Mr. Night Shyamalan: “How many streaming films have marked you or changed your life?”

In an interview at the “World”, the American filmmaker, President of the Jury of the 72nd Berlinale, insists on the importance of the in-room cinema experience.

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In thirty years of career, the recognized filmmaker that is today Mr. Night Shyamalan climbed more than once the Hollywoods arena’s echelons. Sacred Wonder Boy, at the turn of the 2000s, with the surprise success of sixth sense (1999), he had burning reverses (After Earth, 2013), then the resurrection in small productions of horrifying genre, like The Visit ( 2015), then Split (2017). In spite of all these hazards, one thing remained unscathed: an incomparable brilliance in the art of staging, that he manages in hiring hivered stories Hitchcockiens. The Berlinale had the excellent idea for its e-sup> to entrust to him the presidency of the jury.

How did you approach this presidency?

It’s, curiously, something that was familiar to me. When I’m at home, I go down regularly in my little projection room. I look mostly movies alone, a classic, a foreign film that I have been told. This is my favorite activity, if only to continue learning or even finding inspiration. The festival could not have been able to choose someone more curious or thirsty for movies than me. Even if my schedule does not allow me often. I had a free niche between the filming of the fourth season of serving, my TV series, and that of my next film, which starts on April 18th.

I took a lot of notes on the movies seen here, in order to get the best teaching. Because I remain a LORD student. There is a sum of knowledge that springs from watching as many movies: why such a process works? Why not another? I wanted the jury to give each work the time of a complete discussion, and many cinema ideas came out.

The pandemic hit the cinema industry hardly. What a look do you ask for the past two years?

I think, to tell the truth, that nothing has changed. When we come back to normal, people will appreciate more to the cinema, as in the United States. There, when restaurants, concerts, sporting events have reopened everything was complete. It’s up to us to tell wonderful stories, and the public will come back, perhaps even more numerous.

This cinema crisis is the conjunction of two events: on one side a pandemic, on the other the rise of streaming platforms. During these two years, online suppliers spent billions of dollars in content and advertising, and shouted in the world: “Hey, now you can see what you want without commitment or buy a ticket!” I have ‘first found this infinitely damaging. But, thinking about it, the closing of cinemas also demonstrated how invaluable experience it was. There is no equivalent. On one side, we have this world without cinema, where everything is watching on a phone. But how many streaming films have marked you or changed your life? How many of them will remember you in ten years? And on the other, the one where one cherits the prospect of going out, to take his friends, to give all his attention and his love to the images and the characters who are looked.

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/Media reports.