Container #29 Aquarius and Pictures of Ghosts screening
...and the Asia Pacific Screen Awards + a comp giveaway to Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exist.
Hello. Thank you once again for joining us.
Next Screenings:
We have two screenings this Tuesday, both part of our Kleber Mendonça Filho retrospective and engaged with Filho’s exploration of Recife’s heritage. At 7pm and 9:15pm respectively with a short break in-between.
Aquarius, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2016, 146m at 7pm
Clara, a 65-year-old widow and retired music critic, was born into a wealthy and traditional family in Recife, Brazil. She is the last resident of the Aquarius, an original two-story building, built in the 1940s, in the upper-class, seaside Boa Viagem Avenue. All the neighbouring apartments have already been acquired by a company which has other plans for that plot.
Kleber Mendonça Filho deliberately links Sônia Braga, a legend of Brazilian cinema and who plays Clara, with the threatened Aquarius building. Braga’s long and determined history suggesting a similar rich history for Aquarius (and all other condemned buildings.) In one of her great late career performances, Braga brings detail and purpose to an otherwise unblinking decision to remain in Aquarius even as a series of social forces, developer or neighbour, plot to force her out.
“A performance of tremendous wit, vitality and lusty defiance by Sônia Braga drives Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho’s remarkable second feature.” The Guardian
R18+ and with thanks to Rialto
Pictures of Ghosts, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2023, 93m, at 9:15pm
Downtown Recife’s classic movie palaces from the 20th century are mostly gone. That city area is now an archaeological site of sorts that reveals aspects of life in society which have been lost. And that’s just part of the story.
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s most recent work debuted at Cannes 2023 and is a personal essay that lays bare Filho’s own fascination with the city of Recife—his early films made within his family apartment and neighbourhood become another source of historical footage—and bends this intimate knowledge into a wide-ranging study of Recife and cinema, and the city as a city whose constant development both disavows history and draws attention to it.
“Pictures of Ghosts poetically weds cinephilia to more expansive ruminations on urban shifts and social patterns, leading us to contemplate the ghosts that populate all our spaces.” The Film Verdict
Unrated 15+ and with thanks to Urban Sales
Upcoming Screenings:
24 October: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius (above) & Pictures of Ghosts
7 November: Kelly Reichhardt’s Showing Up
21 November: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Bacurau
5 December: Michael Mann’s Black Hat
12 December: Greg Mottola’s Confess, Fletch (pictured above)
Asia Pacific Screen Awards:
APSA kicks off from the 1st of November on the Gold Coast—singling out key Asia Pacific films along in-conversations, workshops, panel discussions, and intimate roundtables with a public program of screenings and Q&As. Good people and one of the key ways for local industry to meet and hear from their Asia Pacific peers. More info can be found at their website here.
We’re partnering with APSA to co-present Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist—Hamaguchi’s follow-up to his breakout Drive My Car and direct from its Venice premiere. Container’s John Edmond will be holding a Q&A with its producer Satoshi Takata, after the screening. We do have some tickets to provide to our members, so the first two people to contact us will receive double passes—just don’t forget the screening is at HoTA on the Gold Coast.
Thank you. We look forward to catching you on Tuesday for our screening two of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s films—the great Aquarius and his Cannes 2023 documentary Pictures of Ghosts, and then in a fortnight for Kelly Reichhardt’s Showing Up (pictured above.)