Program 3: Friends for Eternity
Friends with Benefits: An Anthology of Four New American Filmmakers
February 5 - 11, 2016
Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s first two collaborations—one a radically stylized amalgam of coming-of-age melodrama and political allegory, the other cast against lush jungle settings and the modernist architecture of Brasilia—are sublime stories of friendship and betrayal spanning the medieval past to a dystopian future.
Come early for free beer at the Film Center on 2/6 from 8–9pm.
Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s first two collaborations are sublime stories of friendship and betrayal spanning the medieval past to a dystopian future.
Travel support provided by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Palaces of Pity / Palacios de Pena
Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt, Portugal, 2011, DCP, 59m
Portuguese with English subtitles
After establishing their filmmaking partnership with A History of Mutual Respect, Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt co-directed this radically stylized, era- and genre-scrambling amalgam of coming-of-age melodrama, medieval pageant, and political allegory. Two teenage sisters cope with the death of their beloved grandmother, their long-standing rivalry, and their inheritance of an immense castle with a shadowy Fascist past. An exhilarating whatsit laden with awe-inspiring landscapes, surrealist flourishes, and stirring, unexpected juxtapositions of image and sound, Palaces of Pity is denser with aesthetic, historical, and political ideas than innumerable films twice its length.
A History of Mutual Respect
Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt, Portugal, 2010, digital projection, 23m
English and Portuguese with English subtitles
The first collaboration between Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt is a playful yet serious meditation on friendship, competition, and carnal desire, cast against lush jungle settings and the modernist architecture of Brasilia.
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