CINEMANIA
DE 2002 80 mins / colour / Digi-Beta / 16:9
Dir.: Angela Christlieb, Stephen Kijak
Producer: Gunter Hanfgarn
Funds: Filmstiftung NRW; Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg
Coproducers TV: Bayerischer Rundfunk
FESTIVALS / PRIZE:
“BEST DOCUMENTARY” The Hamptons Int´l Filmfestival, New York, USA
More than 60 filmfestivals worldwide !
Seattle, Locarno, Sheffield, Rotterdam, Los Angeles et al.
"Are you prepared to alter your diet to avoid the need for toilet breaks, thus fitting in more movie screenings each day? Do you take changes of clothes to the cinema to avoid coming home? Can you live on peanut butter sandwiches for months in order to afford up to eight screenings a day? The individuals profiled in this probing but frequently hilarious documentary represent the most extreme cinephiles."
Melbourne International Film Festival
These characters in Cinemania, have clearly crossed over some line and can no longer be considered normal or sane. After watching your film, we are ready to cross that line ourselves.
D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus
If Woody Allen invented these people as characters for one of his films, he'd be accused of gross exaggeration. Bill (who looks and sounds like a young version of Allen) scrupulously washes his glasses before each screening and arms himself with a large bag of peanut butter sandwiches, thermal underwear and pills for "sniffles", back pains and anxiety. "My psychiatrist told me yesterday I have a compulsion," he reveals.
Sheila Johnston, Screendaily
SYNOPSIS:
Cinemania is a feature-length documentary about five of the most addicted film-watchers in New York, obsessives who watch films daily not merely for pleasure, but also as a psychological necessity. If an art lover is able to buy and collect paintings and other such works, a film lover can only collect the residue of film images in his or her memory, accumulate them and make them part of his own private "collection." All of these eccentric film-watchers have passed from having a passion for film to an addiction: film-watching has become an obsession that has taken over their lives completely. The reality outside the dark theater has grown to be almost non-existent. They often cannot hold jobs and are on the verge of poverty, but absolutely must watch films day and night, no matter the cost. These film fanatics have seen thousands of movies and written them all down on lists that attempt to collect, categorize and ultimately possess an abstract and fleeting procession of aesthetic experiences. Collecting and keeping track of film schedules and even archiving their ticket stubs is the daily work of each cinephile. They developed systematic checklists, to organize an accumulation of knowledge about films and directors. The cinephiles profiled in Cinemania are living film encyclopedias, who even know the scratches in certain prints. The film consists of intimate portraits of the five protagonists mixed with clips from Hollywood Classics and archive material.