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Will cinema die? 30 filmmakers answer in the documentary Room 999

In 1982, at the Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders filmed Room 666. This little-known documentary was based on a very structured set-up: a unique room (a large hotel room in Cannes), a fixed camera, an interviewer and a few minutes to answer questions “Is cinema a language in the process of being lost, an art that is dying?”.

Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Michelangelo Antonioni or the young Steven Spielberg, among others, were among the sixteen filmmakers who faced this reflection on their art, while the emergence of home entertainment called into question the future of cinema in theaters. (See excerpt at INA.fr)

This is my first feature film and I think starting my work for directors I admire is a starting point.

Forty years later, in her first feature film, Lubna Playoust uses the same approach and the same device with Chambre 999 and confronts the thirty filmmakers invited to the 2022 Cannes Film Festival with the same question, while the 7th art now deals with streaming platforms. , the ubiquity of images, social networks, and a digital world saturated with content.

“I wonder, are we still really innovating in language and form today?” He explains in the press kit. “I knew that one day it would be necessary to reset the device and re-ask the question posed by Wim Wenders. And then there was a sort of push for Cannes 2022. We kept hearing about the death of cinema. The film was shot exactly 40 years earlier. And to add even more meaning, it was taken the year I was born. Once I told the idea to the film’s producer, Rosalie Varda, and mk2 and the Cannes Film Festival agreed, we were able to shoot in two weeks. It was a fix, a no-brainer, now was the time to do it. “

Cinema does not stop at death and this is the meaning of its life

“Is cinema a language in the process of being lost, an art that is dying?” Faced with this question, the answers are fascinating, sometimes artistic, sometimes economic, sometimes philosophical (“Cinema is dying and this is the meaning of its life” starts Arno Desplechin). Wim WendersAdhering to training and quite pessimistic about the future of his art, he recalls that cinema was born from the fairground attraction and that he returns there, even if the exhibition is now. “virtual, random, arbitrary and anonymous”.

Audrey Divan is interested in storytelling in a world of increasingly short and instant gratification. Alisa Vinokur about standardization. Ruben Ostlund, president of this year’s Cannes jury, agrees, expressing his concern about the concentration of means of distribution through a metaphor that compares the platform’s algorithms to all-inclusive hotels where everything tastes the same and the consumer is assured of quality. the whole.

There are also optimists like David Cronenberg (“I am not afraid of the future of cinema, even if it is a transformed and evolved version of cinema. But it will remain cinema.”). Ninja Thiberg, which evokes the need to master the language of the general public, so that it is not only interested in festivals and the cultural elite. Or Alice Rorowacher, who reminds us that cinema is ultimately the only art that can satisfy our needs for the collective, the gaze, poetry and loss of control.

The conversation continues in public

As for Canadian Monia Chokri, he questions the thorny but essential issue of rethinking place and price. “It’s become a ride for the rich and I don’t want to make films for the rich” It goes into a documentary. Before the talks continue in public this afternoon in Cannes Audrey CouchAlbert Serra and Lubna PlayoustOn the initiative of Thierry Frémaux, in order to “to prolong the echo of the questions it raises”.

Of course, Room 666 and Room 999 It will raise questions, provoke conversations, and should sharpen the minds of filmmakers, film buffs, and film students for some time to come. “Room 666 does not provide a final answer, the film tries to review the situation from the point of view of different filmmakers”. Analysis Lubna Playoust. The bottom line for me is that there is always the question of what is there and it will be asked again 40 years from now and, why not, 40 years from now. The film by Wim Wenders and Chambre 999 is not only about cinema, but about the world we live in.”.

Room 999 does not have a release date yet.

Source: Allocine

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