Charulata by Satyajit Ray (top); Moolaadé by Ousmane Sembene (middle); El Sur by Víctor Erice (bottom)
The Auteurs World Cup was launched yesterday, Nov. 16. David Hudson, formerly of The Daily and GreenCine Daily, describes the AWC thus:
"It's a competitive game measuring up national and regional cinemas against each other[,] created and organized by the online community at The Auteurs. Like the World Cup in soccer, only with movies.
"Background: Kicked off in September with 32 teams, then separated into 8 groups of 4, from which the top 2 in each group have qualified for the last 16. The last 16 match line-ups are here. Each team has had a manager making the selections. In each match 3 films are paired against an opponent. Results are decided by the voting preferences of Auteurs users: to vote you must have seen both films in each pairing. At each stage new films will be selected and some time allowed for viewing before the matches resume."
More details about the Auteurs World Cup can be found here. David adds that the competition's quarter finals begins today, November 17, right here.
Among the competing countries/continents are Spain, Taiwan, Africa, Iran, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Russia, and Hungary. Among the competing films are:
- Satyajit Ray's Indian drama Charulata
- Ousmane Sembene's anti-patriarchy drama Moolaadé
- Víctor Erice's Spanish father-daughter drama El Sur
- Pier Paolo Pasolini's anti-fascist horror movie Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
- Kaspar Rostrup's Oscar-nominated Danish drama Waltzing Regitze / Memories of a Marriage