Carnival revelers in Recife, as seen in Pictures of Ghosts (Grasshopper Film)

Cinema is the art of capturing ghosts. Every time a film is projected, you may see people who have left us forever now coming back to life or those who will one day cease to exist but whose image may not be erased. It captures events from times the past, places that time has changed beyond recognition or that have never been seen in the way movies have presented them. Cinema is always there to introduce the ghosts of the future while jealously protecting those belonging to the past.

Following two acclaimed fiction works (Aquarius, Bacurau), the new film by Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho is a documentary exploration and celebration of those personal and collective specters that define our relationship with movies (and any audiovisual record). Pictures of Ghosts initially feels like a personal diary by the director, yet it moves from the personal to the universal, from autobiography to history. It’s an exercise in spiritual archaeology where memory is excavated and ruins are reconstructed through the legacy of moving images and sounds.

Divided into three parts, Pictures of Ghosts nostalgically begins by showcasing a series of archival footage of Recife, a city undergoing growth and transformation in the mid-20th century with aspirations to become a cultural and tourist destination where Hollywood stars would stroll. Before extensively delving into the architectural and cultural changes undergone by the director’s hometown, the documentary initially narrows its focus by centering its first act on his childhood home, omnipresent in his early films. The surrounding Setúbal neighborhood was also captured by his camera many times, with the help and participation of locals and friends, from his short films to more recognized works like Neighboring Sounds (2012).

All these audiovisual pieces have now formed a decades-long record inhabited by their own particular ghosts: the barking of a dog that is no longer alive; his late historian mother, Joselice, interviewed in her youth about the research she would undertake; and evidence of how much that microcosm (home, community) has changed over the years. There’s even a curious photograph taken inside the apartment of a blurry, moving presence when nothing was there, and what many in the filmmaker’s circle superstitiously considered a real ghost.

What begins as the definitive record of his family home expands with the history of Recife, its past and present contrasted in images that speak for themselves about how much cultural life, traditions, and even buildings can change or be lost in time. Mendonça Filho’s narration laments that the young no longer visit present-day downtown, which looks like run-down and semi-deserted. Faced with its current state, it’s hard to imagine the place as it once was, glimpsed through the archive of images and videos: the crowded carnivals, the films that were shot there, and the imposing marquees of the cinemas that were a vital part of Brazilian culture. Meanwhile, the director refers to the now non-existent marquees as time indicators (after all, the name of a particular movie places us in a specific year), but also as chalkboards that conveyed secret and encrypted messages. Local iconic figures, like a projectionist commenting on how tired he was of showing The Godfather for five months straight or the street vendor dealing in memorabilia discarded by the cinemas, are already part of a half-remembered history.

The last section serves as a short epilogue on the fate that befell the cinemas upon closing their doors: The buildings were converted into evangelical churches that have maintained the original architecture. One building used to be an Anglican church before being demolished to build a cinema, so the cyclical irony of its final destiny is worth considering. This allows the director to reflect on the idea of cinemas being similar to religious temples and also subtly, without fanfare, make a political statement about the cultural regression suffered by his hometown (and by extension, the country).

Pictures of Ghosts is an unassuming sociological and spiritual meditation by a brilliant filmmaker on how much countries and cities can change over time. He trusts that cinema will always be there to give ghosts a second life, despite what cannot be recovered.