The Lady Bug

The Lady Bug is the only film directed by a female on the 2007 anthology DVD To Each His Own Cinema, and that would be the New Zealander Jane Champion, who also directed A Girl’s Own Story.

This short film is about a tiny lady who is dressed like a bug getting chased around a theater by the janitor which is trying to squish her. While this is occurring there is a film playing in the background where in the female characters are mocking the male for not having enough “balls” to be able to live up to female needs.

As such this short film of Champion’s is a commentary about the lack of female directors in mainstream film making. It is also a chicken-in-the-egg question as in, if someone needs a love of cinema to make good cinema and Champion seems to be arguing that male produced films do not cater correctly to female desires for film viewing, how are females to suppose to be able to start making good cinema? It brings up the spirit of Laura Mulvey’s famous bit “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” which basically says that since films are all made by males, they appear to males, as they are directed with a male eye / gaze and thus females are not characters but objects for the males to look at and interact with in the duration of the film. Being that females are meant to be objects within the films, they cannot possibly be included in the direction of the film as then they would resist the preselected male concept of the gaze and other.

The Dybbuk of Haifa

The Dybbuk of Haifa / Le Dibbouk de Haifa is a short film by Israeli director Amos Gitai for the 2007 DVD anthology To Each His Own Cinema. The title more literally means “the possessed spirit of Haifa” for a Dybbuk can project themselves into a living person to continue or repeat their previous life, hence why this film references the Siege of Warsaw.

Warsaw is the capital of Poland and in history it might as well be hour zero for the start of World War II, circa 1939, and it remained under German occupation until 1945. Haifa is one of the largest cities in Israel and in 2006 found itself involved in what is called the July War with Lebanon.

Gitai is using this short film, which shows a theater house in both locations under attack, as a platform about politics. His point seems to be that while war is something most people associate more with cinema than with reality, being that there has not been a major global scale war in a few decades, that war is still a serious issue. Gitai wants the viewer to remember that there are still parts of the world where your daily life can be at serious risk even when you are doing mundane, regular things like going to the theater. Gitai wants the viewers to remember that just because the media does not show the battlefield on the small screen does not mean that these battles are not happening; the middle east has been volatile for a very long while, and each lose of life is as bad as any other. The difference between Warsaw and Haifa being the numbers of the dead and the size of the war they were part of. As such, it is also a religious commentary about how even in modern times, even though people thought they had learned from the Holocaust, that people o f Jewish faith are still at a higher general level of risk of death than other religious denominations.

Movie Night

Movie Night / En Regardant le Film is a short film directed by Zhang Yimou in 2007 for the DVD anthology, To Each His Cinema. He also directed a segment of the Lumiere and Company anthology as I mentioned in my March 4th post about that collection.

This short film is about the power of cinema to bring a community together. It also showcases the excitement and magic around cinema that children experience when waiting for movies to begin. There is this excited build up and then silence when the movies starts, and that is part of what makes movies so great; the experience of anticipation and the delayed gratification. While waiting the community all sits together laughing as the children make shadow puppets at the screen, and a boy throws a chicken into the air. This short film also seems to be saying that the anticipation and the togetherness experienced before the film starts is more important, as the main little boy falls asleep when the film actually starts because it is not as exciting or engaging to him as the participation parts that exist around the idea of film. Likewise this short film also shows how film can bring people together as it’s other main character seems to be a girl that has a crush on the boy managing the projector, and through the magic of film’s presence in the community, she has a reason to hang out with said boy.

This short film can be watched at the link below:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2bb3a_zhang-yimou-en-regardant-le-film_shortfilms

Anna

Anna is a short film which was directed in 2007 by Alejandro González Iñárritu for the DVD anthology, To Each His Cinema. Additionally, he also directed the segment Mexico for the 11’09″01 September 11 collection.

This short film is about the power of a film’s plot, not as shown via the visuals, but by how important the script is. Anna, while it is never directly said, is blind. The male character has to tell her pieces of the visuals happening on screen, which in turn also tells the audience watching Anna what is playing in their cinema. Likewise the male also has to tell Anna at the end that the film was in color and not in black and white like she had been picturing in her head the whole time. Additionally when Anna gets up there is the distinct thumping-click of a hoover cane. Being that Anna cannot see the film, only hear it, that is the experience the viewer is given by never having the camera actually face the movie screen. We must instead be content with listening to a film that is not visible while watching Anna sit in the darkness and have someone explain what is occurring.

Darkness

Darkness / Dans l’Obscurite is a short film directed by the Dardenne brothers of Belgium in 2007 for the DVD anthology To Each His Cinema.

Doug Cummings of FilmJourney.org had this to say about Darkness:

“The scene is also a microcosm of Dardenne dramaturgy: two individuals meet in ethical tension. The darkness of the title could refer to the theater as well as the lack of awareness between characters; the boy sees the other as an object, the other doesn’t see him at all. (Or so we think.) And in the filmmakers’ Levinasian perspective, all thinking stems from encounters with the Other, with ethics serving as first and necessary prelude to all subsequent thought and interaction.”

This short film is about a forced redemption in regards to the boy and human connection in regards to the girl. While it appears that both character give each other what they are in “need” of, it is mostly just the girl who gets what she is searching for, as the boy never expresses or shows want of his forced redemption. The boy, while looking for money to steal from distracted theater goers, ends up getting “redeemed” by the girl who takes his hand and holds it through a sad part of a film, therein acquiring the human connection she was looking to find through the film itself. What this means in regards to the structure of film is that the characters are all contrived to serve the main character’s will and desire, and they do not get to develop outside of that relationship on their own term. It is a commentary about the juxtaposition between how relationships in films are presented as real but they do not reflected the actual relations structure experienced in daily life.

The Electric Princess Picture House

The Electric Princess Picture House is a short film directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien for the 2007 anthology DVD collection To Each His Cinema.

This short film is about the nostalgic feeling that watching old cinema can bring up from old memories. Cinemas, before the multiplexes, were places where people came to hang out and enjoy the atmosphere and just talk before the films started. Now with the multiplexes, cinemas are all very similar and there is no more character left in the theater itself, so there is no reason left for people to come for the theater itself, they just see their movie and go home.

This flow of time, when the family goes through the curtain and the short film jumps to the present where the theater is abandoned and in disrepair but the film reels still play like they did before, is symbolic of the power this nostalgia still has. It indicates that there is still magic left in the old, individual theaters.

This short film can be watched below:

Diary of a Moviegoer

Diaro di uno Spettatore / Diary of a Moviegoer is a short film which was directed by Nanni Moretti of Italy in 2007 for the DVD collection To Each His Own Cinema. Also of interest, there is only one actor within this whole short film, and that is Moretti himself.

The plot of this shot film is taken right from the name, it is Moretti doing a video diary of all his favorite times of going to the movies. As Moretti is a well-know Italian director and actor, his film The Son’s Room in which he had also acted and direct has been nominated for and won many awards, the idea of this film is the in order to be a great film maker you have to have a great love of all kinds of cinema experiences. The whole point really is for Moretti to express his cinephilia as it has shaped his life and defined who he had become; in addition to also shaping how he interacted with his family, and how he remembered various moments with them.

However while this short film might star Moretti and be directed by him, it is not really about him, it is about everyone who goes to the cinema. I remember all the yelling occurring in the theater I saw Paranormal Activity in with my roommates, I remember all the mockery my friends and I made of Star Trek‘s plot holes while watching it, I remember having to sneak into Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy all quiet-like with my one friend because we had gotten to the theater late, and of course there are other stories as there always are. The point really is that cinema has obtained this mythic statues within our culture, it is this thing which some people build their lives around, and it is a thing that can tell us more about humanity than we could ever find out all alone. That is the magic of cinema, to discover one’s self.

Dans le Noir

Dans le Noir / In the Dark is a short film directed by Andrei Konchalovsky for the 2007 DVD collection To Each His Cinema. This short film is also related to Marcello Mastroianni, as the movie that is being played in the theater of Dans le Noir stars him as a main actor. Due to the shared connection of Mastroianni, and Dans le Noir coming after Trois Mintues, these two short films can be said to have an intertextual relation.

This short film is also about the relationships the people build between themselves and cinema. There are three characters in this short film, the main one being a women so engrossed in watching 8 1/2 that she is completely oblivious to the two characters in the back of the theater who are involved with each other. As such, this short film is about how people live precariously through film since this women is engaging in an emotional relationship with the characters within the film rather than having that experience in reality. It is meant to convey how powerful and “real” the emotions in film are suppose to look to the audience and that the audience is meant to connect to those characters in that way.

Trois Minutes

Trois Minutes is a short film directed by Greek film maker Theodoros Angelopoulos in 2007 for To Each His Cinema, a DVD collection celebrating 60 years of the Cannes Film Festival.

Trois Minutes is a tribute short film to the Italian film star Marcello Mastroianni. All of the dialogue in this short film is delivered via one long monologue by Jeanne Moreau, an effective tactic for a short film that is shot all in one continuous take. Two points of interest; Mastroianni and Moreau co-stared in La Notte in 1961 and Mastroianni died in 1996.

This short film is about the emotional connections that actors form with their audiences. Moreau is speaking both as someone who knew Mastroianni in real life as well as speaking as a spectator. Hence why she says “There were those that did not know you getting to know you.” which refers to how audiences form this bond with their favorite actors and get to know them in ways that are more involved / immersed than they would if they were companions in real life. Moreau also talks about how actors reflect parts of the audience back at them, which is part of what makes the connection between fans and actors so powerful. The experience of watching film lets the audience experience new, powerful emotions through the actions and events in which the actors participate. This shared experience lets people explore new parts of their own minds as well as give them emotional outlets for parts of their lives in which they may not be comfortable expressing to other “real” people in their lives.

This short film can be watched below (be mindful of the Portuguese subtitles):

One Fine Day

One Fine Day is a short film directed by Takeshi Kitano (yes, the teacher from Battle Royale) in 2007 for the DVD anthology To Each His Cinema. This short film is about a farmer who goes a long way to a theater to see a movie, which sadly, ends up damaged by a fire in the projection room.

The film the man was watching is called Kid’s Return, which was Kitano’s first return to cinema as a director after a motorcycle accident that left him mostly paralyzed. Understanding that background helps to understand the point of rest of this short film. The last line from Kid’s Return which is played on the screen says, “Hell no! We haven’t started yet.” which is more a reflection of Kitano’s regards to his own career and him affirming again, ten years later, to the people that thought he would have had to stop that he had made it. It was a message about the fact that cinema was a driving force in his life and it helped him to keep going along. So in that vein, this short film is more an artistic autobiography than anything else. This fits into the style and usage of Kid’s Return as that also borrows from bits of Kitano’s life.