HCMC – Screening of “Rohmer in Paris” by The Onion Cellar

Sun 21 Feb 2016, 6.30 pm
CineB

From the organizer:

The Onion Cellar presents a screening of ROHMER IN PARIS.

‘A love letter to legendary Nouvelle vague film-maker Eric Rohmer and the world’s most cinematic city.’

ROHMER IN PARIS

Dir – Richard Misek, using footage from various films by Eric Rohmer
2014, 66 minutes
English, with subtitles in Vietnamese

[youtube width=”700″ height=”393″]https://youtu.be/0FMC5AlyBm0[/youtube]

So you are a dreamy young‘un, a college student, or perhaps (un)lucky enough to have a 9-5 somewhere. You travel through the city everyday, passing crossroads and streetlamps and buildings, for work, for silly gatherings with friends. The same route everyday, there and back. The familiar strangers’ faces, the familiar friendly faces.

On surface, the days repeat themselves, more or less, and yet the possibilities are endless. Little rendezvous of odds-and-ends conversations, fleeting encounters with other young‘uns of the city that make hearts skip… You are like them all. You don’t exactly have any great ideas about life, you don’t rescue anyone. Would a director ever care to make films about you and your little universe?

Here comes Eric Rohmer.

Rohmer’s Nouvelle Vague films – more often than not set in Paris – are charming in their own unassuming ways, with their light tender stories, with a little romance, a little humour – just like real life.

Life imitating art: like in many classic Rohmer films, it all began with a chance encounter. And before he knew it Richard Misek became so infatuated with Eric Rohmer and his films that he went on to watch all of them, not once, not twice… But simply watching them proved not enough: he went on to analyse every glance the characters exchange, every route they follow, all the crushes happening on the pavements, all the coincidences, all the tricks life plays; he cataloged doors, stairways, cafés, metro stations, benches, tree-lined boulevards, of Paris.

This process eventually manifested into ROHMER IN PARIS, an uncategorisable piece of moving-image painstakingly assembled using clips from various Rohmer films set in Paris, guiding audiences through this maze of a city – the beautiful Paris of a lost golden age. And perhaps, ROHMER IN PARIS will take you to the heart of the Nouvelle Vague that changed cinema forever.

[text by Lê Hà My, additional text by Oskar M]

A COUPLE OF THINGS

Something not known (and remembered) by many: in one of its past lives (2011-2013) The Onion Cellar was a double-headed (tiny) monster, whose strange doings unfolding in tandem in both the North and the South. Ambient bliss at Saigon Outcast, noise terror at Dương Thụ’s Cà Phê Thứ Bảy, or how about those Sunday nights at Decibel? Or that time when Zeni Geva and CoCC shared the stage at the Darts Darts Darts (RIP)? Seriously, if you remember them moments (and us), you’re Kool (with a capital K)!

And now: not even joking. Thirty-one months after its last event in Saigon, The Onion Cellar will be back in the buzzing city. For now, ‘for one night only’ (to mark the new year? or perhaps the success of the con… ?) – ON A BEAUTIFUL ROOFTOP IN DOWNTOWN SAIGON – but who knows what the future might bring (right?).

Anyway, two of the films that have proved much loved by the folks in Hanoi will now make their way to Saigon for the first time, on the same night of the 21st of February.

Details on the first film can be found right here; details on the second film “It’s such a beautiful day” can be seen here.

Tickets

Tickets: 40,000 VND
Tickets for both Onion Cellar screenings that evening: 70,000 VND (details on the second film “It’s such a beautiful day” can be seen here.)