♪ You say yes ♪
♪ That you understand me ♪
♪ You say no ♪
♪ You won't deliver, you won't sell, You won't leave me, you won't let me go ♪
♪ But you leave everything (you left) ♪
♪ You leave hurt (you hurt) ♪
♪ You leave cold (you froze) ♪
♪ You leave me hanging (you hung) ♪
♪ You swear, swear (you swore) ♪
♪ You despise me (you spite) ♪
♪ You turn the corner (you cornered) ♪
♪ And you leave me hanging I'm, I'm, I'm… ♪
♪ You feel ill ♪
♪ So you take a pill… ♪
♪ You fool yourself, but keep moving on ♪
♪ That's it for me ♪
♪ There's no last kiss ♪
♪ And there ain't no happy ending ♪
This photograph by Alcir Lacerda is from the late '60s.
It shows the Boa Viagem Church square, South side of Recife.
This is the Boa Viagem Hotel,
a landmark
until it was torn down in the 2000s.
The Boa Viagem Hotel can be seen in these images…
With Janet Leigh and her daughters
on a trip to Recife in the early '60s.
The square has changed a lot.
In the '70s, my small family came to live in this seaside area.
About 250 meters from the beach.
Right here.
On what used to be mangrove.
PART ONE THE SETÚBAL APARTMENT
Apartment 102.
The Pioneiro building,
Number 207
on José Moreira Leal Street
in the neighborhood of Setúbal, in Recife.
The 1972 building has only one floor.
No stilts.
The boxy type.
The apartment's on the top floor, to the back, away from the street,
where it's quieter.
The apartment has three bedrooms,
one en suite,
a living room,
a guest bathroom,
and a kitchen/dining area.
The apartment used to have a maid's room
which my mother, Joselice,
turned into a study by knocking down a wall.
Later, it became a room for watching films.
I was ten when we came to live in this place,
which my mother financed through a public bank in 1979.
This new house meant a new beginning for my mother
after her separation from my father, Kleber.
Joselice, my mother, was a historian.
She studied the abolitionists Joaquim Nabuco and André Rebouças
in 19th century Brazil.
At the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation where she worked,
friends joked that she cheated on Nabuco with Rebouças,
whose framed portrait she had on a wall at home.
Joselice used to say that joke packed a lot of Brazil in it.
Years after her death, I got this tape
from a colleague of hers at the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation.
One hell of a gift.
It's an interview aired on Globo TV in 1981
in which she talks about oral history.
Joselice, tell us about how oral history will shape your new research.
Through oral history, we collect information that's been left out of history.
We seek to evaluate the subject's life--
a part, shall we say, somewhat autobiographical,
then we move on to verify
and collect the data from that person.
It may seem like I'm discussing methodology,
but I'm talking about love.
Today, when I remember my mother and this apartment,
I understand this place was radically altered by her.
Twice.
The first time was at the end of the '80s
and I think there was a sense of euphoria and uncertainty.
That's me with my mother, near our home,
during the 1989 elections.
We voted together once more in 1994,
one year before she died, aged 54.
When Joselice fell ill in 1992,
I saw she had in this apartment an extension of her own strength.
And that's when Joselice renovated this place a second time.
It's as if the apartment had turned into a house,
as if it had undergone surgery--
an aggressive but healing surgery.
Joselice assigned to my brother Múcio,
at the time a 20-year-old architecture student,
the mission of changing our house.
This was the first project he ever designed.
A fine piece of work, with at least one youthful reference to Oscar Niemeyer.
In the 2000s, this place changed once more.
Over all these years, I learned how time changes places.
What a great picture!
Martin and Tomás, right here.
Here, Tomás!
Wow, that's a good picture!
Look.
Lemme see.
One way or another, I lived in this place for 40 years.
OK?
Rolling.
Cut!
This apartment is also where I began making films.
I thought that was good!
- Little less jumpy, huh? - Yeah.
I'm ready, Kleber.
I must have made between 10 and 13 films.
The beach symbolizes paradise, I think.
The focus on this camera is nonexistent, Kleber.
Whenever you're ready.
That's good.
The rug's gone…
It's been shot from every angle…
In every room…
Over…
20 years, I'd say.
Some people would watch these films and ask:
"What's with that street, in Setúbal, in that apartment?"
Sidclay, wake up!
It's where I lived. That's the answer.
Joselice encouraged me to make my own films
whichever way I could.
It was our house-- it was right there.
For posterity…
Neighbors acted as extras. They seemed to enjoy it, I think.
Cut!
We also shot in our next door neighbor's apartment,
It was good to turn the house
into a crowded, workshop or studio.
I had told Pedro Sotero and Fabrício Tadeu,
the cinematographers for Neighboring Sounds,
that I wanted to shoot the street at night without any special lighting,
which is a silly idea, truth be told.
They showed me it was doable,
but when I saw the images, I thought it best to light up the whole street.
It's when you bring together the mundane and some cinema look.
Then it feels like a movie.
Mariá, this is Sofia.
- Sofia, Mariá. - How are you, Sofia?
Fine, thanks.
Is there coffee, Mariá?
- Yeah, I'm just finishing making some. - I need some.
Maeve came over for dinner once.
You're so stuck up with those glasses.
Tryin' to act smarter.
I thought it was funny that she was sitting
in the same spot as in the Neighboring Sounds scene.
What's that noise?
Oh, it's the cats.
A guy had broken into the house next door to steal the gas container.
Later, of course, we re-enacted the whole thing...
…with my telephone.
For many years, I photographed the apartment and the neighborhood.
And this one time, I took the picture of a ghost.
A presence.
The picture is right in the living room of our apartment...
but there's a figure in it, and I have no idea who it is.
To this day, I don't know how this figure ended up
on my camera, and on my film.
All I know is that the photograph got around
and friends wanted to take me to a Spiritist center.
They thought I was a medium.
Years ago, I got home from the cinema with Emilie on a Sunday night.
Sat down at the kitchen table to smoke a cigarette.
Then I heard barking I hadn't heard in years.
It was Nico barking, the neighbor's dog.
There was just a problem: Nico was dead.
He died two years after Neighboring Sounds was released.
Can't get to sleep, Mom?
No.
He will keep on barking…
I got up, hearing Nico's howls and barks, and suddenly
I understood the film was on Globo, on national TV.
And our neighbors were all watching the film.
Nico had become a ghost.
Nico had a bit part in another of my films.
Spontaneously.
I must have recorded the sound of Nico barking and howling
over a few years.
It was hard to believe a dog could bark that much.
He'd bark because he spent the weekend alone.
Meaning, he'd spend all the weekend barking.
I tried talking to the neighbors, to no avail.
They always found a way to say Nico was not a problem.
He was actually advantageous.
They argued that, if Nico's barking,
it means thieves will stay away.
This shot of Nico lying down was seen just now.
Take a look.
The neighbors' house was overtaken by termites,
which contaminated our building and our apartment as well.
Bastards.
The termites ended up in another film of mine Aquarius.
As it happens, the neighbors' house, with its pool,
built in the '70s, was overtaken by termites…
Which brought down the roof over their kitchen.
After all those years, the house went bald,
right in front of our living room.
The house fell into disrepair
and nature takes notice.
It occupies the empty spaces.
I love animals-- Hove dogs, cats--
but these cats took over and got on my nerves.
So fucking annoying.
The netting over the window is a cat deterrent.
And finally, this.
The house turned into a bunker.
Sometimes it feels like the house died with that dog.
The films photographed the neighborhood's demeanor.
FORTLEV
No, that building's fine, it's the next one over.
There, that one there...
Too much. Turn the big one a bit.
There you go, turn it all the way up.
Where there were no bars, bars went up.
You'd walk into the building from the street-- there was no gate.
- Clodoaldo. - Hey, thank you, Bia.
Should the receipt be in your name or in Ricardo's?
I won't need one.
- Thanks for the coffee. - Don't mention it.
Need anything, let me know.
I always found it strange because this neighborhood
never felt especially dangerous.
SECURITY AND STYLE FOR YOUR PROPERTY
Camera!
This was always my favorite house on the street.
The only one with a short. meter-high fence;
the large windows have no bars
A phenomenon.
When we shot Neighboring Sounds
the owner told me that, due to the short fence
and the unprotected windows in the front yard,
no one had ever tried to break into her house.
My name is Clodoaldo Pereira dos Anjos.
Nice to meet you. Your name?
Sometimes people ask if what they see in the films
is production design.
No, it's no production design.
Or, sometimes I'd lie.
Of course it's production design…
And people would be impressed.
This other house behind the wall.
A friend lived here in the '80s.
When I looked at footage of our home to work on this montage,
I saw there's the apartment of our normal life
and there's the cinema apartment.
Yours, all yours
Mine, all mine
Together, tonight
I want to give you all my love
PART TWO THE CINEMAS OF DOWNTOWN RECIFE
♪ I've searched for you ♪
♪ Today I am happy ♪
♪ With you you're everything I dreamed of ♪
♪ Oh I love you ♪
♪ My blood boils for you ♪
♪ Oh I love you ♪
♪ Oh I love you, my love ♪
♪ Oh I love you ♪
♪ My blood boils for you ♪
I love downtown Recife.
Twice, I cut that line, then put it back in,
thinking it was redundant to say.
Then I thought you should say it when you like someone.
A city's central area may remind you of many other cities.
Katia Mesel.
WHO HAD MARIELLE KILLED?
My relationship with downtown Recife was forged through its cinemas.
Between the ages of 13 and 25, more or less,
I'd go downtown several times a week to watch movies.
Deep Throat Ⅱ…
It's the sequel…
Downtown is a place part of the city seems to have forgotten.
Like someone who was left with no further explanation.
Many of the young have never been downtown,
not even during Carnaval.
What can't be denied is that the money has gone elsewhere.
I once heard someone say the problem with downtown...
Is there's no air conditioning.
I have a sentimental map of downtown Recife,
split by the filthy Capibaribe river
with streets and cinemas as landmarks.
The Art Palácio and the Trianon were on Sun Street
right in front of their main rival across the river--
the São Luiz,
on Dawn Street.
Facing each other,
all three of them staring,
in a stand-off
in the sun
and at dawn.
"A STAR IS BORN"
Most of these cinemas are now gone, of course.
This is Joaquim Nabuco,
the abolitionist.
This little map covers an area with street names such as "Longing",
"Hospice" and "Nymphs".
"Hunger Alley", and "Photographers' Alley"
Livro Sete, a great bookstore, no longer exists either.
"Freedom for the customer to choose a book."
It is now a church.
But downtown does its own thing as well.
It's like…
"If you don't like me, Fuck You."
There are those who believe that downtown Recife is dead.
Recifians say they're the 2nd best Carnival in Brazil, 3rd in the world.
According to Dr. H. Martins, the order is: Nice, Rio, Recife.
Is it? See for yourselves...
On the Boa Vista bridge we can see the impressive, excited crowd.
A friend once wrote that downtown Recife smells like tide,
fruits,
and piss.
Jomard Muniz de Britto & Antônio Cadengue.
Downtown probably smelled like that even when money was here.
Cláudio Assis & Matheus Nachtergaele.
I found these images
of myself in the lobby of the Art Palácio cinema on the week it closed.
July 1992.
Almost 30 years later, I was sent these photographs of the same place...
But taken a few days before the cinema opened its doors in 1940.
At least 30 million people came through this place in over 50 years.
I followed the last two years of the Art Palácio
shooting photos and video with a VHS camera.
I was a student at the time.
- Got two cruzeiros? - No.
Got a thousand cruzeiros?
It was like being on a ship as it's being prepped to be sunk.
Sometimes, it seemed like a factory full of old machines.
It was at the Art Palácio where I met Alexandre Moura.
Mr. Alexandre.
The projection room was hot and had no air conditioning.
Alexandre would take his shirt off to work and sit or lie on the floor,
where it was cooler than sitting in the chair.
CinemaScope.
Let some air in. Or else we'll die.
I showed The Godfather here.
I worked with this Godfather…
It showed here for four months.
Wasn't it on TV the other day? The Godfather?
But my kids...
I got so fed up with that music that I couldn't stand it any more.
On the last day we showed The Godfather, I couldn't take it,
I was so anxious to stop showing that film.
So I went over to the Trianon.
And I was a young man back then!
I went over to the Trianon
and the guy from the Trianon came over here to finish the film
'cause I just couldn't do it.
You spend four months watching the same film...
Mr. Alexandre told me how he dealt with censorship under the dictatorship.
So two guys arrived.
"This film's impounded, y'hear?"
They opened up the projection room…
- Who are you, sir? - Federal Police!
"The film's impounded!"
Fine with me. I'll leave early!
I once had a dream
in which Mr. Alexandre opened the hatch on the projector
and the light made him disappear. As in…
Just like in Terminator 2
which he showed in sold out screenings.
Antônio!
No one's here.
Antônio!
After all these years, I never got permission
to see the ruins of the Art Palácio.
There's a good side to that.
When I remember this cinema, I also remember Alexandre,
who passed away in 2003.
Did I ever tell you what that window's for?
- What it was for? - No.
For the narrator.
When it was an art film...
Art films, there'd be a narrator there from the radio.
You know, one of those narrators who are good speakers?
And when would he speak?
While the film was being shown.
The film would be shown and he'd talk during the session, right?
- What, into the cinema? - Into the cinema.
Yeah, it wasn't for the radio, it was into the cinema.
For the viewers.
Now those films... Art films, right?
You'd only get people who…
- What exactly would he say? - About...
He'd talk about the film, right?
In the film, this and that happened, you see?
Those films about kings. Really out there stuff.
- That's so strange, Mr. Alexandre. - Isn't it?
When they announced the Art Palácio and its neighbor the Trianon were closing,
I asked Mr. Alexandre if he was coming to work on closing night.
It'll be a Tuesday, my shift.
So I'll be the one closing up.
I'll lock up the cinema with a key of tears.
That's right.
You're crying…
I'll lock up the cinema with a key of tears.
Mr. Alexandre once told me about a German manager at the Art Palácio
during the war.
Making this film, I finally put the pieces together.
Pretty good story.
The Art Palácio was planned to be an UFA cinema,
the major German studio run by Goebbels and Hitler in the '30s.
The Germans saw the possibility of expanding Nazi propaganda
in two strategic cities in Brazil:
São Paulo and Recife.
During the Getúlio Vargas presidency, who held sympathies for the Nazi regime.
Recife was visited 67 times,
between 1930 and 1937,
by the German machines Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg.
São Paulo and Recife, each with its own UFA Art Palácio
designed by the architect Rino Levi who was, by the way, Jewish.
The office used to be here.
- Isn't it there? - No, it's not...
The headquarters.
Alexandre would talk about the German manager at the time:
Gunther, if I'm not mistaken.
The trapdoor leads to the balcony, right?
During wartime the German guy would hide under there too.
Any trouble, he'd hide
and everything would be quiet again.
With the war, plans for Recife's Art Palácio at the Trianon building
being a UFA project were abandoned.
The building was taken over by distributor and exhibitor Art Films
founded by Italian immigrant Ugo Sorrentino,
who had been since 1931
the exclusive distributor for UFA in Brazil.
And continued to be until 1941.
Months later, Brazil finally cut commercial ties to Hitler's Germany.
These buildings came up in the '40s
and the money was here.
Recife's places of power were carefully planned.
In the '70s, it started to lose its prestige,
not unlike the cinemas.
Seems like parking space was an issue as well.
Little by little, the money left for the South Side of Recife.
Over there in Boa Viagem.
Same thing took place in so many cities
around the world.
Printer cartridges and toner,
an English course,
an office,
some kind of prosthetics.
You can almost hear the intrigue:
American and Nazi spies,
Brazilians in favor and against the country's neutrality in relation to the war.
Everyone plotting
Carnaval.
One can also imagine this building
becoming good affordable housing for many people.
The US Consulate was here
during the war.
Another US Consulate of sorts was in this building
not too far away.
Every Hollywood studio had offices in this five-story building:
Metro, Universal, Columbia Pictures, Fox,
Paramount, Warner, United Artists, Disney.
There was even room for foreign companies like Atlántida, Cinédia, and Embrafilme.
At least that's how Brazilian distributors in this building felt.
Scene 9, take 2!
This footage from the short film Eisenstein
is the last surviving images of the print distribution center
that supplied cinemas in Brazil's North and Northeast.
Fiction films are the best documentaries.
With the arrival of the internet, the studio offices closed in the 2000s
and film distribution was centralized in São Paulo,
about 2000 kilometers away.
The other day I dropped by the Alfredo Fernandes building
and the new administrator informed me, very authoritatively,
that there had never been any film companies in that building.
These companies only occupied the building for over 70 years.
Luckily I kept some mementos from the distributors
at the Alfredo Fernandes building.
Right at the back of the building was its trash.
Right over there
was Hollywood's trash
High quality American posters, trailers, photographs, lobby cards, pressbooks…
Every week, hundreds of such items were thrown out.
A well-known secret.
A lot of it was resold by Paulo Barbosa
on the sidewalk in front of the Trianon.
These images are over 30 years old.
The cinemas went extinct, didn't they?
The poor ones with no money sometimes buy…
sometimes I'll give them printed materials.
If I got duplicates, I'll give it away. Give 'em materials.
A lot of 'em don't have any money, they just look.
Paulo Barbosa sold film memorabilia but he was also a fireman.
RECIFE HERO EARNS A LIVING AS STREET VENDOR
And he was one of the heroes who saved Recife from a tragedy.
On May 12th 1985
he untied the mooring ropes of a burning tanker at the port.
So many stories.
"CHRISTMAS BONUS: FIVE DEAD"
Mrs. Ricardo Pessoa de Queiroz.
Mrs. Julio.
Mrs. Antiógenes.
This paper from 1977.
King Kong with Fay Wray, 1933
King Kong Escapes at the Trianon.
São Luiz had Dino de Laurentiis' King Kong.
Down there we've got The Man from Hong Kong
and Costinha e o King Mong.
The 1977 King Kong fever.
And Sonia at the Boa Vista in Dona Flor, third week.
Around 150 thousand people saw Sonia in Dona Flor at the Moderno alone.
I ended up shooting a scene with Sonia Braga
where the Moderno used to be.
For the film we made together Aquarius.
There used to be windows with posters on this wall of the Moderno cinema
but they've been filled in.
Each window had the poster of a film, and two photos.
It was the first image you ever saw of a film.
Like a gallery exhibit but right on the street.
That's how I found out-- I was just a kid--
that they had made another Star Wars movie
called The Empire Strikes Back.
Vadinho!
Sonia Braga
Some years ago,
I gained access to the Moderno projection booth.
Now here is something quite analog.
Manual.
Cinema marquees.
When digitizing these images,
something strange happened.
The image of this marquee, archived for so long,
went through a digital mutation.
It was like the Moderno marquee was trying to tell me something.
A tree covers part of the marquee
and it's like the film becomes another film.
THE SILENCE...
Sometimes...
Marquees read like secret messages to people.
Who's this Frankie?
Who's this Johnny?
My Name is Nobody.
My Name is Earthquake…
The city was marked all over by fantasy words.
"See Barbarella doing her thing".
"You'll scream in terror and jump out of your seat
when you see Jaws!"
Messages spelt carefully and craftily.
"NO ZIPPER"
I like this series of photos
taken on the Duarte Coelho bridge in different decades,
always with the São Luiz Cinema in the background.
Johnny Guitar - this photo's from '57.
Pink Floyd: The Wall and The Entity--
March '83.
This one with O Quatrilho,
in the '90s.
Suzana Amaral & Marcélia Cartaxo.
Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Chuck
Norris.
I shot this in Super 8
and watching these images makes me dizzy.
How could someone go up there, on that marquee,
no safety procedures,
10 meters up?
Crazy.
Ivan Cordeiro.
The Living Daylights.
I saw it at the São Luiz.
Fernando Spencer.
Marquees are timekeepers.
This photo from Jornal do Brasil, taken in Rio de Janeiro,
dates to when the military passed the Institutional Act 5, tightening the regime.
John Boorman's Point Blank showing at the Pathé
and shit going down on Cinelandia.
Movie marquees, in a way, commented on life in the real world.
It was a loss to cities, I think.
♪ You say yes ♪
♪ That you understand me ♪
♪ You say no ♪
♪ You won't deliver, you won't sell, You won't leave me, you won't let me go ♪
♪ But you leave everything (you left) ♪
♪ You leave hurt (you hurt) ♪
♪ You leave cold (you froze) ♪
♪ You leave me hanging (you hung) ♪
♪ You swear, swear (you swore) ♪
♪ You despise me (you spite) ♪
♪ You turn the corner (you cornered) ♪
♪ And you leave me hanging I'm, I'm, I'm… ♪
♪ That's it for me ♪ NO CENSORSHIP
♪ There's no last kiss ♪
♪ And there ain't no happy ending ♪
Was it a coincidence that the Veneza's marquee read Knock Off
the night it closed?
Was that a coincidence?
Cinemas that no longer exist showing films about ghosts.
December, 1970.
The grand opening of the Veneza Cinema, on Hospício St.
The opening night film: Universal's Airport
in 70mm.
Some days earlier,
a special screening of Fox's Tora! Tora! Tora!
was offered to the Armed Forces.
Military band.
Military government.
The owner, Luiz Severiano Ribeiro Junior,
is seen here greeting the governor of Pernambuco, Nilo Coelho
and Mrs. Nilo Coelho.
Her name is actually Maria Tereza Coimbra de Almeida Brennand.
The Severiano Ribeiro company was the largest film exhibitor in Brazil
during the 20th century.
At the Veneza, they spared no expense.
It's kind of sad to become attached to a product.
The problem lies in the fact that you spent years of your life
going to this cinema,
so the relationship gets emotional and confusing.
It was at the Veneza where I began to pay attention to sound in films.
To these days, people talk about the experience of image and sound
for Milos Forman's Hair in 70mm at the Veneza.
I wasn't old enough to watch it.
The military government, on its last legs, rated it 18 and over.
They found Hair subversive and anti-military.
The film became a phenomenon in Recife, more so than in any other city in Brazil.
Over 200 thousand people saw Hair at the Veneza in almost six months.
CINEMA IS THE GREATEST ENTERTAINMENT
The industry sets up the infrastructure for distribution
then throws it all out.
They were building a mini shopping mall inside the cinema
without exactly tearing the whole cinema down.
This thing took root inside the Veneza
like an alien organism and the cinema became its host.
The city changes every year, no doubt.
With a lot of demolition.
But I've never seen a mutation as strange as this one inside the Veneza.
Seen from a distance, the Veneza is this building here.
With these pillars.
Here was the Marist School,
a traditional school that closed down.
It's also turning into a shopping mall--
The Marist Shopping Mall--
Thus named in memory of the school that closed.
A bit like the cinemas.
These images come from André Antônio's The Cult,
a film that takes place in a futuristic version of Recife.
These are the only surviving images of that school.
Futuristic films are also documentaries.
♪ My my my it's so sweet to grow old ♪
♪ Just like me ♪
♪ To be Brazilian, born in Pernambuco ♪
♪ J and making frevo with God-given inspiration ♪
♪ This is one of my favorite ruins. ♪
♪ To be Brazilian, born in Pernambuco ♪
♪ and making frevo with God-given inspiration ♪
♪ The same beautiful mornings at Dawn Street ♪
♪ My father's name, and my son's, is Luiz ♪
♪ To be such a happy grandad to Simone, Nelsinho and Moema ♪
♪ Three verses in the sweetest of poems ♪
♪ To look at my dear Recife ♪
the Polytheama Cinema.
♪ With the grace that kindness has allowed me ♪
♪ To live in such a world of such sweetness and beauty ♪
♪ How sweet it is to get old like me ♪
PART THREE CHURCHES AND HOLY GHOSTS
♪ Just like me ♪
♪ To be Brazilian, born in Pernambuco ♪
♪ and making frevo with God-given inspiration ♪
♪ The same beautiful mornings at Dawn Street ♪
♪ My father's name, and my son's, is Luiz ♪
♪ To be such a happy grandad to Simone, Nelsinho and Moema ♪
♪ Three verses that make up the sweetest of poems ♪
♪ To look at my dear Recife to love its people ♪
♪ With the grace that kindness has allowed me ♪
♪ To live in such a world of such sweetness and beauty ♪
♪ How sweet it is to get old like me ♪
Some 50 million people have been through the São Luiz in 70 years.
I don't know anywhere in Recife as unanimous as this.
Amin Stepple.
On the inside, the São Luiz stimulates the imagination.
But as you leave, it throws you back onto the street.
Ariano e Zélia.
Cinemas can be places of kindness.
TAKE CARE
WE'LL BE TOGETHER SOON
I've always heard people referring to Recife's São Luiz Cinema as a temple.
Part of local cinephilia uses catholic imagery
when talking about the São Luiz.
I've heard things like:
"To see a Glauber or a Hitchcock one should kneel in praise".
The cinema as a church.
Maybe it's the fleur-de-lis tainted glass.
Very famous.
It's ironic that the São Luiz and the Duarte Coelho building above it.
were built where there used to be a church.
The Chapel of the Holy Trinity of the English.
British money in Recife was no longer as important
as it had been in the 19th century,
especially after the war.
They demolished this Anglican Church from 1838
to build a cinema in 1952.
The decoration celebrates French king Louis IX.
It's all set up like a tent during the Crusades,
with 16 shields on the walls.
The fleur-de-lis is everywhere.
And on the tainted glass.
Luís Severiano Ribeiro, the patriarch,
also spared no expense on the São Luiz.
I witnessed two cinemas that stopped being cinemas
and became evangelical churches at the end of the '80s.
The Eldorado, in Afogados, and the Albatroz, in Casa Amarela.
The transition took a few weeks,
for the cinemas remained unchanged.
Seats, décor-- even the screens remained.
Dead cinemas
but now used as temples of the Universal Church.
When I revisited these images, I saw they might reveal the beginning
of profound changes in Brazil's relationship to religion.
Catholics losing ground
and evangelicals gaining power.
I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH HIM WHO STRENGTHENS ME
They bought cinemas.
When I was a kid, I saw, on this exact screen at the Albatroz,
a Passion of the Christ film starring Fernanda Montenegro.
An Easter week movie.
There are different ways now of stepping out of the trance,
of leaving the temple,
or exiting the movie.
Miguel and Bruno.
The São Luiz is a public cinema
which no longer has the logic of a commercial screen.
Nor should it.
A cinema like this helps build character
Geraldo Pinho.
Gustavo Coimbra.
Films have a natural tendency towards melodrama.
This is often in the image itself.
But also makes sense to embrace the melodrama.
Like listening to Nelson Ferreira's Evocação.
I found in one of the rooms at the São Luiz,
one of the projectors from the old Trianon Cinema,
the Art Palacio's next door neighbor.
Kept as a donation.
And scrap metal.
The Trianon building.
On the other side of the river,
Where Mr. Alexandre used to work.
Good evening.
- How are you? - I'm fine.
You got the address?
These three stops here--
are we picking someone up or did you just put them
to trick the app and drive around?
To trick the app and drive around.
Sometimes, I like to go home, and to unwind
and drive around in an Uber.
But if I just put the address, it chooses a route
that's boring and dull.
So, to get around that-- I once had
an argument with a driver
who wished to follow the route the app gave him,
and I asked him to go another way, and, well…
Want me to turn off the music?
No, you can leave it on.
Who is that?
Herb Albert.
This guy's helped me get through a lot.
How is he helping you?
He's an inspiration. I'm learning to play the trumpet.
So I listen to him a lot.
Because he's good.
- Do you play anywhere? - I play in a frevo orchestra.
Carnaval music.
It's got that upbeat energy I like.
Cool.
And what do you work with?
I work in films.
Films?
But, do you work in a cinema or do you make movies?
I work with a movie theater.
but I make films, I…
I write and direct films.
That's cool!
You an actor? I want a picture later, all right?
- You'll take my picture? - I want a picture with you, all right?
I don't get artists in my car everyday, do I?
I'll take one of you as well.
Have you ever done a telenovela?
No, I've never done a novela.
I bet you know lots of famous people, right?
I know some famous people, yeah.
Movies are great.
The other day I found out I have a superpower.
- You have what? - A superpower.
You have a superpower?
- Yeah. - Yeah?
The power to turn invisible.
You turn invisible?
Yeah, but not, like, disappear...
tele-transportation, jump somewhere else, y'know?
But, like...
I turn invisible, but in the same spot I am.
Then, when I want to, I reappear.
Get it?
So...
So do you…
Do you turn invisible at will?
Or do you suddently turn invisible in the middle of a conversation?
Yeah, sometimes I disappear by accident as well.
But...
I try to plan the moments I turn invisible
and that I reappear, got it?
You are there, aren't you?
Right here, right here!
Is the music too loud? Want me to turn it down?