As Orlando (Magdalena Montezuma) enters the world of “freaks,” the movie develops scenes from a mythological netherworld, the Spanish Inquisition, the Middle Ages, and a few other settings to focus on unusual characters with physical or mental oddities. By the time the various vignettes that take place in these separate periods are completed, each with their own points and counterpoints, the “freaks” seem much less odd than their physically normal contemporaries. After Orlando has revealed much about the human condition through glimpses of a P.T. Barnum side-show, Siamese twins, as well as modern sexual morés, her journey with the viewer is completed. The device of Orlando, the time-traveler and liberated bisexual is based on Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando: A Biography.” The same set of actors play different roles in each of the five chronological segments. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

First Episode
Where it is told how Orlando Zyklopa, with her seven dwarf-shoemakers, as special attraction at the instant shoe repair service at the Freak City department store, strikes the anvil; how she is driven away by Herbert Zeus, store manager; then, as queen of the seven dwarf-athletes, how she climbs up onto the Trojan Horse; and finally how she refuses to be the successor of the stylite, which leads to her death.

Second Episode
Where it is told how Orlando Orlanda, alias Orlando Zyklopa, is born as a miracle on the steps of a basilicum in the Middle Ages and, with her two heads, enchants those around her with a lovely song in two-part harmony; how she cannot prevent the flagellants from taking two acrobats prisoner and leading them out of the city in their procession, which leads her to pursue them with the famous dwarf Galli, a painter, up to the convent of Wilgeforte, the bearded woman saint; how she is dressed in new clothes in the department store warehouse; and how she undergoes an amazing metamorphosis while Galli paints her portrait.

Third Episode
Where it is told how Orlando Capricho, alias Orlando Orlanda, alias Orlando Zyklopa, has to admit that she has been captivated by a special travel offer made by the department store, announced by a seductive voice; how she learns distrust when she sees her mirror image; how she falls into the hands of the persecutors of the Spanish Inquisition at the end of the 18th century; how she has to undergo a thousand dangers and adventures, barely escaping internment in prison; and how she is finally deported with people of every description, which Galli El Primo illustrates faithfully.

Fourth Episode
Where it is told how Mr. Orlando, alias Orlando Capricho, alias Orlando Orlanda, alias Orlando Zyklopa, is engaged at the entrance to the psychiatric ward by the freak-artistes of a side-show traveling around the country; how he quickly falls in love with the left side of Siamese-twin sisters, named Lena, something the other, named Leni, cannot abide; which is why Mr. Orlando, entangled in a rather confusing affair, stabs Leni and thereby also inevitably kills Lena, whom he loved so much; and how the head of the troupe is forced to sentence Mr. Orlando to death in compliance with an age-old tradition of the artistes.

Fifth Episode
Where it is told how Mrs. Orlando, called Freak Orlando because of her special orientation, alias Mr. Orlando, alias Orlando Capricho, alias Orlando Orlanda, alias Orlando Zyklopa, is engaged as entertainer and tours Europe with four bunnies; how she is in great demand as an attraction for openings of shopping centers, family celebrations, etc.; how, finally she is engaged to host the show at the annual festival of ugliness; how she crowns the winner and bestows a trophy with the inscription: “Limping is the way of the crippled,” and, at the end of the festival, we are told that the story is over.

http://nitroflare.com/view/DA001AB7D6AEC8A/Freak_Orlando.mkv

Language(s):German
Subtitles:None

A compilation film designed to evoke nostalgia for the shared entertainment experiences of early baby boomers, “The Movie Orgy” includes clips from television programs and B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as commercials, music clips, newsreels, blooper outtakes, satiric short films and promotional and government films. The effect is something like a simulation of a lazy Saturday of channel surfing or a long double (or triple) matinee at the movies. The film is primarily structured around extended clips from Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) and Speed Crazy (1959); as it progresses, segments primarily culled from about a dozen other films and programs are increasingly intercut to create the effect of a single disjointed story in which numerous monsters and assorted social menaces seem to inflict themselves simultaneously on various American cities and towns. This principal focus is occasionally interrupted by commercial breaks and other assorted side features. (IMDB, Written by scgary66)

http://nitroflare.com/view/099E5B9DD67900A/Joe_Dante_-_The_Movie_Orgy.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom is a BBC documentary series by British filmmaker Adam Curtis, well known for other documentaries including The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares. It began airing on BBC Two on 11 March, 2007.

The series consists of three one-hour programmes which explore the concept and definition of freedom, specifically “how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today’s idea of freedom.”

Episodes:

1. “F**k You Buddy” (11 March, 2007)

In this episode, Curtis examines the rise of game theory during the Cold War and the way in which its mathematical models of human behaviour filtered into economic thought.

2. “The Lonely Robot” (18 March, 2007)

The second episode reiterated many of the ideas of the first, but developed the theme that the drugs such as Prozac and lists of psychological symptoms which might indicate anxiety or depression were being used to normalise behaviour and make humans behave more predictably, like machines.

3. “We Will Force You To Be Free” (25 March, 2007)

The final programme focussed on the concepts of positive and negative liberty introduced in the 1950s by Isaiah Berlin. Curtis briefly explained how negative liberty could be defined as freedom from coercion, and positive liberty as the opportunity to strive to fulfill one’s potential. Tony Blair had read Berlin’s essays on the topic, and wrote to him in the late 1990s, arguing that positive and negative liberty could be mutually compatible. He never received a reply, as Berlin was on his deathbed.

http://nitroflare.com/view/0121DA94DEE2D1A/The.Trap.Part.1.2007.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

http://nitroflare.com/view/A48E0210A33E759/The.Trap.Part.2.2007.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

http://nitroflare.com/view/AD182D8C1EB96A0/The.Trap.Part.3.2007.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

This hypnotic documentary by cinephile par excellence Mark Cousins takes a brave – but increasingly rewarding – abstract angle by seeking through aesthetic rather than conventional exposition to capture the strange, sensory ethos of the Atomic age (a period spanning approximately 1940-60 but having a far-reaching legacy up to the present day). Using Mogwai’s ethereal electronic soundtrack as his conduit, Cousins takes us through the history of the Atomic period through sound and image alone (there is no overt narration) – even trying ambitiously to suggest that splitting the atom and creating atomic weapons were not in themselves immediately malign developments but almost the end-game of a form of evolution, and symbol of mankind’s mastery over the properties of his planet. Hence Cousins finds in the famous, awe-inspiring images of atomic mushroom clouds a correlation with more common sights of proliferation in nature (a bud that grows, a flower that blooms, sperm that fertilises an egg).

It’s the politicisation and militarisation of this scientific development that Cousins laments: his sub-Eisenstein editing hammering home the human and environmental cost of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and the Chernobyl reactor meltdown. Being such an impassioned filmmaker, there is the sense that Cousins has to work hard to rein in his clear authorial subjectivity and a tendency to over-determine the moral of his subject matter. That minor quibble aside, he has crafted a truly original and memorable tone poem to the haunting strangeness of our atomic times.

Mark Cousins is one of Britain’s most beloved and passionate cinephiles, and Atomic is further proof of his increasing proficiency and skill as a documentary filmmaker. It’s an ambitious, distinctive work that captures the sheer strangeness of the Atomic Age, a feast for the mind and the senses.

http://nitroflare.com/view/95EB910DBB84997/Atomic.Living.in.Dread.and.Promise.576p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

Quote:
In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in the 11th arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ’60s. It is the best, and certainly the funniest, of self-reflexive deconstructions of the documentary form. Ruiz drolly exaggerates every hare-brained convention of TV reportage, from shot/reverse shot ‘suture’ and talking-head experts to establishing shots and vox pops (narrator’s note to himself: “Include street interviews ad absurdum”.) Every fragment of reality (e.g. polling booths on voting day) comes through the lens as a pre-fabricated televisual cliché. And, as always, Ruiz detonates his own auteur status.As an essay-film, Great Events contains many echoes – and a cheeky critique – of the sophisticated political filmmaking of Chris Marker. But Ruiz increasingly spices up the lesson with surreal elaborations – such as progressively shorter re-edits of the entire film, avant-garde decentrings of image and sound, and crazy runs of ‘secondary elements’ such as particular colours, angles and gestures.

http://nitroflare.com/view/71852FE27300B9F/Raoul_Ruiz_-_de_grands_evenements.mkv
http://nitroflare.com/view/40541AA3EF5B8FF/Raoul_Ruiz_-_de_grands_evenements.srt

Language(s):French, some English
Subtitles:English (custom)

Quote:
“Maclaine’s next film, Beat (1958), might be thought of as a continuation of The Man Who Invented Gold, since it often cuts back and forth between shots of golden lamps, lights in windows, and gold-colored objects, often situated in the direct center of the frame (in fact, golden lights show up prominently near the close of the fifth section of The End as well). Otherwise, Beat is something of a portrait of the bohemian characters of late-1950s San Francisco, made just as the scene was disintegrating into mass-marketed national media consciousness and North Beach became the tourist’s emblem of the Beat Generation. Once again, Maclaine’s editing technique positively sparkles.

This virtually unprecedented, rapid-fire editing style which Maclaine developed for his films reflects not only his his destitution and sense of extreme alienation. It also reflects his addiction to speed. Stan Brakhage described the experience of listening to Maclaine speak:
“…[a] sentence would break and a new sentence would start that had absolutely nothing clearly recognizable to do with the previous sentence. All these tracks were running simultaneously and he’d leap from one to another, but if you listened long enough, all the stories finally unwound in the whole tapestry of his talking…”
Murphy points out that this is the same principle on which Maclaine seems to have based his editing style: a constant rupturing of the straightforward narrative. The conversation or film will veer off into seemingly random events, only to have those events show up as a crucial element in a later sequence. And to get anywhere with the films, the viewer, as Murphy says, has to “[suspend] judgment until the gestalt can be determined.”

Indeed, Maclaine can be considered a virtuoso of the narrative rupture. Color is intercut with black-and-white; scenes with characters are interrupted by abstract images; disparate juxtapositions abound. And though many of the random-seeming images eventually “justify” themselves in a narrative sense, there is no reassuring sense of an artistic “tapestry” being woven. There is only the tightrope walk between the two poles of “maybe” and “maybe not.” This is one of the qualities that makes Maclaine’s work, despite its pessimism, truly courageous.

Did I mention dancing? This filmmaker is as enchanted by dance as any who ever lived. Shots of walking and dancing feet permeate all of his films. He often edits shots in a way that accents the dance-like qualities of people’s movements – for instance the umbrella woman in Beat who flits at top speed from corner to corner at a four-way intersection like a bird trapped in a cage, or the numerous times he will use jump-cuts to make a person appear to walk faster or slower than they actually are. In a way, all Maclaine’s films could be looked at as choreographic studies – labors of a love for motion and movement.”

“Beat (1958) is weaker, an odd if sometimes powerful essay on alienation whose lack of emotional focus seems to prove that Maclaine’s films need some sort of center, if only for their fragments to fly away from.”

http://nitroflare.com/view/07E03D0B0EE6AAF/beat.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

Quote:
This new medium of expression is the Absolute Film. Here the artist creates a world of color, form, movement and sound in which the elements are in a state of controllable flux, the two materials (visual and aural) being subject to any conceivable interrelation and modification. – Mary Ellen Bute

http://nitroflare.com/view/A735B70C90F838B/Tarentella.1940.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.x264-Cinefeel.mkv

Language(s):None
Subtitles:None

Quote:
A tableaux vivant. The sound of the victrola employed “live” for screenings, utilizing the Vitaphone sound system. Created as part of Residency Unlimited: Special Features.

http://nitroflare.com/view/051B464DBE636B9/Victrola.Cinema.2010.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.x264-Cinefeel.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

Quote:
Lawrence Jordan shot TRUMPIT in the basement of a house on Baker Street in San Francisco that he shared with Stan Brakhage in the mid-1950s. Brakhage himself stars in the film (along with Yvonne Fair). Featuring a card game played on the body of a naked woman, Jordan portrays male sexual frustration while slyly satirizing Hollywood reaction shots. Beat poet and filmmaker Christopher Maclaine provides the soundtrack of voice and manipulated instruments. TRUMPIT is a charming, youthful example of the American avant-garde. – Stela Jelincic

http://nitroflare.com/view/59D8454BB8ED3CE/Trumpit.1956.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.x264-Cinefeel.mkv

Quote:
Of all my films, this is the most popular to date. Unfortunately, it is also the most cartoon-like and has an almost visible storyline: the young boy’s travels through terror, death and the Underworld. My own conception of the circus sequence in the film connotes the world’s weakness for striking up the band to cover tragedy, as when someone falls from a high wire in the circus. I did achieve certain special “break-throughs” with OUR LADY OF THE SPHERE, in that the flat surface was broken with forward and away zooms, but this is a simple thing. In the process, I had to relinquish certain subtle and more tenuous relationships between moving components and also the highly artificial gravitational formulations and inventions of such films as DUO CONCERTANTES and HAMFAT ASAR. – Lawrence Jordan

http://nitroflare.com/view/354E88BAFA00F3E/Our.Lady.of.the.Sphere.1972.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.x264-Cinefeel.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitle:None

The film is a Homeric journey through the history of cinema. Its theme is based on the mythological Odysseus of Homer, the Ulysses of James Joyce, and the synthetic figure, Telemach/Phil, from the 24-hour-long piece «The Warp,» by Neil Oram. Werner Nekes combines these three figures, and he shows their stories within the history of «lighterature,» writing with light = film. His central theme, however, is visual language in of itself: Odysseus/Bloom is transformed into Uli the Photographer, Penelope/Molly into his model, and Telemach/Stephen into Phil, who begins his «Telemachia». The connecting of their three lives occurs during the course of a single day, in September of 1980, in Germany’s industrial Ruhrgebiet region, preceding the elections in the Federal Republic.

http://nitroflare.com/view/477E9E5DE49A30B/Uliisses-1.avi

Language(s):English (predominately) German (some, mainly song lyrics)
Subtitles:German (optional)

Quote:
Described as a cross between a “speech” and a “fireworks display.” A magician-like figure delivers a peculiar speech that is embedded in extravagant arrays of time-delayed images that reflect and refract ideas about memory, time and language. By embedding his gestures in a spectacular diachronic array, Peter Rose has created a new form of kinetic poetry.

http://nitroflare.com/view/3A57027F91CC2EE/Metalogue.1997.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.x264-Cinefeel.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

Quote:
San Francisco based filmmaker Lawrence Jordan’s 1954 short follows his hand, gesturing through a house of mirrors, cards and paintings of women. Shot in black-and-white and playfully incorporating direct animation, enhancing the photographed image by scratching and etching directly on the film. A woman reads Philip Lamantia’s poem (from which the film gets its title), a choice, which evokes masculine angst as the hand acts out the scenario of the poem. – Stela Jelincic

http://nitroflare.com/view/86ABC489EB3AD16/Man.is.in.Pain.1954.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.x264-Cinefeel.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

Quote:
Longtime experimentalist Walter Ungerer extrudes a snow-covered forest obscured by icicles through time-lapse and polychromatic effects into a more synesthetic experience. – Tom Fritsche

http://nitroflare.com/view/95C5591C787CD85/Ici.2013.720p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.x264-Cinefeel.mkv

Language(s):None
Subtitles:None

Quote:
Night Awake is an experimental noise film provoking 3rd eye (seeing what is inside beyond the limit of symbols) opening with image and sound. By transferring camera into a spiritual medium, the lunar god has taught messages in the gap of time. The film is from the graveyard, and it is a textile of death(final transformation), which made the lucid light shines in the depth of many dimensions. To call the third eye awakening, we should not agitate the surface of the mind and physical eye, but soothes and provokes the third eye to awaken. In the gap of time, the flame of images that rise and become eternity is forming the rhythm and the speech. The teachings received in green crystals and had been translated into this film. In distanced mysteries and the half rotten emulsion is the art of metaphysical connection and awakening.

This film talks in a spiral language. It moves through one part of otherness to another part of otherness. The sound is a dialogue. It is an energy that sparks the image. The film has two parts, the second part double the speed of the first part.

http://nitroflare.com/view/E612BABF885DA4B/Night_Awake_%282016%29_-_Sandy_Ding.mkv

Language(s):None
Subtitles:NONE

SUMMARY
The film recalls various periods of Greece’s history. Sfikas studies and interprets the artistic movements of his time, influenced by eighties Post-Modernism. Starting in antiquity, he passes through the Byzantine and feudal eras and ends up in capitalism, without proposing this as a final end. Following the spire of this development, Sfikas resorts to poetic allegory. His cinematic oratorio, where angels are crushed in the abyss of civilizations, is something more than the transformation of a philosophical idea into a film; it becomes the very soul of the poet who wonders about its perpetual evolution.

EN
SYNOPSIS

Allegory purports to examine the fall of pagan culture and the rise of Christianity by moving the camera very slowly around a circular set filled with stationary actors supposedly forming an allegorical representation of Byzantine artwork. There is some good music to listen to as the camera completes its glacially slow rotations, and Greek cinema devotees may spot Yiannis Lambros among the human statues, but all but the most indulgent film students will probably want to give this experiment a pass.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Kostas Sfikas (1927-2009) was born in Athens. He worked as an employee in the post office in his juvenile years. In 1961, he directs a short film and begins his adventure as a self-taught cinematographer. Seven years later, along with Stavros Tornes, he directs the short documentary, Theran Matins, bought later by MOMA in New York. Devoted to experimental cinema, Kostas Sfikas has filmed nine documentaries and fiction films. He also worked with Demos Theos, Theo Angelopoulos, Nikos Koundouros, Nikos Panayotopoulos and other greek film directors.

FR
A PROPOS DU FILM
Dans un décor circulaire clos, rappelant l\’art byzantin, des figures humaines immobiles évoquent la disparition du paganisme et la victoire du christianisme. Le tout accompagné de musique atonale (Ignacy Paderewski, Christou, Nono). Dans ce film, Kostas Sfikas évoque, en se fondant sur le mot « allégorie » remontant dans la langue grecque à l\’époque hellénistique, l\’évolution dialectique de la Grèce à travers le temps, de l\’Antiquité à l\’époque byzantine, puis aux années 1980.

A PROPOS DU CINEASTE
Kostas Sfikas commence à travailler comme commis des postes, en 1961. Cinéaste autodidacte, il débute avec le court métrage La maison du désir. En 1962, il tourne le documentaire Egainia, en 1963. Il participe au scénario de Les Petites Aphrodites (Mikres Aphrodites) et, en 1968, de Thiraikos Orthros, un film réalisé avec Stávros Tornés. De sa vision du matérialisme dialectique au cinéma résulte le film expérimental Modèle, en 1974, qui est un long plan-séquence sur Le Capital, de Karl Marx. Mitropoleis, en 1975, et Allégorie (Alligoría), en 1986, sont également inspirés du marxisme. Kostas Sfikas tourne ensuite Les oiseaux prophétiques pleins d\’inquiétude de Paul Klee (To profitiko pouli ton thlipseon tou Paul Klee), en 1995, et Promithefs enantiodromon, en 1998. À partir de 1976, il tourne plusieurs épisodes pour la série télévisée Paraskinio, comme Kata Markon evangelio (1979), To montaz tou Eisenstein (1983) ou Ο enigmatikos kyrios Ioulios Vern-Nemo – Alligoria II (1993). Kostas Sfikas est également acteur dans plusieurs films.

http://nitroflare.com/view/AB76A1FF1C53484/Sfikas%2C_Kostas_-_1981%2C_Allegory.mkv

Language(s):Greek
Subtitles:None (no needed)

Quote:
Peter Gidal’s structuralist short CODA I is composed of three lines of a thousand-word story he wrote (as read by William Bouroughs in a cut­up tape collage) amidst an ultra-abstract play-of-light through a camera. Gidal describes his “so­called” imagery as “a complex of barely visible cuts in space and time, the opposite of erasure, but nothing so much as visible.” – Stela Jelincic

http://nitroflare.com/view/7A7CE79AAEB01B5/Coda.I.2013.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.x264-Cinefeel.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

Quote:
Peter Gidal’s second Coda continues with William Burroughs voice, reading three lines of a 1971 story by Gidal. A slightly more abrupt cut in Burrough’s reading of the text accompanies the flickering of light upon 16mm film. – Stela Jelincic

http://nitroflare.com/view/75AF750ACC36D3A/Coda.II.2013.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.x264-Cinefeel.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

Quote:
In describing the process of BIG SUR, artist Lawrence Jordan writes, “As with RODIA-ESTUDIANTINA only one shot, which probably was the result of lapse in concentration, was deleted from the original camera roll. This film was intended to extend my experiments with the ‘in-camera’ film, and is probably one of the most successful. Against the coastline of the Big Sur country the camera catches swiftly shifting fragments of the women at the baths, playing the guitar, cutting their hair, sleeping. In this case I attempted to use the camera movement to slightly smear the images onto the film emulsion in a manner parallel with the use of broad different medium from music or painting, I have always been interested in the dynamic parallels that existed once photography in its still form was released into time (the parallel with music) and into motion (the parallel with the brush stroke).”

http://nitroflare.com/view/9392C89030C3204/Big.Sur-The.Ladies.1966.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.x264-Cinefeel.mkv

Language(s):None
Subtitles:None

Quote:
The animated film VISITATION unwinds through a dark landscape of unending life and death; steeped in the alchemical and inner dream life the film explores a black and white landscape of gothic figures who enact evolving metaphysical dramas. Surrealistic and strange, cast in grainy 16mm images, the film allows an imaginary glimpse within “an outer-world night…” The visions in the film are summoned from the film maker’s imagining of a mythical eternity which is beautiful but fraught with pain, exposed by the ether voices and figures which inhabit the eternal ballet beneath our consciousness. VISITATION imagines scenes from the alchemical experiments which were calculated to disclose and finally manipulate existential nature. Metals, air, fire and water were essential elements in Alchemy, and their psychological counterparts are likewise interpreted within the film as essential elements of death, cruelty, rebirth, and eternal evolution. The film was inspired by hearing wolves crying and simultaneously reading H.P. Lovecraft, a combination which led the filmmaker’s imagination into the world she then created. Using painted cut-outs and early cinema techniques (multiple passes, mattes, multi-plane levels, in-camera superimpositions, shutter manipulation, etc.) the film was shot with a 16mm Bolex camera in black and white which gives it a grainy handmade look. The abstract passages were created by placing objects directly onto raw film and exposing the film with a flashlight. Thus the film’s process mirrors the alchemical nature of chemical and material experimentation.

http://nitroflare.com/view/E3230CDE68EBD3D/Visitation.2013.480p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.x264-Cinefeel.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None