it. I truly enjoyed watching it and highly recommend it.









http://rapidshare.com/files/156683962/Ciske_de_Rat__Guido_Pieters__1984_.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/156687670/Ciske_de_Rat__Guido_Pieters__1984_.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/156691039/Ciske_de_Rat__Guido_Pieters__1984_.part3.rar
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http://rapidshare.com/files/156698459/Ciske_de_Rat__Guido_Pieters__1984_.part5.rar
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http://rapidshare.com/files/156706855/Ciske_de_Rat__Guido_Pieters__1984_.part7.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/156680643/Ciske_de_Rat__Guido_Pieters__1984_.srt

no pass