Little independent cinemas that sold coffee and carrot cake and showed foreign films about cruelty, poverty and grief; occasional nudity, frequent brutality. Why, I wondered, did people seek out portrayals of the very experiences that, in real life, would send them mad with despair? Shouldn’t art be an escape, a laugh, a comfort, a thrill? No, said Connie, exposure brought understanding. Only by confronting the worst traumas of life could you comprehend them and face them down, and off we’d trot to watch another play about man’s inhumanity to man.
