Cinema Heaven

The three minutes of imagery captured by great men to be written into movie history are truly magnificent. Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky said of his work, “Pushkin once said, ‘I don’t have enough time to write a short letter so I will write a long reply,’ and so it is that short films need more condensed philosophies and time than long films.”

The greatest strategy was laughter. Kitano Takeshi, who plays a simple-minded projectionist who makes mistakes showing a movie to an audience of one, kept the laughs coming. The clown warmed up to Italian director Nanni Moretti as he confessed how he subtly compared his 7-year-old son’s favorite movie, “Matrix,” to his own and was thoroughly scorned for the effort.

The most impressive was Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles’ piece called “8944 Kilometers from Cannes.” In front of a theater that was showing two South American blacks in “400 Blows,” he evaded questions about the Cannes until he finally said, “Cannes is a small abandoned fishing village, and its chief is a vicious man whose name is Gill,” making the audience burst into laughter. Gill Jacobs is the president of the Festival de Cannes.

What comes after are memories. Four Chinese directors bring to the screen stories of their childhood, imbuing anticipation and excitement wonderfully. In these movies, children wait all day for movies and doze off during the night when the movies play, or turn the wheels of a bicycle instead of a film projector. The most surprising was Tony Leung’s “I Traveled 9000 Kilometers to Give You This.” Based on the love with a woman he met for the first time in a theater, the characters in this movie are intoxicatingly seductive.

There was also criticism on today’s films. Canadian director Atom Egoyan showed a woman watching another movie through her cell phone and sending text messages during a showing of a black-and-white “Jeanne D’Arc” in a theater, a satire of a generation so bombarded with images that they can’t focus on a movie. British filmmaker Ken Loach showed a father and son choosing from nonsensical movies at a multiplex theater, and eventually going to the soccer stadium instead, warning viewers of the overly commercialized movie industry that is threatening the foundation of film-making. The sole female director from Australia Jane Campion showed a woman dressed up as an insect in a theater continually praising male actors, and is harassed by an employee until she is squashed, in her movie, “The Lady Bug,” criticizing the male-oriented movie industry.

But there is still this movie which shows the power of film and a fondness for it. An usher who ceaselessly plays Federico Fellini`s “Eight And A Half” despite an empty theater, and an expressionless cowboy who cannot stop the emotion from pouring forth watching an art film, are reflections on ourselves, the audience.

“To Each His Own Cinema” shows us through the panoramic screen that the “cinema heaven” is not at Cannes, but in the hearts of all the movie fans all over the world.

confetti@donga.com