Play Time (Jacques Tati, France, 1967)

Jacques Tati and an open air screening are a perfect match for a summer night. As a newcomer to Kino Otok, I could not have had a better introduction to what a movie festival is and mostly what it means to me: a place where movies, memories and experiences merge to become a common ground shared by organizers, volunteers, visitors and locals.

Yesterday's projection meant an instant connection to the memory of my grandfather. He was a very serious and methodical man because of his job, and he also was the person who started my movie education. I will always remember how astonishing it was to see such a severe man laughing (and crying) at Louis de Funès as a French gendarme, or Peter Sellers as a clumsy Indian movie extra.

I didn't know it then, but those moments watching movies together when I was 6 or 7 years old would become one of the most vivid memories of him that I will always carry with me. They were also my first movie lesson: the Greats of Comedy.

Tati was one of those comedic geniuses too, who seem to be lost for most of our young generation despite the fact that his movies and his comedy never gets old. Monsieur Hulot will always make me think of long weekend afternoons, the smell of my Grandfather's coffee and the memory of a time which will never come back but deserves to be paid tribute. So we did.