Last May in Theaters – Films

Arief Budiman
Indonesia, South Korea | 2025 | 22 min
European Premiere
Languages : Indonesian, Korean
Subtitles : English, French

Cinemas usually disappear into the darkness to make way for the on-screen show. Here, by contrast, iconic movie palaces in South Korea and Indonesia take centre stage in an analysis – ranging from archival images to a dazzling use of generative AI – of how cinemas became protagonists of tragic or exhilarating historical moments and movements from the 1970s to 1990s.

Cinemas usually disappear into the darkness to make way for the on-screen show. Here, on the contrary, iconic movie palaces in South Korea and Indonesia, where military dictatorships ended in 1988 and 1998 respectively, take centre stage in an analysis, ranging from archive images to a dazzling use of generative AI, of how cinemas became the protagonists of tragic or exhilarating historical moments and movements between the 1970s and 1990s. It could only be May, the most revolutionary of months, to intertwine the releases of iconic films from those decades, from La Nuit américaine to Titanic, from Taxi Driver to The Taste of Cherry, often delayed by years due to censorship, with the riots and uprisings that invaded those cinemas, defining them as social and political spaces akin to streets and squares. The ticket sellers, projectionists and ushers whose voices we hear thus become witnesses to a cultural, architectural and historical reappraisal, which refuses to accept that struggles are destined to fade away, just like light beams from projection booths. Dans la rue! Au cinéma!

Sergio Fant

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