Luc Moullet Box Set

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domino harvey
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#26 Post by domino harvey » Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:32 pm

You're welcome, I'll take more captures as I work my way through the set chronologically.

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zedz
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#27 Post by zedz » Thu Feb 15, 2007 11:06 pm

justeleblanc wrote:Thanks, Domino!
And thanks from me. I know almost nothing about these films, but the use of negative space in those compositions tells me I just have to see them!

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domino harvey
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#28 Post by domino harvey » Fri Feb 16, 2007 1:23 am

Une Aventure le Billy de Kid / A Girl is a Gun (1970)
Well, the original French version IS on the disc, but without subs, so if you want to see this and understand it, you can hear the English-looped version, with Moullet himself dubbing Leaud's voice, complete with Three Stooges noises. This would bother me a whole lot more if I thought I'd ever want to watch the film more than once. Ugh, it's... bad.

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#29 Post by evillights » Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:29 am

domino harvey wrote:Une Aventure le Billy de Kid / A Girl is a Gun (1970)
Well, the original French version IS on the disc, but without subs, so if you want to see this and understand it, you can hear the English-looped version, with Moullet himself dubbing Leaud's voice, complete with Three Stooges noises. This would bother me a whole lot more if I thought I'd ever want to watch the film more than once. Ugh, it's... bad.
First of all, I think this film is a complete masterpiece. So there's that.

Secondly, Moullet is not dubbing Léaud's voice in 'A Girl Is a Gun' (which we should note is his preferred version of the film, as opposed to the French-language-track version). I forget exactly who it is providing the voice, but whoever, the guy is presumably a North American.

Since I can see these films not getting a lot of love on the forum where 'Seven Samurai' is routinely touted as the ultimate in cinema-orgasm, let me at least give my perspective on what I like about them, or one in particular, from a piece I wrote that should be appearing in New-York Ghost this week or next (subscribe here if you're interested -- it gets delivered via email as a PDF; run by Ed Park from The Believer and a few others) —

Anatomie d'un rapport (Anatomy of a Relationship) by Luc Moullet

"I'd like to write about this relationship, but I can't. All I can do is think about it." Moullet's brilliant comedy exposes the relationships among the following: love, rejection, sexual dysfunction, the gentle gesture, le type sympathique, le type inefficace, the sex organs of women and men, Jeanne Moreau, The Passenger, life after les Cahiers jaunes, a career outside the system, the power of money, dignity in the face of poverty, fresh air as inalienable necessity. Luc Moullet, who could just as easily have titled his picture God's Comedy, makes his films with a zen perseverance, with a beatified optimism, and the two qualities likewise emanate from every scene of every one of his films. I'm as grateful for their existence as some other cinephiles are for the work of Ozu. Of the selection presented to us in the recent BlaqOut DVD box set, it seems to me that Anatomie d'un rapport is the crux-film, the one that, true to its title, presents the greatest number of connections between the most disparate elements of the contemporary world, and in the process manages to fuse so many of the concerns (obsessions, neuroses) one finds swarming all throughout Moullet's oeuvre. Like the greatest New Wave films, Anatomie is as much a tribute to the differences between men and women as a critique, and its exploration of the more utilitarian ways in which we as humans find ourselves interrelating is as visionary as the acid-quest methodology of Les Contrabandières (The Smugglers) and A Girl Is a Gun. In any case, those are three of the best films ever made.

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domino harvey
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#30 Post by domino harvey » Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:47 am

Apologies, when I read "dubbed by Moullet," I didn't realize they just meant he wrote the dub. But tell me more about how everyone here loves Seven Samurai

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Barmy
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#31 Post by Barmy » Fri Feb 16, 2007 1:35 pm

Billy the Kid is utter crap. I'm glad someone has seen the light.

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Steven H
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#32 Post by Steven H » Sun Mar 18, 2007 4:31 pm

Facets announced a Luc Moullet set the other day, to be released May 22nd, for May with Brigitte and Brigitte (1966), The Smugglers (1967), A Girl Is a Gun (1971), Anatomy of a Relationship (1975), Genesis of a Meal (1978), The Sieges of Alcazar (1989), and Up and Down (1992), as well as Courant's documentary The Man of the Badlands. It's priced at 129.95, which is slightly more expensive than the Blaq Out, with all the possible baggage Facets brings to the table.

I've never seen a Moullet film, but I'm definitely with zedz on being intrigued by those screen shots.

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domino harvey
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#33 Post by domino harvey » Sun Mar 18, 2007 7:46 pm

I'll try to make my way through the rest of the set in the meantime to make more caps for the remaining films.

BTW, I bet Criterion releases Cornel Wilde's the Naked Prey next January. Just hunchin'

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domino harvey
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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#34 Post by domino harvey » Sat Jan 09, 2010 4:39 pm

Some kind soul on YouTube has upped several of Moullet's shorts. They're not subbed, but you can probably figure out what's going on in Barres and Essai d'ouverture without 'em

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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#35 Post by What A Disgrace » Sun Jun 12, 2011 11:38 am

There's precious little written about Moullet that's readily available in English on the Internet. I've only recently discovered the director, and while Brigitte et Brigitte and Anatomy of a Relationship were a bit difficult, I fell in love with Parpaillon (called Up and Down on the Facets discs) as I have with few other films. And I managed to find this intriguing essay on the film in question.

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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#36 Post by Numero Trois » Mon Dec 02, 2013 5:40 pm

There's at least a few more articles than that available around the web:

http://sensesofcinema.com/2009/feature- ... -pompidou/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://sensesofcinema.com/2010/feature- ... esterbert/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/a-rock-i ... uc-moullet" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I finally got around to netflixing a few of the Facets discs, and so far my favorite is easily "Anatomy of a Relationship." I hate to say it, but with its somewhat autobiographical nature, its laser focus on splicing male / female relationships and its economical budget the film reminds me of what I've seen of mumblecore films. Of course its a mumblecore film done right. As rigourous a treatise on the war of the sexes as one could ask for.

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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#37 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Mar 29, 2021 9:19 pm

After cracking this open roughly two years ago and sampling the incredible Brigitte et Brigitte and Les Contrabandières, I’ve finally made my way through this entire set, and as a result it’s become one of my most prized possessions.

First the bad: based on what I’d heard, A Girl is a Gun wasn’t as terrible as my expectations going in, but it wasn’t good either. I do think the film would’ve played better if there was a subtitle option rather than only English dub because Léaud’s branded narcissistic whine, that he can skillfully flaunt to reach octaves of amplified hysteria while remaining perceptively composed, would have likely contributed to the film’s cheeky amusement based on the look of the pitch in the character’s delivery we see onscreen. Unfortunately this doesn’t translate well to the dubber, and thus ruins any behavioral gags that seem to be the core reason to sit through this film.

Moullet is clearly homaging the spaghetti westerns here to some extent, but he seems more interested in shamelessly responding to El Topo, creating an aimless acid western even more stripped-down, reaching a point of disconnected irreverence that makes the Jodorowsky film narratively coherent by comparison. If Moullet is subverting the formula in a Godardian inverted-genre dissection, it doesn’t add up to much of anything, though I could see the obsessive champions of Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control declaring this a masterpiece for similar reasons they do that film. However not only is this a tougher sell at face-value, but Moullet talks about the inspiration in the accompanying doc, L'Homme Des Roubines, as replicating the spirit of Hawks who- according to Moullet- made the best of each genre, and he wanted to pay tribute to him. This unfortunate reveal of his creative process seems to indicate a sincerity behind this film that can only marginally work as a lark, so I’m going to opt to read the film the only way that makes any sense.

I didn’t really care for Parpaillon either; a loose directionless film about cycling- literally a directional activity- seems ripe for innovation, but Moullet’s vibe is so laid back that the deadpan gags or absurdist commentary on superficial social interaction feel lazy and fail to elicit laughs- if that’s even the intention. This is the kind of film that earns the term “effortless” but not as a compliment. The previously mentioned extra L'Homme Des Roubines is the worst film in the set- not directed by Moullet, but a completely vapid rant by him as the star principal, who seems to be actively working to make us like his films less via monotonous behind-the-scenes pretensions. His explanation to why he’s attracted to scatalogical material by sharing some family history is absolutely insane, and spoken earnestly… (“I think the scatalogical gene is mostly recessive in me” is a funny punchline, but it’s not delivered humorously).

Alright, onto the good/great, which is everything else. Brigitte et Brigitte is conversely the compliment version of a film appearing “effortless,” an unhinged, tangled compound of politics, pop culture references, and nouvelle vague stylizations, communicated through expectedly amplified youthful liberation, simultaneously celebrating and lampooning the content with equally playful parodies of methodology, including the very titular youths telling it. It’s the best film on the set, and one of the most gleeful works from the most spirited artistic movement the medium has ever offered, and likely ever will.

Les Contrabandières is similarly bold in its abandonment of narrative prudence, skipping through an entire movie’s-worth of material via sloppy editing and a voiceover completely uninvested in aiding our connectivity to the prologue, all within the first few minutes. So we’re self-consciously introduced physically and philosophically to a zany lawless space (shot in the same badlands-mountains as A Girl is a Gun) reflexively channeling the unorthodox structuralism in technique and plot. This is a film that asks us to surrender quicker than your typical form-disbarring fairy tale from Rivette, or schizophrenic obstructing/facilitating cognitive-emotional chaos from Godard, though it’s not nearly as deep or exciting as the best from those masters.

Still, credit where credit is due- Moullet knows how to double down on the elements of his colleagues and influences. Using the examples of those two- Rivette’s conspiratorial paranoia is introduced and destroyed at once, with an aggressive Bretchian rod punishing our heroine by literally undoing her blouse as she explains she is expecting revenge for not paying her dues to the smuggler’s union! For Godard we get the inclusion of an unapologetically nonsensical posturing at political subtext, and a lovers-on-the-run plot that bypasses the establishment, or fun, of the running. Rules are instituted and replaced or abandoned constantly, as characters talk to the audience, nonchalantly graze over unknown critical details, and even mock the simplest of spectator-involving techniques by brazenly having one woman express kittenish excitement about being free in narration as we watch her solemnly stew in her barren apartment in mobileless apathy.

The irony of providing the viewer with novel comic pleasures through refusal to maintain the bare-minimum charities we expect as moviegoers is perhaps the film’s central conceit, and one that it milks for ingenuity with great success. My favorite example is the picnic early on when we’re having the dynamics of a love triangle thrust upon us just as the characters are, and their segregated internal monologues reflect our own confusion and wish for invitation and comfortability. When one woman is about to talk and the other mentally-pleads for her to break the ice, so do we- and yet the absurdity of the male’s defense mechanism of nervously consuming food as avoidance most resembles our own indulgence of information rapidly and restlessly without respite to cope with the erratic delivery and congestion of content.

It’s a blatantly amateurish work in formalism that thrives off the freedom from this disjointment. Moullet doesn’t exhibit a branded technical chaos like his peers (so many unpredictable, alienating choices for camera placement!), and so even that familiarly within the internal logic of the eccentric is absent, for better and worse. Here is a film that manages to be both laconically bare and turbulently flooded with ideas, set to an irregular tempo of invisible phantasmagoria. I think it’s one of the most interesting movies I’ve ever seen, mostly because its methodology engrosses me through an experience of blissful delight and crippling unease.

Eventually we’re left in a state of exhausted submission like the girls’ jumbled speech attempting to string together ideas adrift in the hot desert, a vast space of vacuousness, though one where we can still feel and play, even on our last legs. If the film ended here, it would be more coherently linear in tone at least, but the final act is even more disturbing. Moullet has one last trick up his sleeve, however it’s the opposite of Rivette’s magic or Godard’s immersive layered provocations that keep us distracted as they educate us. Instead he invades our familiar pedestrian domestic milieus and demonstrates in a manner of minutes how oppressive and suffocating these social contexts are, fumes of stress unbearably burning our senses until the only answer is flight. The loop is closed, and now we know why- an implication far more blistering in its helpless aftertaste than the hopeful release that we jumped off from at the start. The reveal of this narrative as one rooted in the anxiety driving a deliverance of Freedom From, rather the aspiring optimism of Freedom To, is as existentially defeating as the awareness of the sisyphean cycle in the final frame is soberly tragic. Not even in the most exuberant movies can we escape this mundane anchor of pragmatic cynicism in totem. Salvation is a mirage in the desert.

Anatomie d'un rapport is a more introspective and comprehensive answer to Allan King’s A Married Couple if made by Yvonne Rainer. The film starts as a stark emasculation of male complacency by the patriarchal threat of feminist empowerment, and delves into unexpected places of vulnerability, solipsistic defaults, desire, and yearning for connection on our terms. The spectrum of selfishness and selflessness is explored in the only authentic way possible: by expose this philosophical defense mechanism for the cognitive rabbit hole it is- and reframing selfishness as a necessity for empowerment and communication. Moullet and his wife play the central couple, and Moullet has no qualms about patronizing his own experience, as the core idea of the film is that relationships are inherently absurd, and that through the cultural movements involving liberation of identity in the 70s, we as individuals have ironically retreated into a narcissistic place as a result of this empowerment by way of fragmentation from the binding ideological systems of the whole. Independence is nice, but it’s also full of banality and confusion.. and the compromised ending that’s rejected in the drifting coda feels right, but that last few minutes of meta-deconstruction and attempts at reconstruction are amongst the funniest moments in any Moullet film, something Charlie Kaufman would love. Anyways, it’s another great movie that one could probably ramble about for pages, but I’ll just recommend it instead.

Genèse d'un repas is a clever manipulation of narrative formula, working backwards from an ordinary breakfast to exploit how capitalist systems bleed certain demographics, and supporting Godard’s thesis that everything is politicized by finding a connective tissue from the most random starting point. This is a social justice film without clearcut didacticism, igniting a versatility of emotional and philosophical responses sans designated area to purge this weight. What I loved most about this work wasn’t how informative it was, but how respectful, curious, and passionate Moullet’s stance is in exploring the depths of cross-cultural comparisons, from the expected wage and condition disparities to eating habits and conditioned calorie intake! I never got the sense he was projecting his skewed view onto his subjects, and his opinions mix together well with the observational attentiveness and expressions from those functioning within this system. Eventually the link is traced back to the material of film stock itself- and the grey commentary becomes as personal to Moullet as to the audience consuming film in real time. Juxtaposing this revelation with racist propaganda resonates a sense of privilege across multiple lenses, and leaving us with these revelations is all Moullet needs to do to make an effective doc.

Last but not least, Les sièges de l'Alcazar is a lovely self-deprecating and self-reflexive deadpan satire about an obstinate and cantankerous film critic who isolates by nature but finds himself inexplicably drawn to a similarly austere and narcissistic critic of the opposite sex. Their awkward process of joining intimately is a bizarre yet drab courting process that finds an ironic midpoint between banal anti-romantic realism and the artificial romantic skeletons right out of the movies they critique insularly for a living. The narrative slips into farce while maintaining a dry restraint, so it never lifts off the ground to glaringly qualify as loud masquerade. There’s a quiet madness populating this film, and Moullet’s ability to keep it grounded with wry tempered gravity stops the meta-contextual nudges from exploding into bombasticity like so many others, when orbiting around a tranquilized droll energy is more than enough.

I love how the central character becomes paranoid when his unique opinion begins to become popular, first resenting that this filmmaker does not belong to him anymore and then doubting if the filmmaker is talented at all! His embarrassed reaction to culminating the kiss with his love interest, sourced in a fear that she’ll think he’s copying the film they're watching, is simultaneously a surrealistic and realistic reflection of the barriers of one’s anxiously irrational headspace to participate in life, fatalistically bound to the self-alienating behavior of cinephilia. In the end he can’t part from his rigid schedule, or the film, or thoughts of his love, nor can he concentrate on any one of them as a confident choice in absolute terms. So yeah, the surrealism of the blended ideas are exposing a very realistic example of neuroticism facilitating a purgatory of agency clogging self-actualization.

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furbicide
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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#38 Post by furbicide » Mon Mar 29, 2021 9:35 pm

Pleased to hear you enjoyed so much of this, TWBB! I also think Anatomy of a Relationship and The Seats of the Alcazar are brilliant (the first in particular a wonderful examination of male insecurity and the anxieties and frustrations of both parties in sexually dysfunctional relationships), though I must say I found Parpaillon / Up and Down hilarious, kind of like a cinematic version of a page in a Where's Wally? book (favourite line in the film: "Mummy, Daddy, a tandem! Call the police!"). Apart from Man of the Badlands – which sounds pretty dull, and your description certainly doesn't make a strong case for it! – Genesis of a Meal is the only one in the set I haven't yet seen, but it sounds like an essential entry in his filmography.

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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#39 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:49 am

Yeah I could tell that Parpaillon was operating on such a soft diminished wavelength that much of the pleasures were flying right under me, so it's one I definitely plan returning to when I'm in the space to pay closer attention (and maybe after some early-Tati revisits, which are surely the core inspiration). If you liked the playful yet dense esotericism of Anatomy of a Relationship, I'm curious how you'll respond to Yvonne Rainer's work, who I've been referring to as the feminist Godard but her loose style feels more of a kinship with this film. The Seats of the Alcazar isn't my favorite film on the set, but it might be Moullet's cleverest work in just how perfectly he manipulates the mechanisms of cinema and real life to emulate one another. For an artist who seems to often be impulsively spewing creativity onto the screen without a filter, this is a mature entry (perhaps not coincidentally a later-life effort) that practices restraint while still retaining the wild surrealism barely protected below a impassive facade.

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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#40 Post by furbicide » Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:14 am

Rainer's been on my wavelength for a while – she has a great brief appearance in Ulrike Ottinger's Madame X – but I've never seen any of her work, so will certainly follow up on this and let you know what I think! Which of her films would you say is a good one to start with, given my enthusiasm for Anatomy of a Relationship?

I also reckon I need to revisit The Seats of the Alcazar, now you mention it – I recall really enjoying it, but I've only seen it once and quite some time ago, so I must confess I'm struggling to remember a few of the aspects you mention (the subtle surrealism, the male protagonist struggling with the popularisation of his stance). But it's a delightful premise and one that I'm kind of sorry not to have seen anyone else successfully frame a comedy around (at least, I can't immediately think of any other neurotic film-critic couplings on screen).

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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#41 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Mar 30, 2021 9:57 am

furbicide wrote:
Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:14 am
Which of her films would you say is a good one to start with, given my enthusiasm for Anatomy of a Relationship?
Kristina Talking Pictures or The Man Who Envied Women come to mind, but all of her features revolve around similar themes even if the causes are inclusive of different subjects. I’d actually suggest reading a bit about her/interviews with her, and seeing her first film, Lives of Performers, and then jumping around from there. I linked some Internet resources to her dedicated thread

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furbicide
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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#42 Post by furbicide » Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:01 pm

Excellent, thanks!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#43 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Feb 24, 2022 10:48 am

A second Isabelle Prim work, La rouge et la noire, based off an unfinished Luc Moullet script (who is seemingly the sole champion of her work- maybe now we know why!) has emerged on back channels

I highly recommend her most recent film, Mens

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furbicide
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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#44 Post by furbicide » Thu Feb 24, 2022 7:10 pm

I saw The Red and the Black at the Melbourne International Film Festival around a decade ago – it's an interesting, sometimes funny but ultimately pretty minor work that I guess was definitely made with Moullet fans in mind (and he does show up himself in a cameo). I didn't realise until now that it had been so hard to see in the intervening years!

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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#45 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Feb 24, 2022 9:06 pm

I want to say I hated it, but I think I’d have to fully understand what the fuck the point of the central conceit is to feel like I engaged with it fully. Prim is definitely a unique filmmaker keen on venturing down rabbit holes of some meta-ideas though, based off this and the excellent Mens alone!

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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#46 Post by kubelkind » Sat Feb 26, 2022 9:01 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Thu Feb 24, 2022 9:06 pm
I want to say I hated it, but I think I’d have to fully understand what the fuck the point of the central conceit is to feel like I engaged with it fully.
Same here, though I did find much of it hilariously funny, despite/because of the fact that it was so utterly befuddling.
I'm wondering if watching the BBC documentary referenced in this would help ("The Camera That Changed The World"). It can be watched here, at least from where I am in the world. I haven't seen it yet but just flicked through it and I'm sure I saw Prim herself standing behind Jean-Pierre Beauviala in one sequence.
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/camera-changed-world/

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Re: Luc Moullet Box Set

#47 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Feb 26, 2022 7:21 pm

The voices sounded a lot like the two dishwashers in Riget to me, and so the positioned vocal commentary over images seemed ripely pitched at dry humor from a completely subjective standpoint, though it never really excelled in this area even with the personalized boost


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