May 23, 2012
Festival, SFFILM
Found Memories, (Historias que so existem quando lembradas, Brazil/Argentina/France 2011) Júlia Murat’s evocative tale of a Brazilian village forgotten by the world, opens an exclusive San Francisco engagement June 22 at San Francisco Film Society Cinema (1746 Post Street).
A disarming meditation on memory, aging and letting go of the past, Júlia Murat’s beguiling film takes place in a town where time stands still. The tiny Brazilian village of Jutuomba may be hard to locate on a map; indeed, it might exist only in the collective imagination of its few remaining residents, a tightly interconnected group of elders who enact daily routines of baking bread, churning coffee beans, attending Mass and enjoying communal meals al fresco. Into their autumn years drifts Rita, a young photographer captivated by the lush locale’s picturesque greens and ochers, and intrigued by the local cemetery’s mysteriously locked gates. As Rita discovers the village’s intertwined past and present through her camera lens, she forms a strong bond with Madalena (standout Sonia Guedes) and offers her new friend a chance at long-desired liberation. Murat has cited Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (SFIFF 2008) and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life (SFIFF 1999) as models for her film’s similarly deft blend of fictional and documentary elements, to which she adds Caravaggio-like interiors lit only by oil lamps (in brilliant work by cinematographer Lucio Bonelli) and a palpable affection for her characters and their otherworldly bit of Brazil. “I’ve never heard so much silence,” Rita says of Jutuomba, yet this silence speaks volumes. Written by Maria Clara Escobar, Júlia Murat, Felipe Sholl. Photographed by Lucio Bonelli. With Lisa Fávero, Sonia Guedes, Josias Ricardo Merkin, Luiz Serra. In Portuguese with subtitles. 98 min. Distributed by Film Movement.
Showtimes 2:30, 4:30, 6:30, 8:30 pm
Tickets $9 for SFFS members, $11 general, $10 senior/student/disabled. Box office now open online at sffs.org and in person at SF Film Society Cinema.
To request an interview contact hhart@sffs.org.
To request screeners contact bproctor@sffs.org.
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads.
At SF Film Society Cinema, the stylish state-of-the art theater located in the New People building at 1746 Post Street (Webster/Buchanan) in Japantown, the San Francisco Film Society offers its acclaimed exhibition, education and filmmaker services programs and events on a daily year-round basis.
More upcoming San Francisco Film Society programs
Through May 24: Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle and Le Rayon Vert (Summer)
Opening May 25: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Opening June 1: Hide Away
June 2 only: An Evening of Wholphin Love
Eight consecutive Saturdays June 2-July 21: The Story of Film: An Odyssey
Opening June 8: The Wages of Fear
Opening June 15: The Woman in the Fifth
June 21: Master Class: The Politics of the Cutting Room Floor
June 22-July 8: KinoTek: Adriane Colburn: Ways, Points and Means In this installation, Colburn presents the sea as a persistently foreign body, an overlooked wilderness that one attempts to comprehend through navigational technologies, optics and cartography.
Opening June 29: Corpo Celeste Alice Rohrwacher’s assured first feature mixes neo-realism with a touch of Buñuelian satire.
Opening July 6: Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present Back by popular demand, the handsome, persuasive documentary about the so-called grandmother of performance art which sold out every SFIFF 2012 show.
August 24: Master Class: Les Blank on Documentary
TBA: KinoTek: Brent Green, sculpture and animation