THE PLAYER: Cinephile Week at FOMO Cinema Tbilisi

To coincide with our hosting of the shnit worldwide shortfilmfestival (Aug 22-27), for the next two weeks FOMO is celebrating filmmaking itself. We’re screening a special program for cinephiles built around movies about movies. We’ll look at filmmakers, actors, movie obsessives, collapsing productions, Hollywood mythology, French and Persian New Wave, and the strange process of turning an idea into something that ends up on a screen.

Some films are about making movies and the people who dedicate their lives to them. Others are about the places where we watch them and why cinema matters in the first place. It’s our own small celebration of the people, chaos and obsession behind the movies we love.

THE PLAYER

Robert Altman | 1992 | USA | 2h04m | Presented in the original English audio with English subtitles

THE PLAYER is Robert Altman’s acerbic portrait of Hollywood as an industry where everyone talks about movies but are actually more worried about money, status, and who's next in the firing line.

Tim Robbins plays Griffin Mill, a studio executive whose days are spent listening to writers pitch increasingly absurd ideas and deciding which projects live or die. When he begins receiving threatening postcards from a screenwriter he believes he rejected, Griffin becomes convinced he knows who is responsible. His attempt to deal with the problem drags him into a situation that begins to resemble the kind of thriller his studio might actually greenlight.

Altman treats Hollywood as both workplace and ecosystem. Executives interrupt one another with story ideas. Careers shift over lunch. Famous actors wander through the background playing themselves. The film’s celebrated opening shot moves through the studio lot for several uninterrupted minutes while characters casually discuss famous long takes, immediately establishing the joke: THE PLAYER knows every convention of Hollywood filmmaking and takes enormous pleasure in turning them back on the industry itself.

Altman was a central figure and leading creative force of the New Hollywood (or Hollywood Renaissance) movement during the late 1960s and 1970 with films including MASH, MCCABE & MRS. MILLER and NASHVILLE. He spent much of the 1980s working outside the Hollywood mainstream. THE PLAYER marked his return with a film that openly mocked the system welcoming him back.

Funny, cynical and packed with cameos, THE PLAYER is one of the great films about the business of making movies. Its central joke has aged particularly well: everyone in Hollywood wants something original, provided it feels exactly like something that already made money.

FOOD AND DRINK POLICY: FOMO Cinema Lounge Bar opens 1 hour before the first screening of the day and closes at 02:00, serving a wide selection of beer, wine, cocktails, and non-alcoholic refreshments including coffee and tea, as well as fresh hot popcorn! Outside food is allowed in the bar but not in the cinema. No alcohol from outside allowed. All guests are invited to arrive early and stay late!

LOCATION: FOMO Secret Cinema, Bazari Orbeliani, Tbilisi. A five minute walk from Liberty Square metro.

HOW TO FIND FOMO: Enter Bazari Orbeliani via Atoneli St above Carrefour and take the stairs on your left to Level 1. Signage on the door. You can also check our Instagram story highlights for a video showing exactly how to find us: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTMzMTA2Mjk0MDI5MjM1