Ghost John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

Ghost

• directed by Takashi Ito, Japan, 5’

  • The ghost is haunting the city. Takashi Ito, visionary of Japanese cinema captures the experience of creative exhaustion with ghostly images.

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John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection

• [L'empire de la perfection], directed by Julien Faraut, France 2018, 95'
  • For many people, especially tennis enthusiasts, this film can simply be an essay about their favourite sport or a document about one of the most interesting players in the history of tennis. At the same time, John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection is a lecture on cinema theory that addresses its key issues: movement and time. The original title, literally translated as the empire of perfection, refers not only to the difficult character of the tennis legend, but above all to the film medium itself. Julien Faraut is as much interested in sport itself, as in its deep connections with cinema. Gil de Kermadec becomes the second protagonist as the author of hundreds of hours of tennis games recordings, including John McEnroe's greatest matches, which were supposed to serve training purposes by helping analyse every move of the player. The director, however, sees a huge philosophical potential in this material; here, the cinema is both a tool for discovering the world and a medium which allows us to perceive time in a completely different way.