VERENA PARAVEL & LUCIEN CASTAING-TAYLOR BOX SET [Blu-ray]

Anthropologists and filmmakers Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor explore living beings, observe connections between creatures, and question the cosmos. They set out to discover the world with humility, without judgment, accepting the overthrow of their own certainties. The power of their work, unique in contemporary cinema, emerges from the visual and sonic force of their films, from the intelligence with which they handle the medium of cinema, from the aesthetic beauty that their singular approach brings to life. There is a before and after discovering the documentaries of Paravel and Castaing-Taylor. One emerges from them shaken, astonished, traversed by a multitude of sensations and emotions, but also enlarged, awakened.

All films feature an introduction by Lucien Castaing-Taylor.

Web store exclusive, limited edition, ships only within the US and Canada

-

LEVIATHAN
2012 / 86 min. / 1.78:1 / DTS HD Master Audio 5.1, stereo / English

In the very waters where Melville’s Pequod gave chase to Moby Dick, Leviathan captures the collaborative clash of man, nature, and machine. Shot on a dozen cameras – tossed and tethered, passed from fisherman to filmmaker – it is a cosmic portrait of one of mankind’s oldest endeavors.

Special feature: Still Life, a short film by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (2013, 29 min.)

-

SOMNILOQUIES
2016 / 73 min. / 1.78:1 / DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 / English with English subtitles

somniloquies is a descent into the dream-world of our unconscious. A wild orgy, a mass drowning, a dwarf city for rent, a surgical operation that goes tragically awry, a baroque mansion for sale that doubles up as a torture chamber, a de-pressurized Experiment Hall that causes ladies’ fingernail polish to fly off their nails… such were the nocturnal dramas of the world’s most garrulous sleep-talker. An American lyricist who yearned for a career on Broadway, Dion McGregor dreamed out loud while his New York roommate recorded him over seven years in the 1960s.

Special feature: Deleted scenes (28 min.)

-

CANIBA
2017 / 91 min. / 1.78:1 / DTS HD Master Audio 5.1, stereo / Japanese with English subtitles

A new documentary from the pioneering filmmakers behind Leviathan, Caniba reflects on the discomfiting significance of cannibalistic desire in human existence through the prism of one Japanese man, Issei Sagawa, and his mysterious relationship with his brother, Jun Sagawa. As a 32-year-old student at the Sorbonne in Paris, Issei Sagawa was arrested on June 13, 1981, when spotted emptying two bloody suitcases containing the remains of his Dutch classmate, Renée Hartevelt. Two days earlier, Mr. Sagawa had killed Hartevelt and began eating her. Declared legally insane, he returned to Japan, where he lived as a freeman. Ostracized from society, he has made his living off his crime by writing novels, drawing manga, appearing in innumerable documentaries and sexploitation films in which he reenacts his crime, and even becoming a food critic.

Special feature: 8 mm Sagawa archives, edited by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (2025, 57 min.)

-

DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA
2022 / 118 min. / 1.78:1 / DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 / French with English subtitles

Five centuries ago, anatomist André Vésale opened up the human body to science for the first time in history. Today, De Humani Corporis Fabrica opens the human body to the cinema. It reveals that human flesh is an extraordinary landscape that exists only through the gaze and attention of others. As places of care, suffering and hope, hospitals are laboratories that connect every body in the world.

Special feature: Deleted scene (6 min.)