Cinema Can Do Fairy Tales: The Wizard of Oz

“Somewhere over the Rainbow”. Judy Garland’s enchanting voice makes anyone with a heart tremble when she dances through a Technicolor rush of colors as Dorothy with her dog Toto in the classic musical THE WIZARD OF OZ. The glow of yearning covers everything: the yearning to move beyond your limits, to look behind the curtain, to find your way, with the help of others and with their community around you: “There’s no place like home.” Where is this home, how is it to be understood? The memory of a place of security? Is it really drab Kansas from which Dorothy is catapulted out of by a storm or the dream landscape of the myriad surreal adventures that she withstands and that we withstand with her? And what about cinema? Cinema can also be such a home, above all with children at Arsenal watching THE WIZARD OF OZ, which allows cheerfully hopeful expectations about still unknown adventures to arise – that too is family and an experience of the world. (ara)