Movie lessons #2: the roots

“pure cinema, not multiplex entertainment”

‎- Cut (Amir Naderi, Japan, 2011)

Yesterday I saw Amir Naderi’s Cut, the first movie to be screened at Kino Otok this year, and I really identified with the main character, Shinji. We both were looking for something… and in my search I got the second lesson from this festival.

I have been thinking a lot about the roots and evolution of cinema lately. It started a month ago, when I was visiting the Lumière Brothers Museum in Lyon for the first time. After a rather boring walk through different rooms packed with of all kind of devices and personal belongings, I finally found a source of inspiration, and again the movie magic was working its power in front of me.

I found myself in front of a screen wall showing images that the Lumière film crew were filming all over the world by the end of the 19th century. I immediately thought of what the Spanish director José Luis Guerín said about feeling like a Lumière brothers film operator when he was filming his last movie Guest all over the world. I guess that it makes sense because both (Guerín and these cameramen) were looking for something too, and using a camera to make it happen.

Inside the Art Kino Odeon I also felt the same kind of connection that Guerín felt making his movie. I understood that cinema had lost something on its way to become the billionaire industry that “rules the world” nowadays. And thanks to Shinji and his love for pure cinema I found that the answer was in the roots of the art itself.

The Lumière’s cameramen were using their “travel movies” as a way to make the audience discover places and people that they had never seen before. That’s why it became so rapidly popular and successful (and also the reason why their business got exhausted when they didn’t have any exotic places left to show to the avid spectators).

The blockbuster movie industry nowadays has reached the same point as the Lumiere’s brothers movies. They’re just not interesting anymore. There is nothing new to show to the audience, and the amazing technical evolution of our time seems not enough to fill this lack of “adventure”. But what’s this adventure? Good question… It might be a different thing to each of us, but in my case I discovered that the feeling of exploring a new territory (artistic, social or psychological) while watching a movie is what is most exciting to me.

So I hereby want to thank the creators like Jose Luís Guerín and Amir Naderi (both present at this year’s Kino Otok) for keeping a bit of that Lumiere’s brothers spirit in every movie they make. Hvala vama.