Future//Present – Never Eat Alone (w/ Last Poems Trilogy)
This event took place on Apr 7, 2018
$12 General Admission
$9 Student/Senior
$7 Member
Sofia Bohdanowicz
Canada
2016
1h 38m
Series -
Future//Present: Canada’s New Wave
Visiting Artist
** Director Sofia Bohdanowicz in attendance! **
About
Toronto’s Casa Loma, a present-day landmark, is here configured as a metaphorical cage of memories, captured on film in the 1950s for a live televised melodrama. One of its stars, now in her mid-80s, widowed and lonely, is wondering what ever happened to that charming baritone she performed with, the one who fancied her and even asked her not to go through with her wedding – before disappearing from her life forever. Her granddaughter Audrey (played with remarkable naturalism by Deragh Campbell) finds the show in an archive and attempts to track down this would-be lover.
This is the feature debut of Sofia Bohdanowicz, who continues to explore the themes of aging, memory and mortality she first tackled in her Last Poems trilogy of short films. Shot in a subtle docu-fiction style, this is a film of quiet poetry and muted profundity that takes a frank and tender look at late-life loneliness and the poignancy of inevitable solitude. With a precise but understated vision, Bohdanowicz has the sensitivity and skill of a young Chantal Akerman and, with these works, immediately joins the ranks of Canada’s most gifted filmmakers.
“The film’s repetition allows it to explore the ritual of our relationships, both with ourselves (eating, preparing food) and with others (reading old letters to a granddaughter, trying on a grandmother’s clothes). Bohdanowicz’s quiet precision and her interest in cross-generation relationships among female family members inevitably recalls the work of the late Belgian director Chantal Akerman…” – Nathan Smith, Knoxville Mercury