Comrades in Dreams

"If I did not talk to the theater owner or the ticket seller, I should be lost, cut loose metaphysically speaking", says Binx Bolling in Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer". Uli Gauke takes Bolling's creed to its literal extreme and zooms in on the people behind the movies. "Comrades in Dreams" portrays an African cinema entrepreneur, the young Indian owner of a traveling tent cinema, a North Korean projectionist, and an American owner of a small-town warehouse theater. Four corners of the world, two men, two women, each with a story of their own. But the secret stars are the people on the fringes: an African cinema-goer who is afraid he might disappear in the darkness of the theater, a freckled young cowboy refusing to praise the Lord in Sunday school, a well-meaning friend scouting potential brides for Anup, the bachelor king of the traveling cinema. I usually stay away from feature-length documentaries, but I can't say I have any regrets in this case. I'm with that unnamed guy in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso: "I have no friends and don't like bars either. So I go to the movies."