Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project [2013] [Criterion Collection]

Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, the World Cinema Project expands the horizons of moviegoers everywhere. The mission of the WCP is to preserve and present marginalized and infrequently screened films from regions generally ill equipped to preserve their own cinema history. This collector’s set brings together six superb films from countries around the globe, including Senegal (Touki bouki), Mexico (Redes), India and Bangladesh (A River Called Titas), Turkey (Dry Summer), Morocco (Trances), and South Korea (The Housemaid). Each is a cinematic revelation, depicting a culture not often seen by outsiders on-screen.

Martin Scorsese has put together a collection of six films in an ongoing film series called 'The World Cinema Project'. This is the first set of films that Mr. Scorsese has chosen. 'The World Cinema Project' is set up to show us films from around the world that are culturally important and that might have gotten lost over the years, only to be restored to pristine quality for us to discover. And what better way than to release these "lost" films than have the best home-video company, Criterion, release this set in gorgeous high-definition.

Again, this first set of six films that were hand picked by Scorsese were made all over the planet and came out between the 1930s and the 1980s, which is a fifty year span of movies that you never knew existed. Among them are 'Touki Bouki' by Djibril Diop Mambety, which was made in Senegal in 1973; 'Redes' by Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gomez Muriel, which was made in Mexico in 1936; 'A River Called Titas' by Ritwik Ghatak from India/Bangladesh in 1973; 'Dry Summer' by Metin Erksan from Turkey in 1964; 'Trances' by Ahmed El Maanouni from Morocco in 1981; and 'The Housemaid' by Kim Ki-Young, which was made in South Korea in 1960. All of these films are excellent, and you can see how each film influenced the legendary Scorsese.

With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In this French New Wave–influenced fantasy-drama, two young lovers long to leave Dakar for the glamour and comforts of France, but their escape plan is beset by complications both concrete and mystical. Characterized by dazzling imagery and music, the alternately manic and meditative Touki bouki is widely considered one of the most important African films ever made.

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Early in his career, the Austrian-born, future Oscar winner Fred Zinnemann (From Here to Eternity) codirected with Emilio Gómez Muriel the politically and emotionally searing Redes. In this vivid, documentary-like dramatization of the daily grind of men struggling to make a living by fishing on the Gulf of Mexico (mostly played by real-life fishermen), one worker’s terrible loss instigates a political awakening among him and his fellow laborers. A singular coming together of stunning talents, Redes, commissioned by a progressive Mexican government, was gorgeously shot and cowritten by the legendary photographer Paul Strand.

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The Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak’s stunningly beautiful, elegiac saga concerns the tumultuous lives of people in fishing villages along the banks of the Titas River in pre-Partition East Bengal. Focusing on the tragic intertwining fates of a series of fascinating characters, in particular the indomitable widow Basanti, Ghatak tells the poignant story of an entire community’s vanishing way of life. Made soon after Bangladesh became an independent nation, the elliptical, stylized, painterly A River Called Titas is a grand epic from a director who has had a devoted following for decades.

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Winner of the prestigious Golden Bear at the 1964 Berlin International Film Festival, Metin Erksan’s wallop of a melodrama concerns the machinations of an unrepentantly selfish tobacco farmer who builds a dam to prevent water from flowing downhill to nourish his neighbors’ crops. Alongside this tale of soul-devouring competition is one of overheated desire, as a love triangle develops between the farmer, his more decent brother, and the beautiful villager the latter takes as his bride, resulting in a Cain and Abel–like struggle. A benchmark of Turkish cinema, this is a visceral, innovatively shot and vibrantly acted depiction of the horrors of greed.

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The beloved Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane is the dynamic subject of this captivating musical documentary. Storytellers through song, some with a background in political theater, the band’s members became an international sensation (Western rock critics have often referred to them as “the Rolling Stones of North Africa”), thanks to their political lyrics and sublime, fully acoustic sound, which draws on the Moroccan trance music tradition. Both a concert movie and a free-form audiovisual experiment, Ahmed El Maânouni’s Trances is cinematic poetry.

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A torrent of intimate obsession, revenge, and betrayal is unleashed under one roof in this venomous melodrama from South Korean master Kim Ki-young. Immensely popular in its home country when it was released, The Housemaid is the thrilling, at times jaw-dropping story of the devastating effect an unstable housemaid has on the domestic cocoon of a bourgeois, morally dubious music teacher, his devoted wife, and their precocious young children. Grim and taut yet perched on the border of the absurd, Kim’s film is an engrossing tale of class warfare and familial disintegration that has been hugely influential on the new generation of South Korean directors.

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Volume one of Martin Scorsese's 'World Cinema Project' is simply awesome. Each film is unique and excellent, showcasing the time period it was made in. It's no wonder that Scorsese is one of the best directors of all time and this truly shows his appreciation and understand of film from all around the world. The video and audio presentations are all top notch with tons of amazing bonus features. You don't need to think twice about owning this Criterion set, as they have simply hit a home-run with this release. This is a must-own.

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