Arabian Nights Volume 1: The Restless One
classified 15 SThis year's most ambitious cinematic undertaking - and the most talked about experience of last year's Cannes - is Miguel Gomes' (Tabu, a Bristol hit) uniquely imaginative, wildly ambitious three part fable that adopts the structure from Scheherazade's Arabian Nights to explore Portugal's plunge into austerity. Although each film in the trilogy can be enjoyed individually, it is probably best to see all three films: we will be screening Volume Two: The Desolate One (from Fri 29 April for at least one week) and Volume Three: The Enchanted One (from Fri 6 May for one week).
This, the first volume in the triptych, is jam-packed with ideas, taking in housing projects and palaces, punk rockers and princesses, baliffs and caliphs – an encyclopedic sprawl of a film that mixes fantasy, documentary, docu-fiction, Brechtian pantomime and echoes of MGM musicals. Non-professionals – sometimes playing characters, sometimes being themselves – mingle with genies, wizards, camels, dogs and IMF economists, all to a deliriously eclectic soundtrack. Oh and there are appearances by cunning wasps, virgin mermaids, an exploding whale, erection-inducing potions, and a talking rooster. Told you it was eclectic!