Cada quien su cine

Chacun son Cinema is a collection of 33 short films, 3-minute long each, made by renowned international directors, which was released in 2007 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival. The shorts revolve about the emotional connection of the director with movies in general, certain movies in particular, or some movie theaters.

As you can expect from a collection of short films, there are good bits, so-so bits, and bad bits.

The movies I liked the most were eight. I loved two of the Asian ones, "Movie Night" by Yimour Zhang and "Zhanxiou Village" by Kaige Chen, which really reminded me of my childhood and my relation with movies; they are beautifully shot and have special magical moments in them. I found hilarious "Cinema Erotique" by Polanski. "Cinema around the corner" by Lelouch is very stylish, while "The Foundry" by Kaurismoki and "Dans le Noir" by Konchalovsky are great concepts an thought- provoking films. I also liked the emotion (without the corn) in "Darkness" by the Dardennes and "Anna" by Iñarritu. Some of the others are still interesting an nice, some others a complete disappointment and waste of time.

The main flaws of the movie, to me, are 1/ the length being limited to 3 minutes, the director has a time constriction that doesn't allow to do much, really, and the stories in the shorts resent it. 2/ The regional unbalance in the selection of the movie directors, very French on the other hand, with a complete shocking absence of Spanish directors! 3/ The only sub-Saharan movie is not even made by an African director... that's a sort of Colonialism... 4/ The presence of that mediocre called Moretti chosen to represent Italy.

However, it is an interesting and enjoyable collection of stories. Cinema is full of magic and has shaped our lives since childhood, and this collection of shorts tries to honor that.