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Monday and Tuesday,
September 17 and 18
Admission: $5, $10 minimum
Showtimes: 8pm
reservations
are recommended
In the pantheon of great directors for whom the letter "K" leads
the way, Kusturica sits in the clouds amidst three dead ones
(Kubrick, Kurosawa, Kieslowski) and one living (Kiarostami).
Of these five masters, Kusturica is the funny/brilliant one.
He likes gypsies. He plays in a gypsy band. He casts non-actor
gypsies in key roles. He even made a film with the poorly dressed,
overly lionized ex-pat Johnny Depp AND Vincent Gallo AND Jerry
Lewis -- in ONE film. AND you probably didn't see that one
either.
But this is not your fault or our fault or Jerry Lewis' fault.
It is the fault of independent distributors. I'm almost sure
of it.
On these two brisk nights in September we shall show one of
Kusturica's classics. Released in 1998, Black
Cat, White Cat had a short run
in Manhattan and it has never been release on DVD in the U.S.
It often feels like a cross between a Shakespearen comedy and
a Harold Lloyd comedy. Love,
marriage,
gangsters,
gypsies,
sunflowers and the gorgeous Danube are in play.
Janet Maslin from the New York Times is reminded of Fellini:
The lighter side of Emir Kusturica's boisterous talent is let
loose in "Black
Cat, White Cat." It's a mad scramble through the Felliniesque realm of Kusturica's
imagination, and it proves nothing if not this much: give this man the Danube,
Gypsy musicians and a camera, and you've got a party.
The starting point for "Black Cat, White Cat" was Kusturica's idea
of making a documentary about the tuba-toting musicians who roamed through "Underground." He
evidently hoped to dispel some of the gloom inherent in that film's vision of
his native Yugoslavia, and he began (with Gordan Mihic) to dream up a cheerfully
absurd fable that would do the trick.
Most noticeably, Kusturica gave himself the chance to work rapturously out of
doors, bringing high spirits to his innate fancifulness and earthy humor. This
filmmaker takes an "everything plus the kitchen sink" approach to telling
even the simplest story...
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