Chacun son cinéma

Toronto International Film Festival Program Guide
2007

Chacun son cinéma | To Each His Own Cinema
Theo Angelopoulos, Olivier Assayas, Bille August, Jane Campion, Youssef Chahine, Chen Kaige, David Cronenberg, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Manoel de Oliveira, Raymond Depardon, Atom Egoyan, Amos Gitai, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Aki Kaurismaki, Abbas Kiarostami, Takeshi Kitano, Andrei Konchalovsky, Claude Lelouch, Ken Loach, David Lynch, Nanni Moretti, Roman Polanski, Raul Ruiz, Walter Salles, Elia Suleiman, Tsai Ming-liang, Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier, Wim Wenders, Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yimou FRANCE, 2007
French, English, Mandarin, Italian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, Danish, Russian, Japanese, Finnish, Portuguese 119 minutes, Colour and Black and White/HDCAM
Production Company: Elzevir Films
Executive Producer: Sandrine Brauer
Producer: Gilles Jacob, Marie Masmonteil, Denis Carot
Production: Elzevir Films

Chacun son cinéma is one of the most ambitious omnibus films ever conceived. In honour of the sixtieth anniversary of the venerable 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.

Representing five continents and twenty-five countries, the roll call of canonical cineastes invited by Jacob for his homage is truly impressive; every one is an acknowledged master of the seventh art. David Cronenberg stars in his provocative, unsettling At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World. Abbas Kiarostami offers a peek into women’s tearful reactions to the tragic close of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet in Where Is My Romeo? 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 filmgoing in seventies Malaysia. (Many of the highlights are by East Asian cineastes, including superb contributions by Wong Kar-wai, Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou and Takeshi Kitano.) In front of a Brazilian rep theatre playing Francois Truffaut’s Les 400 Coups, 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.

As most of the films are set in theatres, the conflicts that erupt or the bonds forged within them are recurring themes; the love of the filmmakers for their muse is palpable. A number of directors focus on the decaying state of the movie houses they have loved since their youth, and thus Chacun son cinéma has a certain political edge to it. 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.
—Noah Cowan