Night Colonies / Kummatty

Sat 01.06.
20:00

Cinema

Arsenal 1

Night Colonies

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s oeuvre has frequently brought the non-human to the fore and NIGHT COLONIESisno exception. This hypnotic short unfolds in a hut mysteriously devoid of people in the middle of a jungle storm: as a whole community of lizards and buzzing insects convenes on the neon-lit bed, human concerns seem to fade into the background. (jl)

Kummatty

When a strange man arrives in a small Indian village, young Chindan and his group of friends initially view him with fear, dubbing him Kummatty (“the bogeyman”). But once the children realize that Kummatty just spends day after day sitting beneath the great tree by the temple singing, they come to see the outsider with affection. As the seemingly harmless eccentric sets off again, his true powers are revealed, however: as he sings and dances with the children in the field, he turns each of them into a different animal. Now a dog, Chindan flees in fear, meaning he isn’t changed back to human form at the end of the song like his friends. How will he navigate life as a canine and will he stay a dog forever? Recently restored by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, Govindan Aravindan’s enchanting children’s classic is bursting with bright colors and ravishing images of nature, a fairy tale that wanders deftly between the cheerful and the melancholy on its way to a joyful end. (jl)