Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project No. 2

Volume One of "Martin Scorsese' World cinema Project" offered half a dozen from around the world and across the last eight decades -- culturally and cinematically important works from Turkey, Senegal, Morocco, Mexico, South Korea, and Bangladesh.

The follow-up volume, "Martine Scorsese's World Cinema Project No. 2" follows a similar plan, drawing rarely-seen (and endangered) films from various nations and eras into a single presentation, on Blu-ray and DVD, with loving restoration and new digital scans in 2K and 4K. The titles hail from Turkey, Soviet Kazakstan, Brazil, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand; the oldest is a 1931 silent, and the newest was made in 1998 though its official release was in 2000. (Why does a film made so recently need restoration? Scorsese, who introduces each film, explains: "Cinema is fragile.")

In some cases, due to time or malice, source materials were scarce and not always in the best condition. Also, the source materials may not have been that great to begin with; still, the technicians who carried out the restorations (when possible, with the participation of the filmmakers) have done amazing work in restoring or improving both the visual and audio elements of these movies.

None of which would mean anything if the films in this collection weren't worth watching. But each of them is a rare and special work; this collection is a veritable jewel box of film, a trove of overlooked, suppressed, and almost forgotten masterpieces.

"INSIANG"

Phillippines - 1976 - Directed by Lino Brocka

It's a brutal pig- killin' world in the Manila slum where Insiang (Hilda Koronel) lives with her mother, the sharp-tongued Tonya (Mona Lisa), a woman so worried about her own faded looks that she responds with venomous rage to the youthful beauty of her daughter with harangues and accusations. After tossing out a number of relatives in order to make room for her younger boyfriend Dado (Ruel Vernal) -- a slaughterhouse worker and neighborhood tough guy -- Tonya is only partially mollified; her rages grow worse as she begins to suspect that Dado has designs on Insiang. This abusive mother-daughter dynamic is intensified by Insiang's other relationships, such as that with her horny boyfriend Bebot (Rez Cortez) and her friendship with Ludy (Nina Lorenzo), a shop girl whose running commentary on Insiang's life constitutes passive-aggressive backbiting. Only Ludy's sweet brother, Nanding (Marlon Ramirez), seems to offer Insiang affection without strings or undercurrents of contempt, but naturally she's uninterested in him. The politically conscious director presents a harrowing story of revenge and innocence transformed, by poverty and squalor, into pitiless cunning.

In addition to an introduction by Scorsese, each of the films offers an interview or video essay with a filmmaker of film scholar. In this case, the interviewee is Pierre Rissient, who worked with Brocka to get his films to Cannes and even helped produce a few of the prolific director's titles. Rissient calls the movie "A melodrama that's really a tragedy," and reveals the astonishing fact that it was shot in only 11 days.

A booklet that accompanies the set includes essays about each film; the essay for "Insigne, by Phillip Lopate, contradicts this, making the even more astonishing claim that the movie was shot in seven days. No wonder Brocka -- who died young, at age 52, in a car crash -- managed to make so many movies, in addition to producing so many plays.

"MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON"

Thailand - 2000 - Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

A very different proposition from "Insigne," which was based on a novel, "Mysterious Object at Noon" is made as an "exquisite corpse" tale -- that is, a story that unfolds with the ad libbed contributions of whoever is asked where they think the story should go next. A traveling fish seller starts things off after relating her own sad life story (she was sold by her father, she says, for "bus fare"), the fishmonger suggests a story about a teacher and a boy in a wheelchair; as the filmmaker travels across Thailand, others (an elderly woman, a group of school children) contribute their thoughts: The teacher faints, and the mysterious object of the title comes rolling out of her skirt; this turns out to be a fallen star from the celestial realm; that star assumes human shape and causes trouble; a second episode of child-selling, or at least an attempt at it, is observed; a "witch tiger" enters the fray. Not all of these plot developments are committed to film, and those that are tend toward simpler setups and executions; money, evidently, was a limiting factor. The tale's wildest elements are contrived by the school kids, and we don't see their ideas executed cinematically; rather, we see the kids telling the tale, practically tumbling over each other in their enthusiasm.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul talks about the film, and Dennis Lim provides the booklet essay.

"LAW OF THE BORDER"

Turkey - 1966 - directed by L�tfi �. Akad

Described, not inaptly, as a "Turkish-Western," this film (which the military government did its best to destroy, efforts that all too nearly succeeded) focuses on a village near the Syrian border of Turkey. The people there are so impoverished and pressed that their only means of economic survival is smuggling. One wealthy villager, Hasan, has 3,000 sheep he needs someone to sneak across the border, and he's willing today top dollar for the services of ace smuggler Hidir (the Kurdish actor and filmmaker Yilmaz G�ney, who co-wrote the script). But the smuggler is wary of a smart new military man (Atilla Erg�n) brought in to supervise the village's goings-on. What's more, Hidir -- a forward-thinking sort -- embraces the idea of cooperating with the government on some things, such as a new school where his son Yusuf (Hikmet Olgun) can learn a trade. It doesn't hurt that the school mistress (Pervin Par) is lovely, single, and attracted to Hidir. But it's a tough sell to the villagers, in part because they are suspicious of the government and of new ways of doing things -- and in part because local power players, including a rival smuggler named Ali Cello (Erol Tas), are so viciously corrupt.

The film's restoration is hampered by the poor quality of the source material, especially since an entire reel was lost and those doing the restoration had to reset to a beta tape. Overall the film is somewhat scratchy and bleary - and this, as it happens, underscores the setting and mood, and offers the delight of old-school cinema

Filmmaker Mevl�t Akkaya comments on the movie, while Village Voice film critic Bilge Ebiri pens an illuminating essay.

"TAIPEI STORY"

Taiwan - 1985 - directed by Edward Yang

Edward Yang collaborated with veteran Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien (who also stars) to create this tense, understated movie about an ambitious professional woman named Chin and her boyfriend Lung (Hsiao-hsien), a glum former baseball player whose life peaked far too early. The movie lands on the point of many intersections and transitions, including traditional manners of life giving way to a new, capitalistic order that creates opportunity but also turmoil, especially for the vulnerable. (It also creates incredibly polluted city air.) The single Chin seeks her own life --and her own apartment -- despite sudden job insecurity; Lung, of this part, seeks balance in his relationship with Chin as well as his not-yet-resolved divorce from Gwan (who, in an additional complication, has a child -- but not, it seems, with Lung). Chin's father is mixed up with loan sharks thanks partly to his underhanded business practices. Just how, and when, is a fresh start possible?

Hsao-hsien and Edmond Wong are featured in conversation about the film, and Criterion's own Andrew Chan, a film writer, examines and contextualizes the movie.

"REVENGE"

Kazakstan - 1989 - Directed by Ermek Shinarbaev

The phrase "new wave" is applied to several of these films and their directors, and always with good cause -- these are movies that helped usher in new cinematic tides, is they didn't spark them single-handedly. Even so, this film is a special case poised as it is, thanks to an accident of timing, between the end of one national identity and the coalescing of another, as the Soviet Union collapsed and that region of the world had to find new social and political footing.

Shinarbaev's film, adapted from a short story by Anatoli Kim, takes a hard look at a demographic not often given its due in films from the region: Ethnic Koreans who lived in Soviet nations. That tension between ethnicity and nationality (which, under Stalin, involved an existential threat for those of Korean heritage) is amplified by the film's theme of revenge. Both have multi-generational repercussions with a wider social impact. In this case, it's the murder of a young girl by an evil, unhinged teacher named Yan that kicks off the action, but the thematic elements have long been incipient and in place -- ever since the 17th century, when a cruel Korean emperor executes a loyal servant for no unifiable reason, leading to the court poet's self-imposed exile.

Like transmigrating souls, cruelty and creativity (or, if you like, nobility and sadism) rattle through the centuries to crystallize in human affairs like the killing of the child and the single-minded focus on revenge that her bereaved father lapses into. But human plans are not the only ones at work here: Supernatural forces are also in the mix. Enter a mystical wandering monk and a young woman possessed of unearthly powers of knowledge and healing. They (attended by hedgehogs) intervene in matters.

Unable to complete his task and kill Yan after pursuing him to faraway lands, the girl's father takes a new concubine with the express prepares of siring a son who will carry the mission into the future. The son -- a gifted poet in his own right -- ends up working on the island of Sakhalin (off Russia's eastern coast), his life further compromised when it turns out that he is tainted not just by the father's thirst for vengeance, but also by a disease that causes copious bleeding -- a situation that derails a rare chance for romance. What's it all mean? Revenge is unworthy, and fate inescapable? Yes.. and so much more.

Director Ermek Shinarbaev appears in an interview in which he explains the fraught process of clobbering with the writer, Kim. The lovely essay on "Revenge" is by filmmaker and New York Film Festival Director Kent Jones.

"LIMITE"

Brazil - 1931 - directed by M�rio Peixoto

The only directorial effort to be completed by screenwriter and novelist M�rio Peixoto -- and made when he was only 22! -- this silent movie is a revolutionary cinematic experiment that is structured less as a traditional plot-driven story and more like a tone poem of images, symbols, and music (Peixoto selected specific existing works of music to accompany each scene). The story is simple to summarize: Two women and a man drift in a rowboat on the open seas, evidently the survivors of a shipwreck. Supplies are running low, there's no water, and the burning sun beats down. All they have to sustain themselves, and each other, are their stories, which are told in flashback -- stories of prison breaks, dashed romantic dreams, and adulterous affairs that end in a melange of heartbreak and disease.

Heavy damage at the sides of the film around the 24 minute mark only adds to its surreal quality; the worst damage clears up after about 5 minutes, but this film, having been reassembled from a variety of sources, is highly variable in image quality, The soundtrack, however, is flawlessly reconstructed, based on the music notes prepared for the film's production. But the image quality becomes secondary to the film's visuals: Artful dissolves, inventive cuts, pointed juxtapositions, and innovative camera placements create a sense of hallucinogenic absorption that counterbalances Piexoto's penchant for long takes of shoes, trees, clouds, water... you don't watch this movie so much as dissolve beneath the force of Peixoto's artistic will. (The director himself appears in a cameo as a spiteful romantic rival.)

Much is made in the essay as well as the interview with Wally Salles, who created the M�rio Peixoto Archives, of the film's defining, bookending image: A man's handcuffed wrists resting on a woman's shoulders, pinning her while, implicitly, simultaneously limiting his freedom. But while much of the film is overtly about the ways in which love both fulfills and harnesses a person, it's also about a larger and more definitive kind of limitations: The fleeting nature of time and the finite duration of life. Salles discusses Peixoto's background, cinematic influences, and the film itself. Filmmaker and critic F�bio Andrade delves into Peixoto's life, career, and influence in his essay.

Love movies? Buy this box set. There's nothing else out there like it... well, actually, there is, and that's Volume One in what, the gods of cinema willing, will be a continuing series.

"Martin Scorses's World cinema Project No. 2"
Blu-ray/DVD Combo
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