The
arrival in a new city, by sea. The city's
streets which unfold in the night, its bars, its sounds, the voices,
sleepiness… Dawn on empty beaches, returning to the ship.
Then again inside the
city, in its neighborhoods, in its secrets, on the second floor of a
house
overlooking other lives… And inside a room for remembering
or, perhaps, for
forgetting.
"This
video is part of a broader project that
began with Flor
da Baixa, in which a woman looks out of a
window in a boarding house in Lisbon
and watches a ship leaving the city. Rio de Janeiro
is the story of this distance, this absence
and the anticipation of a reunion. It is the story of the oblivion that
is
necessary in order to survive, of an anticipation that becomes
delirium,
perhaps a hallucination. Images stolen from a window in a courtyard
during a
sleepless night, of life that passes and grieves, everywhere in the
same way. Rio de Janeiro is
the
first segment of a voyage that will touch other ports, other cities and
other
lives, before it returns home." (M. Santini)