Arabian Nights Vol. 1: The Restless One

One of cinema’s most ambitious attempts yet to engage with the age of austerity, Arabian Nights is also full of great pop music and ribald seaside humour.

Using Scheherazade’s story-telling as a frame, this beguiling and befuddling new trilogy by Miguel Gomes (Tabu) takes great joy in colliding and combining fantasy with reality. The kamikaze production process began with a team being despatched across Portugal to gather stories, which once approved by a committee were swiftly filmed by a small crew on 16mm using actors and non-professionals. One of cinema’s most ambitious attempts yet to engage with the age of austerity, Arabian Nights is also full of great pop music and ribald seaside humour.

Vol.1: THE RESTLESS ONE Opening with the director doing a despairing runner from his own film-shoot, the first volume is the one most explicitly concerned with Portugal’s economic struggles. From protesting dockers to defiant jobless swimmers, the stories here offer piercing insights into a world where almost everyone is paying for the crash in some way. Gomes has no time for straight-up social realism though, so you’ll also find an exploding whale, a cockerel on trial, and a scurrilous satire on the EU Troika, aka ‘The Men With Hard-Ons’.

We will be screening Arabian Nights Vol. 2: The Desolate One and Arabian Nights Vol. 3: The Enchanted One on Saturday 23 April at 1.15 pm and 4pm.