A touch of Cannes
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Collective Chaos presents a package of five films that won the top award at Cannes
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ALLEGORICAL Gunter Grass assisted on the film adaptation of the novel Tin Drum
You are a true cineaste if May reminds you of the Palm d'Or rather than the searing heat. It is the time of the Cannes film festival where reputations are made and broken in a jiffy. For all the hysteria, the early screening of The Da Vinci Code was greeted with sniggers. And now you have gorgeous overload with Hugh Jackson, Famke Jansson and Halle Berry promoting X-Men 3. Then there are gaffes unlimited from Aishwarya Rai who is there with her battered wife turn in Provoked. In time with the Cannes Film Festival, Collective Chaos is screening five films that took the top prize at Cannes over the years.
Starting with Volker Schlöndorff's Tin Drum (Germany/142 min/1979) on May 26 at 6.30 p.m. Novelist Günter Grass assisted on the film adaptation of his novel, which depicts significant events in German history since the turn of the century as seen through the eyes of a bizarre child. In this allegorical film, a three-year-old boy observes the hypocrisy of the adult world and decides to remain a child forever by not growing any taller.
On May 27, at 2.45 p.m., it is Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha (Japan/162 min/1980).
The film tells the story of a petty thief named Kagemusha (Tatsuya Nakadai) who is saved from a death sentence because he resembles the warlord Shingen Takeda (also Nakadai). When the warlord is fatally wounded, Kagemusha struggles to transform himself from a criminal into a leader.
At 6.30 pm, there is a screening of Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (Denmark/140 min/2000). The final instalment in Lars von Trier's Golden Heart trilogy (which includes Breaking the Waves and The Idiots), Dancer... takes the director's original blend of heightened pseudo-realism, fabricated melodrama, and the principles of the Dogme 95 genre to a dangerously intense level. The film tells the story of Selma (Björk), a Czech immigrant living in 1964 Washington State with her 12-year-old son, Gene (Vladan Kostic).
After her neighbour Bill (David Morse) discovers Selma's hidden savings and steals them from her, she is forced to perform an act of salvation that will condemn her forever. On May 28 at 2.45 p.m. Emir Kusturica's Underground (Yugoslavia/167 min/1995) will be screened.
A surreal, absurd mix of politics, sex, fantasy, black comedy and brutality that has been widely hailed as one of the decade's most exhilarating cinematic efforts. During World War II, a pair of friends in the Serb resistance hides in an intricate cellar. Years later, the war is over but the lies and deceptions continue.
At 6.30 p.m., Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry (Iran/95 min/1997) would be screened. The film follows Badii and his journey through Tehran.
Intent on finding an aid for his planned suicide, Badii encounters citizens from every walk of life; a trash collector, a soldier, and a seminarian, all of who refuse to help him, either out of a sense of religion or personal morality. Finally a taxidermist agrees to help.
The films would be screened at Nani Cinematheque (CFD, 5th Floor, Sona Towers, Millers Road). For more details log on to: www.collectivechaos.org or call: 25203932
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