Like a lot of good things, I came across Cinema16 by a stroke of luck in a DVD parlor. In the section that hosted world films at Clixflix, my regular DVD joint, the cover of this DVD was jutting out among a pile. My first instinct was to push that back right in the slot but that something which clicks sometimes in your head with respect to a DVD clicked and I found myself holding the DVD cover in my hand. And I am mentioning a few names that I came across on the cover: Christopher Nolan, Lars Von Trier, Jon Svankmayer.. And mind you these were 'some' of the names. The decision was easy by now and by the time I returned the DVD, I had already googled all the versions of Cinema16 available online.
Cinema16 is an excellent collection of short films from the world over and to my knowledge at least 4 other such DVD's exist. Film as a medium, as the gurus tell us only need a beginning, middle and end and the duration of a particular film in that sense is secondary. Cinema16 fundamentally plays on that basic premise and offers a colorful canvas of 16 short films ranging from anywhere between a minute and a half to fifteen minutes. The publishers have got their collection spot-on with almost every film guaranteed to leave you with a 'wow'. It was hard to pick out a stand-out film because while some impressed because of their technical audacity, (you have to watch Copy Shop to know where the word audacity is coming from), some simply because of their storytelling (Election Night). Some because of the format (Wasp) and others simply because of the imagination of the filmmaker (The Man without The Head).
I never got to pick up another Cinema16 DVD because my regular joint didn't have the other DVDs in the series. For me, it represents the joy of cinema in its rawest form. And the fact it has some heavyweight names sitting on the DVD cover, doesn't hurt one bit. This is one DVD series that I am hunting for to add in my collection. What more can I say !
Rating: 8.4/10
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