Pictures of Ghosts

Pictures of Ghosts is a voyage through time, the architecture of Recife, and the history of cinema. Taking as its starting point Kleber Mendonça Filho's childhood home in Recife, Brazil, the film unfolds through the narrow streets of his home town. He observes the multiple mutations of its urban character, thwarted by the region's economic difficulties, and the successive layers of a constantly changing history. The filmmaker maps this territory, at once precise and indeterminate, stopping along the way at the iconic cinemas of yesteryear, most of which have now disappeared. He strives to capture its soul and to invoke the spirit of these places through an act of artistic resurrection. Juxtaposing archival footage, extracts from his films and personal video documents, this collage-like montage captures an almost supernatural breath of life in these spaces, underlining the link maintained between cinema and reality, in an interplay that is as symbiotic as it is symbolic. As both a witness to and an actor in this collective narrative, Kleber Mendonça Filho celebrates the sacred capacity of cinema to allow access to eternity through a radical and melancholic artistic gesture.
Bastien Bento