Cinemania

A homage to the obsessive-compulsive essential New York normal schizophrenic in the form of a film buff. How better to characterize this great town than with portraits of it's neurotic citizens. We love New York and New York loves the movies.

Get a sneak peek into the lives of some "different" people. You probably know that people who are fanatic about subjects tend to be interesting anyway, but this movie takes you further.

If you enjoy watching people and making up stories for them, you have to see this movie! The real lives of these strange people are more interesting than anything you could think up!

And I thought I had a problem.

I guess obsession is the same no matter what the object is, and many documentaries have dealt with that theme, but obviously this one is much more of a meta-doc.

What I wonder is, are these people so dysfunctional because they continually go to movies; or do they go to movies because they're dysfunctional? There's something really disturbing if the former is the case -- that we consume movies and TV (more than we should) and the result is this deterioration of the mind and total disconnection from society. Are these people examples of over-consumption taken to its logical extreme? Do most of us have the exact same pathology but just watered down?

CINEMANIA is a film for its subject matter: film geeks. I absolutely loved it, which tells you a little about me. This is a great film for anyone who's ever hopped a cab, bus or subway train in a mad frenzy to get from one movie to the next, for everyone who's ever made a list of all the films they've seen in a year just out of morbid curiosity as to how wisely they've spent their time, for anyone who's ever sacrificed a social event to see a movie alone. Yes, I've done all these things and more, but despite my identification with the weirdos that are the subject matter of CINEMANIA, even I was amazed at the absolute compulsion many of them have for cinema. One man is said to choose a carefully orchestrated "constipating diet" in order to avoid the inconvenience of missing the beginning of a film due to the necessity of bodily function; another places a personal ad in which he writes almost exclusively about film; the only woman among them, Roberta, has been known to physically fight ticket sellers at theatres that inconvenience her goal to save the ticket from every movie to which she's ever been. The astounding thing is how proud the cinemaniacs seem of their obsession and the utter lack of anything else in their lives. One film buff proclaims himself a "writer and philosopher", yet we never hear about him writing anything other than the aforementioned personal ad. Another has an extensive collection of movie soundtracks on vinyl, carefully arranged by composer, but doesn't own a record player. But this is not a mean-spirited, satirical film out to expose or poke fun at the "losers" and their passion for passive entertainment. As I have said, it is a film for those who identify with these so-called "losers", hopefully to a somewhat saner degree. Perhaps the most touching and important moment in the film is a scene in which one film buff (proponent of the constipating diet) discusses the escapist quality of film. "In a movie", he says (I'm paraphrasing) "you can just walk out of the restaurant and blend into the crowd, then walk across the street as if moving on into your new life, but in real life, you know, you have to go home; you can't put real life in a frame and make it art." But sometimes real life is art, sometimes it's better without the frame, and I'm happy to know that the tragic, comic and wonderful "characters" of this film are really out there, still passionate about this great art form, even to the point of insanity. Right on, brothers (and sister)!

Manhattan is a mecca for the lonely. Nowhere in the world can people survive for years without the need of communicating with other people. Some of them have absolutely no life, or in the case of these five characters in this fantastic documentary, these are people who put all their energy into escaping from the real world. Their refuge is the many film theaters of Manhattan that show non commercial programs such as the ones that attract them.

How much can they absorb? How much can they really enjoy the same films that attract them?. Watching this documentary one can't really say.

Of all five people analyzed in the film only Jack comes close to a normal person. He is a walking encyclopedia. He knows about cinema. I have seen him in numerous occasions and have talked to him. He is the source one wishes to have when one is thinking of an obscure passage of a forgotten film, domestic or foreign. His whole life revolves around the different showings around the city. His life is a mess, but at least, he gives the appearance of normalcy in comparison to the others.

Roberta is an eccentric lady whose whole life revolves around collecting programs wherever she goes. She appears to go to films out of duty, not because she really enjoys what she is seeing. Her own anecdote of taking off her blouse during an air conditioned failure is a hoot. Talking to her after a film will give you no clue if she liked or disliked what she saw. She would be much better off staying home sorting out a whole lifetime at the movies and straightening the mess she lives in. I hate to see a fire in that tenement, or in some of the other apartments, for that matter.

Co-directors Christlieb and Kijak know these people very well. They give us a bit of their world; they have captured the essence of these five lonely souls in the big city.