Found Memories

Elderly Madelena (Sonia Guedes) lives a simple life of routine in the rural, almost abandoned community of Jotuomba, in the outskirts of Brazil. Each day she wakes up, makes bread for the local coffee shop, exchanges playful banter with the owner, partakes in a community mass at noon and shares a meal with all of the townsfolk at dusk. Amidst this simple, but sustainable lifestyle, she reflects upon her past, her deceased husband and the many memories and thoughts that help her maintain a sense of psychological peace. When young photographer Rita (Lisa Fávero) stumbles upon the town, after wandering down train tracks that have long fallen into disuse, she stays with Madalena, photographing the village and its ghostly sense of mortality just as she photographs her host, whose existence is similarly destined to be little more than a series of memories very soon. This idea of capturing, or at least grasping onto, the past in a visual, artistic capacity juxtaposes the past and present in Júlia Murat's deliberately paced and exceedingly minimalist drama, Found Memories. Just as Madalena spends her days writing down past experiences in an effort to transcend the ephemeral nature of existence, a younger, modern woman comes along to document and take her memories to help them live on. Rather than imply exploitation on the part of young Rita, Murat is curious to examine the nature of mortality as a collective, generational experience, with Brazil moving towards more of a conglomerate, machinated way of life. In such, there is much to contemplate thematically while each scene drags on endlessly, focusing on the kneading of bread or the drinking of a cup of coffee. Also included with the DVD is Belgian short film Land of the Heroes, wherein the American superhero ethos — helping young men cope with their actual self, in relation to the socialized alpha ego — is transposed onto a Middle Eastern child that sees only Saddam Hussein on TV. As such, heroism becomes that of a more literal mode of power assertion when two young siblings lock up a young bully friend in a box and pee on him. Television is ultimately indicted, as is the worldwide childhood socialization of boys as special and entitled, leading to an adult inability to process or respond rationally to difference or lack of power.