To Each His Own Cinema

In honor of the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, the festival’s president Gilles Jacob invited nearly three dozen of cinema’s most esteemed filmmakers to make three-minute-long contributions to a collective work. The theme that unifies them is, naturally, the love of cinema. The sheer diversity of the films proves that while the enthusiasm for cinema may be universal, each culture’s experience of it – not to mention each spectator’s – is wholly unique. The roll call of canonical cineastes represents five continents and twenty-five countries. David Cronenberg stars in his provocative, unsettling At the Suicide of the Last Jew. Abbas Kiarostami offers a peek into women’s tearful reactions to the tragic close of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968). Nanni Moretti’s hilarious autobiographical Diary of a Moviegoer is a typically persuasive spiel about the state of the cinema. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Electric Princess Picture House mourns the glory days of European art cinema as Robert Bresson’s Mouchette plays to an empty house. Tsai Ming-liang’s It’s a Dream is similarly wistful, looking back to his childhood experience of film going in seventies Malaysia (many of the highlights are by East Asian cineastes, including contributions by Wong Kar-wai, Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou and Takeshi Kitano). In front of a Brazilian rep theatre playing François Truffaut’s 400 Blows (Les 400 Coups, 1959), Walter Salles stages a show-stopping Cannes-themed musical number in 8944 km from Cannes. Theo Angelopoulos even arranges a final meeting between Jeanne Moreau and the late Marcello Mastroianni in Three Minutes (the omnibus is dedicated to Mastroianni’s great guru, Federico Fellini). The list goes on. The directors’ names are usually only revealed at the end of each contribution, allowing you to test your cinephilic chops and figure out which filmmaker is behind each piece. A number of directors focus on the decaying state of the movie houses they have loved since their youth. As the communal experience of being in the dark with hundreds of other people gives way to solitary viewing on computer screens, many of these filmmakers are mourning the end of an era that defined them, while others are celebrating the radical changes that are ushering in a new age.

Born in 1943, in Toronto, the son of a journalist and of a piano teacher, even as a child, he showed a strong inclination to literature and music (he played classical music on the guitar up to the age of 12). In his first films, such as in the short film Transfer (1966) and the medium-length films Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970), the qualities could be noted that are his, even today: convincing argument, originality in the script, renewal in terms of terror, and humanization of the characters in spite of or, at times, because of their bizarre nature. His first feature, Shivers (1975), a modernized film about vampires, made him a “master in horror films”. He was acknowledged internationally in 1981 with Scanners. He also directed Videodrome (1982), The Fly (1986), Naked Lunch (1991), Crash (1996), and eXistenZ (1999).

Born in Porto, Portugal, in 1908. Before being a director, he was race driver and athlete. Made his first short silent film, Douro, Faina Fluvial, in 1931. In the 1940’s, he became a winemaker. He returned to cinema in the 1970’s with authorial films that made him one of the most unique directors in history. Oliveira had all of his movies since Ill-Fated Love (1978, 3rd Mostra) presented at the São Paulo Film Festival. He gained a complete retrospective of his work at the 15th Mostra and at the 29th Mostra, respectively in 1991 and 2005. He won Mostra’s Special Festival Award with The Cannibals (1988, 12nd Mostra), the Critics Prize for Abraham’s Valley (1993, 17th Mostra) and I’m Going Home (2001, 25th Mostra), and the Humanity Award for the ensemble of his work (2004, 28th Mostra). He also directed titles such as Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl (2009, 33rd Mostra), The Strange Case of Angelica (2010, 34th Mostra), the segment From Visible to Invisible, part of the film Invisible World (2011, 35th Mostra), produced by Mostra, Gebo and the Shadow (2012, 36th Mostra) and The Old Man of Belem (2014, 38th Mostra). Died in 2015 at the age of 106.

Born in Haifa, Israel, in 1950. His works are presented at Mostra since the 20 th edition, in 1996, with The Arena of Murder. In 2004, at the 28 th Mostra, he was honored with an exhibition of his photos, the publishing of a book and a complete retrospective of his films, including Kadosh (1999) and Kedma (2002, awarded with the Critics Prize at the 26 th Mostra). He directed a short film in the collective project Welcome to São Paulo (2004), produced by Mostra. He has also directed Free Zone (2005), Disengagement (2007) and Ana Arabia (2013). Gitai won the Humanity Award at the 31 st Mostra, in 2007. The director also presented at the 38 th Mostra with the films Tsili (2014) and Words with Gods (2014). He exhibited at the 41 st Mostra the feature film West of the Jordan River (2017).

Belgians, Jean-Pierre was born in 1951 in the city of Engis, while Luc was born in 1954 in Awirs. The brothers did together numerous documentaries between the 1970s and 1980s before starting to make fiction features. They gained notoriety with The Promisse (1996). In 1999, signed the direction of Rosetta, winner of the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. They also directed movies such as The Son (2002, 26th Mostra; The Child (2005, 29th Mostra), also winner of the Golden Palm; a segment of To Each His Own Cinema (2007, 31st Mostra); Lornas’s Silence (2008, 32nd Mostra); The Kid with a Bike (2011), opening title of the 35th Mostra and winner of the Grand Prize of the Jury in Cannes; Two Days, One Night (2014, 38th Mostra) and The Unknown Girl (2016, 40th Mostra).

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA