Pictures of Ghosts
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1h 33m
Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho | 93 mins | 2023
A film that functions as a kind of memoir/essay film companion piece to "The Secret Agent", with the later film’s loving evocation of the largely disappeared Recife movie palaces remembered from Mendonça Filho’s youth, the diptych "Pictures of Ghosts" begins as a contemplation of the apartment where the director spent decades of his life and shot both his earliest films and portions of acclaimed later features, then moves on to offer an ode to the city’s now-gone-to-seed old center and its cinemas, one of which, the sumptuous Art Deco São Luiz, still today draws enthusiastic crowds. A meditation on the changing face of one city, making use of many an exceptional found-footage discovery, that has much to say about what we have lost and are still in danger of losing in cities around the world that neglect the shared spaces facing onto the streets in their heedless skywards climb.
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