This is an entertaining and interesting documentary as far as it goes. It's well made, and turns the rather patchy story of the UPP, which is after all full of gaps in its use as a cinema, into a very coherent piece of drama.
Bill Heine has obviously cooperated fully, providing photos and a wealth of testimony about his years in charge of the place. His naturally mischevious nature shines through, giving a vivid impression not only of fine old times in the PPP but also some of the prevailing spirits of the age. And it may be only me who feels some of the answers are a little glib, skating too easily over some underlying controversies.
So far so good, and this makes it all the stranger to me why the documentary should so utterly fail to cover the more recent history of the cinema. Was this a political decision, and if so whose? Were there just a shortage of celebrities to be interviewed who had enjoyed the UPP in the later 90s and most of the 2000s? It seems to me a travesty to condense Saied's custodianship down to the fact "it was a bit dirty"! If that's all you noticed then you surely weren't watching the same films I was!
And that's the trouble in the end: that I left this documentary feeling terribly short changed. It was certainly telling the story of a cinema on Jeune St, but as long as it totally failed to mention anything about the period I have known and loved it best then it wasn't the history of the UPP.
Bill Heine has obviously cooperated fully, providing photos and a wealth of testimony about his years in charge of the place. His naturally mischevious nature shines through, giving a vivid impression not only of fine old times in the PPP but also some of the prevailing spirits of the age. And it may be only me who feels some of the answers are a little glib, skating too easily over some underlying controversies.
So far so good, and this makes it all the stranger to me why the documentary should so utterly fail to cover the more recent history of the cinema. Was this a political decision, and if so whose? Were there just a shortage of celebrities to be interviewed who had enjoyed the UPP in the later 90s and most of the 2000s? It seems to me a travesty to condense Saied's custodianship down to the fact "it was a bit dirty"! If that's all you noticed then you surely weren't watching the same films I was!
And that's the trouble in the end: that I left this documentary feeling terribly short changed. It was certainly telling the story of a cinema on Jeune St, but as long as it totally failed to mention anything about the period I have known and loved it best then it wasn't the history of the UPP.