New York Film Festival 2023

[Chris Knipp]

KLEBER MENDONÇA FILHO: PICTURES OF GHOSTS/RETRATOS FANTSMAS (2023)


INTERIOR OF A RECIFE PICTURE PALACE IN ITS HEYDAY FROM PICTURES OF GHOSTS

Haunting images and haunted places: the Brazilian director explores the sources of his inspiration

Menconça Filho memorably and spookily followed a world of menace and disorder in new Recife buildings fictionally in his 2011 debut feature Neighboring Sounds (ND/NF 2012). This time he crafts, with old footage, much of it his own, a personal documentary about fading remnants of culture in downtown Recife since the picture palaces, once idyllic places, went dark, preceding this by a pictorial review of family apartments, where he has shot his films over the years. Thus he flows from thoughts on his own movie-mad youth and his own family above to an eelegy for the lost communal culture of shared moviegoing - and what cinema owed to cinemas, and has lost as film "going" goes electronic and digital and solitary.

Speaking of apartments, Mendonça Filho's second, and more widely known film was Aquarius (NYFF 2016), which is about an imperious woman, magnificently played by Brazilian superstar Sonya Braga, who won't give up her apartment to developers. In speaking of this film, less structurally inventive than Neighboring Sounds, I said the film "shows how the apartment has acquired through decades of human use the quality of baraka as Robert Graves defined it in his Oxford Addresses on Poetry."

Mendonça Filho does this in even more detail, with lots of film illustrations, in talking about the family apartment, which remained occupied by him for forty years, and went through two major. remodelings, but still doubtless retained the underlying baraka from decades and decades of family use. Initially, when we see the old interior of the apartment, it's dark and cozy. We keep going back over it, people in it, his mother, siblings, the balcony and people watering the plants outside. We see and hear a lot about the apartment next door, with its swimming pool. It was invaded by termites, which caused the roof to collapse and got into the director's family apartment too. Off in the distance is the sea, and the big apartment buildings that have grown up as Recife has grown. All this is narrated in Mendonça Filho's own voice. And he tells us how he made movies here, with this apartment as the location, not just juvenile efforts but also mature work.

The film's second part shifts to Recife's city center, now in decline, and the handsome cinemas that once were important places of entertainment there. This section of the film is partly about cinema, partly about urban decline, partly fond memories of specific places, homes away from home if you like, inspirations and almost places of worship for young cinephiles and cineastes. Detailed visual explorations of the places, some archival, some Mendonça Filho's own footage shot over years, also include his visual records of Mr. Alexander, chief projectionist of one of the biggest theaters, whom the director filmed prior to his death two decades ago. While old movie palaces in America, most of them gone, tended to the baroque, those of Recife seem to have been of later vintage and more clean and modern-looking. Many were torn down and replaced by other buildings, some were converted into shopping centers - one, even while it was still a movie theater.

Mendonça Filho's skill is in creating magic, mystery, and fearful haunting out of the ordinary - a neighborhood or a long-inhabited family apartment. He does something like that in a coda to this evocative, richly personal documentary in which he takes a ride with a driver who tells him he has discovered a superpower: the ability to become invisible in place. And voilà! he finds himself in a driverless car. But no! The driver is still there, you can hear his voice. Simple, artisanal movie magic is the best way to haunt the viewer and plant lasting memories.

Mendonça Filo has crafted a most personal and original set of recollections. This splendid documentary confirms and elucidates his distinctive vision and whets the appetite for another feature, while providing one of the best guides to his work future students will ever see.

Pictures of Ghosts/Retratos Fantasmas ("Ghost Portraits," "Phantom Portraits"), 93 mins., debuted in May 2023 at Cannes Special Screenings. It was screened for this review as part of the New York Film Festival, where it shows Oct. 9, 2023 at 5:30 pm.