Since its infancy at the beginning of the XX century, cinema has always drunk from the bottomless well of literary topics, ideas and projects. April is literature’s month par excellence in which the Festival of the Word takes hold of Alcalá de Henares for another year, and the Cine Club rewards its devotees with an extra portion of feature films with high-class literary connections. The Teatro Salón Cervantes (TSC) will be screening the films ‘Gomorra’, ‘Blindness’, and ‘The Class’ during the month. All were regaled with fervent praise by the critics and awards at international festivals, and all have their origins in the printed word.
The first page will be turned by ‘Gomorra’, based on the novel of the same name by Roberto Saviano. The author describes his own experiences at the heart of the mafia network operating in southern Italy. The publication of the book has placed him at the centre of firestorm; he has received death threats from within his former stomping ground. ‘Gomorra’ was directed by Matteo Garrone. Saviano collaborated on script of the film, which has turned into one of the year’s revelations. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2008, and the European Film Festival awarded it five prizes, including best film.
‘Gomorra’ tells five independent stories connected by the common thread of questions concerning la Comorra operating in the provinces of Naples and Caserta. Claustrophobic stories with a backdrop of violence always ready to rear its ugly head. ‘Gomorra’ will be screened on Wednesday the 1st and Thursday the 2nd of April in the TSC (18:30 and 21:00).
The next film to appear on the screens of the TSC will be the Canadian film ‘Emotional Arithmetic’. Here the script is based on a novel by Matt Cohen, which brings an event from the Second World War affecting Melanie played by Susan Sarandon up to the present. She discovers that the young dissident who protected her in 1942 in the Drancy detention camp is still alive. She invites him to come and live on the family farm with her.
Paolo Barzman directs this feature film of redemption, reconciliation and the healing of wounds left open by the distant past. ‘Emotional Arithmetic’ will be screened on Wednesday the 15th and Thursday the 16th at the normal times and place.
‘Blindness’ and ‘The Class’.
Seven days later one of the main attractions of April’s programme arrives. It has just been taken off the billboards, but now ‘Blindness’ is back. Cine Club will be screening Brazilian Fernando Meirelles’ adaptation of Jose Saramago’s novel ‘Blindness’, one of the most famous works by the 1998 Nobel Laureate. After ‘The Constant Gardener’, Meirelles decided to take a highly complex and symbolic text to the big screen with an adaptation completed by Don McKellar.
‘Blindness’ begins powerfully. A man suddenly goes blind. And his condition soon spreads to the rest of the population. Panic and paranoia make their entrance in a context in which a woman played by Julianne Moore pretends to be blind in order to be close to her husband confined in an abandoned psychiatric hospital. The screening of ‘Blindness’ will vary from the norms of Cine Club. It will be screened on Tuesday the 21st and Wednesday the 22nd of April, at the same times and in the same place as the other screenings of the month.
Lastly, literary April will come to a close with ‘The Class’, a French production, half sociological documentary, half dramatic fiction, based on the novel ‘Entre les Murs’ by the school teacher François Bégaudeau and directed by Laurent Cantet. It won the Golden Palm at Cannes 2008, and depicts the everyday working life of a school teacher, the actual writer of the book, in a high school located in a troubled neighbourhood. ‘The Class’ will also be screened in original version with subtitles and can be seen on Wednesday the 29th and Thursday the 30th of April (18:30 and 21:00. Teatro Salón Cervantes).
