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 DREAMERS
Bernardo Bertolucci | 2003 | France / UK / Italy | 1h55m | Presented in the original English and French audio with English subtitles
THE DREAMERS is a film about three young people who love cinema so intensely that they begin using it as a way to shut out the world beyond their apartment.
Paris, 1968. American student Matthew meets French twins Isabelle and Théo outside the Cinémathèque Française, where protests have broken out over the dismissal of Henri Langlois. The three quickly bond over movies and, with their parents away, retreat into the twins’ apartment. What begins as friendship develops into a private world of film trivia, reenactments, games, arguments and increasingly transgressive intimacy.
Bertolucci fills THE DREAMERS with cinema history. Characters recreate scenes from the films they love. Clips from older movies interrupt the present. References to Godard, Chaplin, Garbo and the French New Wave become part of the characters’ shared language. They don’t simply watch movies. They use them to understand themselves and one another.
That devotion is also the film’s central tension. Outside, Paris is moving toward the political upheaval of May 1968. Inside, the trio remain absorbed in their own cinematic universe. Bertolucci gradually brings those two worlds into collision, asking whether immersion in art can become a form of escape when history is happening immediately outside the door.
THE DREAMERS fits naturally into our two-week celebration of filmmaking itself, running alongside FOMO’s hosting of the shnit Worldwide Shortfilmfestival this August 22-27. Across the program, we’re looking at filmmakers, actors, projectionists, movie obsessives and the people who build their identities around cinema. Few films capture that obsessive relationship with movies as directly as this one.
It also makes a useful transition in the program. Earlier films like CAMERA BUFF, IRMA VEP and DAY FOR NIGHT look at cinema from the side of production. THE DREAMERS looks from the other direction, at the people in the audience, and at what happens when being a cinephile becomes part of your entire personality.
Sensual, nostalgic and frequently divisive, THE DREAMERS remains one of Bertolucci’s most personal late works. It understands the intoxicating pleasure of disappearing into cinema, while also recognising that sooner or later, the outside world has a habit of interrupting.
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
FOMO Secret Cinema • Bazari Orbeliani, 0105 Tbilisi, Georgia
