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Monday, March 5 -
Wednesday, March 14 (CLOSED Thursday, March 8)
Monday, March 26 - Tuesday, March 27
Admission: $5, $10 minimum,
Free Shot of infused Cachaca w/ admission
Showtime: 7:30pm and 10:15pm
reservations
are recommended
I saw this film at MoMA 2 years ago as part of a Brazilian film
series. I knew very little about it, except that it was from the
makers of the brilliant Bus
174. Afterwards, I found my friend who was had
arrived earlier and we proceeded to talk about Estamira
for nearly as long as the film itself.
When was the last "indie" film that did
that for you?
Little Miss Sunshine? Borat? The Prestige?
Children of Men? The state of independent cinema is not
what it was. It may, on occasion, be entertaining, but it's rarely
enlightening.
And Estamira never steps onto a soapbox. It is not about
mental health reform or homelessness or any sort of leaflet rhetoric.
Watching Estamira is like watching Dante or Nietzsche or even
Shakespeare in the present...in a garbage dump. Watching Estamira
will not restore cinema to an imaginary heyday, it will simply
serve as an island in the stream, a nourishing nugget that transcends
our moment.
Thus Spake Estamira:
"There is the lucid, the one I wrote about. The lucid
is this here. There is the conscious. The conscious
is the knowing, of which Jesus cannot read or write
about, but he learned of everything, from just watching
the lucid. Your lucidity impairs your sight...
Lucidity and Non-lucidity. Okay. And sentiment as well.
Conscious, lucid and aware, and there is the sentiment.
What keeps taking, reaping, recording, is the sentiment."
"The earth said, she spoke, now that she is dead,
she said she would no longer be a witness to anything.
Look what happened to her. We were on bad terms for
a long time, and...I told her we would stay that way
until she proved me wrong. The earth proved me wrong.
She proved me wrong because she is defenseless. The
earth is defenseless.
My flesh, my blood is defenseless like the earth.
But I, I, Estamira, my aura is not defenseless.
If you incinerate all spaces, and I am in the midst,
go ahead and burn me, I am in the midst, invisible.
If you burn my sentiment, my flesh, my blood, if it's
for the greater good, if it is for the truth, on
behalf of the lucidity of all beings, it can be now,
this very second, and I will even thank you for it."
The Filmmakers Synopsis:
"Estamira tells the story of a 63 year-old woman who suffers
from schizophrenia. Estamira has lived and worked for the past
20 years at the waste disposal site of Jardim Gramacho in Rio
de Janeiro. Filming began in January of 2000, when Estamira started
getting treatment at a state-run psychiatric clinic. The film
shows her life during four years of continuous medication...In
her children's statements, her arduous existence becomes exposed;
her lost childhood in poor, rural Brazil, her tormented loves
and marriages, and her frustrations. With a poetic, philosophical
and eloquent discourse, Estamira lives for the mission that was
set upon her: to reveal and to relclaim the truth."
Official Website:
http://www.estamira.com.br/
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