| The Million |
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Masters’ Cinema: Eugenio Barba & Odin Teatret Wed 17 October, 6pm Cinema Room Admission free 55’, 1979, Odin Teatret Film Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium & Centre for Theatre Laboratory Studies Film Archives Actors: Torben Bjelke, Roberta Carreri, Toni Cots, Tom Fjordefalk, Tage Larsen, Else Marie Laukvik, Francis Pardeilhan, Iben Nagel Rasmussen, Silvia Ricciardelli, Gustavo Riondet, Ulrik Skeel, Julia Varley, Torgeir Wethal (some of the actors only participated in one of the various versions); direction: Eugenio Barba.  The production was created in Holstebro, Lima and Ayacucho (Peru) on the basis of scenic material prepared by the actors during travels, on their own or in small groups, in different parts of the world. 223 performances were presented from September 1978 to October 1984, indoors and in the open air, in Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, France, French Antilles, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, USA, Wales. Recorded in 1979 in Hamburg. A journey among the carnivals of different cultures, from India to Bali, from Japan to Brazil, from Africa to European ballroom dancing. A “musical” à la Odin: a mocking album of exorcism whose figures of flesh and blood prance about in front of a strange traveler, clad like a missionary, with the spectacles of a short-sighted intellectual and the backpack of a tourist. The spectacularity and the candid joy of the opening scenes slowly reveal their opposites: dismay at the brutality which accompanies the explosions of life, the misfortunes which encompass the carnivals on the outskirts of empires, the exploitation and humiliation of women, the children with no future. This exotic album becomes one of meditation reduced to its essentials: love, abandonment, old age, death. For the civilized traveler who is intimidated and vulnerable, the journey becomes escape, distance, involuntary cynicism. |