To Each His Own Cinema

To Each His Own Cinema is a French anthology collection that was created in 2007.  Like it said on my post on World Cinema, this collection is a tribute to the Cannes Film Festival as it celebrates it’s 60th anniversary.  The 36 acclaimed directors that were chosen to participate in this collection were asked to express “their state of mind of the moment as inspired by the motion picture theatre” through their own short films.  Each short is 3 minutes long and stems from different parts of the world.  World Cinema was the first film we watched that is a part of the collection and we followed up with 9 others.

• One Fine Day by Takeshi Kitano – this one was mainly about types of movie lovers and the lengths they’ll go to see the movies they want, like walk miles down a dirt road.  And even if the film keeps screwing up, it’s still the satisfaction and escapism of seeing a film.

• Three Minutes by Theo Angelopoulos – this was more about the actors in films and their interactions with one another and how they are just as effected and moved by films as the directors are.

• Dans le Noir by Andrei Konchalovsky – this is about the people who work for film on a smaller level than a director or an actor or a producer.  this is about the people who control and distribute a movie-goer’s ticket.  even though it’s a job, it’s still something they love and times still stops for them while they’re watching film.

• Diary of a Moviegoer by Nanni Moretti – this is a wide look at someone’s own personal diary of all the films he’s seen and how each of them have been significant to his own life and the people who he cares about the most or enough to take to them to a film with him, along with doing it by himself.

• The Electric Princess Picture House by Hou Hsiao-hsien – this is about a larger community coming together and waiting in line to watch a film.
• Darkness by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne – this is just about the darkness and isolation of a movie theater

• Anna by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu – this is a little similar to “Darkness” because the majority of it is filmed in a theater but this is also like “One Fine Day” because there are so many types of movie lovers, like the blind woman who needs to be told what is happening as she listens.

• Movie Night by Zhang Yimou – this is about a wide community of children and adults coming together to watch films and participate in making their own for their own entertainment and enjoyment.

• The Lady Bug by Jane Campion – this is about the little creatures who share a love for film as much as humans.

Each film is the director’s own personal exhibition of what film is to them and the importance of it to them in particular. These films have a different context but still have the definition of the love of film and why it’s important for a wide variety of reasons. Because, it is extremely important for more reasons than a collection like this could expand on.  These directors do an excellent job in expressing the different sides of a love for film.

These films can be paired with a term that we learned in class, a term that relates to a passion for cinema and all of it’s components.  The term cinephilia refers to the passion of a cinephile, which is a person who loves film to the highest extent.  This term has been used since the silent film era, when film clubs and groups first began after the particular medium changed everything.  Cinephilia is often discussed with Post-War France after World War II with students in France were rioting in front movie theaters after foreign films were banned, along with screenings and film clubs. This eventually generated a lot of uproar for the youth culture during that time which evidently led to the riots.  But it was the love of film that led the students to riots and the anger for not having the access to see films.  Eventually that term kept moving as film gained more and more lovers and will continue to do so as the years go on.  Currently, blogging (oddly enough) is included as a part of contemporary cinephilia.