Courtyard only tickets available at the door for $13, cash only. The film screens simultaneously down in the courtyard at the same location—still outdoors, still beautiful, but at street level.
Saturday, August 10
On the roof of the Old American Can Factory
232 3rd St. @ 3rd Ave. (Gowanus/Park Slope, Brooklyn)
8:00PM: Doors open
8:30PM: Live music
9:00PM: Film
11:00PM–12:30AM: Reception in courtyard
SXSW WEEKEND. A stunning, poetic, experimental documentary hailing from Brazil that sends the director on a search for her sister, through image, sound, emotion and the many incarnations of lives loved and lost.
(Petra Costa | 80 min.) This feature documentary debut from Brazilian director Petra Costa charts her poetic journey in search of her sister, Elena, whose volatile life moves from their South American home to the gridded brownstones of New York City, fluidly capturing the spirit of loss through home video, tape recordings, beautifully realized artistic interludes, and a deep love of her sibling.
Before embarking on her first stay in New York to pursue her career as a film actress, Elena gives a young Petra a seashell, telling her to listen to it for sounds of the ocean, to communicate with her, to remember her by -- an act that Petra takes to heart as an adult when she continues to search for Elena through the echoing sounds she left behind.
Elena, a project supported by the Tribeca Film Institute’s Latin America Media Arts Fund, compiles both found footage in the form of a vast archive of home movies and also material of gorgeously staged scenes of pure artfulness. Yet it is the rich storytelling ability that stitches together these artifacts and imaginations into a strongly unique auto/biography on film, edited with a poise and ease much like the mercurial movements of the dances often performed by the expressive sisters.
The lives of Petra and Elena are most like a forceful current that moves in and out with the moon, drawn into their own personal, emotional undertow as they are confronted with the intensity of life and forced outward by living the lives of others through acting, singing, and play. Do the tides of our hearts continue to push and pull through the blood of others long after we are gone? Is anything ever really lost? The complexity of Elena, both as a person and as a film, delves into waters we rarely ask to tread, an existential journey for not only the lives floating on film but for the audience as well.
- Donna K.
