See the childhood moments of legendary filmmakers in “Enfances”
Based on the early years of six canonized filmmakers, “Enfances” (“Childhoods”) is an attempt by young up-and-coming French directors Yann Le Gal, Isild Le Besco, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Corinne Garfin, Ismael Ferroukhi, and Safy Nebbou, to re-create events that could have happened in the lives of Orson Welles, Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock and Jacques Tati, whose styles marked the history of filmmaking.
Producer Laurence Darthos and director Yann Le Gal, read and picked quotations from the filmmakers’ memoirs and made a collection of associations based on their childhood years. The idea was to focus on a certain period in the early lives of every one of these filmmakers that later influenced their art.
Those six childhood miniatures represent a kind of Freudian anthology about childhood, filled with emotional wounds, frustrations and encounters. The future movie legends are depicted in one particular episode that played an essential role in their transition to adulthood and how their personalities formed, and thus shed light on their cinematic works.
Ten-year old Fritz Lang in 1900’s Austria collides with Anti-Semitism for the first time that leads to rebellion inside his family. Little kid Orson Welles is already able to recite Shakespeare and tries to rescue his sick mother by watching her as she sleeps. The lankiest boy at school, 12-year old Jacques Tati confuses school photographer, trying to take a class picture. The son of the renowned artist, Jean Renoir, spends summer holidays in a country house, and a local village kid helps him get a different perspective on life. A strict mother is punishing her little son Alfred Hitchcock, highly fascinated by theater, not allowing him to go with her and the father to the next play. Ingmar Bergman’s childhood changes with the birth of his younger sister.
The most interesting part of watching “Enfances” is trying to guess which great director each story relates too, since the child’s identity is not revealed until each miniature is over.
Kyiv (19 Chervonoarmiyska, 234-7381).
French with Ukrainian voiceover and English subtitles.
Tickets are Hr 15 to Hr 40
