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>>Filmmakers deliberate on film itself in
the anthology Chacun son cinéma

by MATTHEW HAYS

At the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, director Wim Wenders ventured to make Chambre 666, a simple documentary about the art of cinema. He invited a gaggle of various filmmakers—including Fassbinder, Antonioni, Spielberg, Godard and Herzog—sat them down in front of a camera in a hotel room, and asked them what they envisioned as the future of cinema. Given that Wenders did the editing, the outlook seemed grim, with Spielberg being one of the few who had anything remotely optimistic to say.

A quarter century and the Internet later, one would think things might seem even more grim. But Cannes has spawned another meditation on cinema by a group of filmmakers, only this time it’s much more uplifting. Gilles Jacob asked 35 filmmakers from all over the globe to celebrate 60 years of the Cannes Fest by creating three-minute vignettes that reflected their love of the art. Titled Chacun son cinéma (To Each His Own Cinema), the result is a wildly diverse mash-up of homages to the big screen, from such names as Jane Campion, Gus Van Sant, Lars Von Trier, Wim Wenders, Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-Wai.

Chacun son cinéma kicks off nicely; early in the film, there’s a lovely tribute to Antonioni by Theo Angelopoulos. At no risk of being outdone is our own Cronenberg, who manages, typically, to be both bleak and humorous at once. He casts himself as “the last Jew in the world in the last cinema in the world,” descending towards a suicide as pundits chat about movies on screen.

As anthologies like these go, Chacun son cinéma is uneven, but if and when you do find yourself watching a less appealing entry, you know it’s going to be over in a minute or two, so it’s not so evil. And in a telling—if unintentional—nod to the future of cinema, it all feels somewhat interactive: since the name of the director doesn’t appear until the end of each short, film buffs can try to guess which auteur came up with the short they’re viewing. Good fun.

Chacun son cinema opens at
cinéma du Parc Friday, April 25

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