Birds Eye View : Past Weekenders : Rumba

Rumba

Filmmaker: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy

Belgium / 2008 / 77 min

Opening Weekend Date: 31 July 2009

Cinemas screening the film: ICA Cinema, Odeon Panton Street & selected Key Cities

BEV's Creative Director Rachel Millward chats to Fiona Gordon, co-director and star of the magical comedy RUMBA. Read more on our blog (click here).

It's Jacques Tati meets Mr Bean in this wonderful Belgo-French slaptick comedy that has seduced film festival audiences around the world directed by and starring Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy. Originally screened as part of Critic's Week at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, the film continues to charm critics.

Synopsis

Rumba tells the story of Fiona and Dom, who are teachers at a country school with a shared passion for Latin dance. They are deeply in love and at weekends they enter dance competitions. One night returning home from a dance event they encounter a man on a suicide mission. Swerving to avoid him, they crash into a wall and their life is thrown into turmoil...

Far from being a bleak drama, Rumba has a resolutely optimistic feel, which has characterized this directorial trio since their first feature, Iceberg. In keeping with the great silent comics, Abel, Gordon and Romy depict a stylized and colourful world - for this story of thwarted love punctuated by flashes of musical comedy.
Paying homage to Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati, this highly original and surreal comedy set in a colourful world, magically blends theatre, dance, mime and dialogue and will appeal to all film fans seeking out something different this summer.

About The Directors: Fiona Gordon, Dominique Abel and Bruno Romy

The Trio met in the early 1990s, during a theater tour in the Calvados départment of northern France. Since then, their respective filmographies have regularly crossed paths and in 15 years of collaboration, they've created a dynamic of collective creation. All three have years of stage experience in physical comedy behind them.

Abel and Gordon live together in Brussels. They created four burlesque and visual shows, which are still touring, non-stop to this day: La Danse Des Poules, L'Evasion, Poison and Histoire Sans Gravite. During the 1990s, they took their first steps into cinema with three shorts: Merci Cupidon, Rosita, Walking On The Wild Side. In 2004, they co-directed their first feature-length production, The Iceberg, along with Bruno Romy. Romy lives in Caen. He worked as a math teacher, supermarket manager, clown and theater stage manager before entering the world of filmmaking.He has many short films to his credit. Today, he teaches cinema at the Collège Lycée Expérimental in Hérouville St Clair, Caen.