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CinemaPRO -
Friday, December 12, 2014 - 18:00
Written by:
Miguel Gomes, Mariana Ricardo
Cast:
Jaime Pereira, Donatello Brida, Jean-Pierre Rehm, Maren Ade
Editing:
João Nicolau, Miguel Gomes, Mariana Ricardo
Sound:
Miguel Martins
Producer:
Luís Urbano, Sandro Aguilar, Jonas Dornbach, Janine Jackowski, Maren Ade, Paolo Benzi
Production:
O Som e a Fúria, Le Fresnoy, Komplizen Film, Okta Film
Romanian premiere
REDEMPTION reveals the fluidity of cinematic meaning and the mechanisms through which collective memory constructs public figures and universal history. Voice-overs attributed to some of the most controversial politicians of our times continuously transform the archive footage into devices of remembrance, idealized reconstructions of the past and projections of the most intimate desires and thoughts. Gomes exposes our natural tendency to construct simplified representations, a mechanism in which we often also cannibalize public figures and their personal histories, draining them of humanness, in our effort to make sense of the world. (Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF)
Director:
MIGUEL GOMES (b. 1972, Lisbon) is a graduate of the Superior School of Theatre and Film Lisbon and has initially worked as a film critic, authoring several theoretical works on cinema. After debuting in feature films with THE FACE YOU DESERVE, OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST solidified his international reputation. His 2012 film, TABU, has been awarded the Alfred Bauer Prize for Artistic Innovation and the FIPRESCI Jury Prize at the 2012 Berlinale. Retrospectives from Gomes’s work have been programmed at the Viennale, the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, Torino Film Festival, in Germany and the USA. Gomes is currently preparing the next feature, ARABIAN NIGHTS.
Festivals, awards:
- Vanguard & Genre Prize for Best Short - BAFICI Argentina 2014
- Venice International Film Festival 2013
- Toronto International Film Festival 2013
- Rotterdam International Film Festival 2014
- Vienna International Film Festival 2013
- Vancouver International Film Festival 2013
- Edinburgh International Film Festival 2014
- Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal 2013
- Melbourne International Film Festival 2014
Comentariul curatorului:
For all their Rivettian game-playing and winking self-awareness, Gomes’ films are all, at root, portraits of cooped-up, restless people who crave an escape from their present situations, whether through fantasy, music, role-playing, movie-going or memory. The same goes for Redemption which (…) plays like a breathless highlight reel. That said, it’s also marked by many Gomes trademarks: his profound sympathy for people cut off from their own pasts; his conflicted attitude towards how movies function as a kind of memory surrogate; his interest in the grey areas between national and personal remembrance; and his tendency to lace his satire with sympathy.(…) On one level, Redemption’s subjects come across as pathetically tragicomic figures, cut off from their own private lives by their Wagnerian dreams of glory. But it’s the fact that this same sense of estrangement comes through in the structure of the movie itself (in the divide between who’s supposed to be speaking and the voices we hear, or between the memories we’re supposed to be watching and those we actually see) makes Redemption at once so funny and so profoundly sad. In the end, the only eternal present open to these lost souls is the collective memory of the movies which is both a kind of redemption and a bitter compromise. (Max Nelson, Cinema Scope)
For all their Rivettian game-playing and winking self-awareness, Gomes’ films are all, at root, portraits of cooped-up, restless people who crave an escape from their present situations, whether through fantasy, music, role-playing, movie-going or memory. The same goes for Redemption which (…) plays like a breathless highlight reel. That said, it’s also marked by many Gomes trademarks: his profound sympathy for people cut off from their own pasts; his conflicted attitude towards how movies function as a kind of memory surrogate; his interest in the grey areas between national and personal remembrance; and his tendency to lace his satire with sympathy.(…) On one level, Redemption’s subjects come across as pathetically tragicomic figures, cut off from their own private lives by their Wagnerian dreams of glory. But it’s the fact that this same sense of estrangement comes through in the structure of the movie itself (in the divide between who’s supposed to be speaking and the voices we hear, or between the memories we’re supposed to be watching and those we actually see) makes Redemption at once so funny and so profoundly sad. In the end, the only eternal present open to these lost souls is the collective memory of the movies which is both a kind of redemption and a bitter compromise. (Max Nelson, Cinema Scope)