Retratos Fantasmas aka Pictures of Ghosts

Retratos Fantasmas aka Pictures of Ghosts
by Kleber Mendonça Filho
2023, Brazil, 93 min., Portuguese w/ English subtitles

The classic movie palaces from the 20th century in Recife, Brazil, are mostly gone. The city area is a sort of archaeological site that reveals aspects of life in society which have been lost.
Ghosts are everywhere, in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s celebrated documentary Pictures of Ghosts, and they are vividly real. They are the ghosts of places, public and private, that no longer exist as we knew them, yet continue to live in memories, and in pictures.

The filmmaker uses archive documentary, home videos and clips from his films such as Neighbouring Sounds and Aquarius, to show us around the places that have inspired his work. Kleber is your ideal ‘local guide’ to Recife, once a Dutch colonial stronghold, now the capital of Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco. He shows his mother’s apartment and the surrounding neighbourhood near the shark infested beaches, and how it changed over the years. He takes us downtown where his love for cinema started in the 20th-century cinemas that have lost their cosmopolitan glamour, now repurposed as evangelical churches.

Pictures of Ghosts traces these historical changes with geographical precision. Never without some wry humour and not without a stinging, bitter streak, your local guide is however not an archaeologist of sorts, reminiscing about better days and different times (though there is also that). In the first place Kleber is a filmmaker, revealing his research and process in the probing editing, gradually finding meaning, love, friendship and humanity in unexpected places.

Premiering in Cannes (where all his films have started except Neighbouring Sounds that premiered at IFFR), Pictures of Ghosts became a surprise choice as the Brazilian entry for the Oscars. In part, this may have been a political peace offering, after the dark years of Temer and Bolsonaro’s (extreme) rightwing governments. But it also cements Recife as Latin America’s most surprising cinematic hotspot of the last twenty years, and Kleber Mendonça Filho as its foremost film director.

Presented by Gerwin Tamsma, who was was one of the main programmers at IFFR between 1996 – 2022.

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