A USEFUL LIFE & AS FOLLOWS (Federico Veiroj, 2010/2004)
Event Date: November 3, 2011 - 7:30pm
Location: The James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall 1409, UCLA
From the Director of Melnitz Movies, Samuel B. Prime:
A USEFUL LIFE is a story about the decline in public film exhibition. As art house theaters around the world become increasingly rare and audiences choose the comfort of their homes over the shared space of a darkened venue, public screenings of features in their native format(s) face extinction. Showing A USEFUL LIFE on 35mm represents our commitment to showing film on film and celebrating the century's old tradition of coalescing in a darkened theater to have our eyes & minds opened, as we have so many times before.
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After twenty-five years, Cinemateca Uruguaya’s most devoted employee, Jorge (real-life Uruguayan critic Jorge Jellinek), still finds his inspiration in caring for the films and audiences that grace the seats and screen of his beloved arthouse cinema. But when dwindling attendance and diminishing support force the theater to close its doors, Jorge is sent into a world he knows only through the lens of art—and suddenly forced to discover a new passion that transcends his once-celluloid reality. Stylishly framed in black-and-white with brilliantly understated performances, Federico Veiroj’s sly and loving homage to the soul of cinema is a universally appealing gem and knowing charmer about life after the movies.
A Useful Life is co-presented by the Global Film Initiative and is part of the Global Lens 2011 film series. For more information, visit www.globalfilm.org. This screening is also sponsored by the Latin American Institute.
Best Director, Valdivia International Film Festival
Special Mention, Kutxa New Directors, San Sebastian International Film Festival
Coral Grand Prize, Best Film, New Latin American Cinema of La Havana
Special Mention, Warsaw International Film Festival
Special Jury Prize ex-aequo, Istanbul Film Festival
“The sensitivity in this segment is a mark to Veiroj’s keen eye towards material and architectural detail surrounding his film, as well as the humor and pleasingly, gently inert humanity embodied in Martínez Carrilo’s affably schlumpy, rarely emotive and entirely effective performance. Definitely one of the festival’s finest films, which I was count my blessings I was able to see in an actual theater, albeit a multiplex and not a cinematheque” -Daniel Kasman, The Daily Notebook
“What begins as a seemingly dry work directed purely at cinephiles evolves almost invisibly into a droll romantic comedy, and marks a clear step forward for Veiroj.” -Robert Koehler, Variety
DIRECTOR: Federico Veiroj
CAST: Jorge Jellinek, Manuel Martínez Carril, and Paola Venditto
A Global Film Initiative Release
35 mm, 80 min.
A USEFUL LIFE (LA VIDA UTIL) from The Global Film Initiative on Vimeo.
