Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project No. 4 (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray)

Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project No. 4 (Criterion Collection)Label: The Criterion CollectionDescription: Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007 The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project has maintained a fierce commitment to preserving and presenting masterpieces from around the globe with a growing roster of dozens of restorations that have introduced moviegoers to often overlooked areas of cinema history. This collector’s set gathers six important works from Angola (Sambizanga) Argentina (Prisioneros de la tierra) Iran (Chess of the Wind) Cameroon (Muna moto) Hungary (Two Girls on the Street) and India (Kalpana). Each title is an essential contribution to the art form and a window onto a filmmaking tradition that international audiences previously had limited opportunities to experience.DUAL-FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES * New 4K digital restorations of Sambizanga Prisioneros de la tierra Chess of the Wind and Muna moto and 2K digital restorations of Two Girls on the Street and Kalpana all overseen by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays * New introductions to the films by World Cinema Project founder Martin Scorsese * New and archival interviews featuring Indian film historian Suresh Chabria and filmmaker Kumar Shahani (on Kalpana); Argentine film historians Paula Félix-Didier and Andrés Levinson (on Prisioneros de la tierra); Two Girls on the Street director André de Toth; and Sambizanga director Sarah Maldoror and Annouchka de Andrade Maldoror’s daughter * New program by filmmaker Mohamed Challouf featuring interviews with Muna moto director Dikongué-Pipa and African film historian Férid Boughedir * The Majnoun and the Wind (2022) a documentary by Gita Aslani Shahrestani daughter of Chess of the Wind director Mohammad Reza Aslani featuring Aslani members of the film’s cast and crew and others * New and updated English subtitle translations * PLUS: A foreword and essays on the films by critics and scholars Yasmina Price Matthew Karush Ehsan Khoshbakht Aboubakar Sanogo Chris Fujiwara and Shai Heredia SAMBIZANGA A bombshell by the first woman to direct a film in Africa Sarah Maldoror’s chronicle of the awakening of Angola’s independence movement is a stirring hymn to those who risk everything in the fight for freedom. Based on a true story Sambizanga follows a young woman (Elisa Andrade) as she makes her way from the outskirts of Luanda toward the city’s center looking for her husband (Domingos Oliveira) after his arrest by the Portuguese authorities—an incident that ultimately helps to ignite an uprising. Scored by the language of revolution and the spiritual songs of the colonized Angolan people and featuring a cast of nonprofessional actors—many of whom were themselves involved in anticolonial resistance—this landmark work of political cinema honors the essential roles of women as well as the hardships they endure in the global struggle for liberation. PRISIONEROS DE LA TIERRA The most acclaimed film by one of classic Argentine cinema’s foremost directors Mario Soffici’s gut-punching work of social realism shot on location in the dense sweltering jungle of the Misiones region simmers with rage against the oppression of workers. A group of desperate men are conscripted into indentured labor on a treacherous disease-ridden yerba maté plantation under the control of the brutal foreman Köhner (Francisco Petrone)—a situation that boils over in an explosive act of rebellion led by the defiant Podeley (Ángel Magaña) and made all the more tense by the fact that Köhner and Podeley love the same woman: Andrea (Elisa Galvé) the sweet-spirited daughter of the camp’s doctor. The expressionistic shadow-sculpted cinematography of Pablo Tabernero evokes the feverish dread of a place where suffocating heat economic exploitation and unremitting cruelty lead inexorably to madness and violence. CHESS OF THE WIND Lost for decades after screening at the 1976 Tehran International Film Festival this rediscovered jewel of Iranian cinema reemerges to take its place as one of the most singular and astonishing works of the country’s prerevolutionary New Wave. A hypnotically stylized murder mystery awash in shivery period atmosphere Chess of the Wind unfolds inside an ornate candlelit mansion where a web of greed violence and betrayal ensnares the potential heirs to a family fortune as they vie for control of their recently deceased matriarch’s estate. Melding the influences of European modernism gothic horror and classical Persian art director Mohammad Reza Aslani crafts an exquisitely restrained mood piece that erupts into a subversive final act in which class conventions gender roles and even time itself are