A Useful Life

(La vida útil)

BAMPFA Collection

An elegy to cinephilia and the lives less ordinary keeping it on life support.

Ed Gonzalez, Slant
featuring

Jorge Jellinek, Manuel Martínez Carril, Paola Venditto,

In this deadpan comedy of cinema and obsolescence, Jorge (played by Uruguayan film critic Jorge Jellinek) has worked his entire adult life at Montevideo’s Cinemateca Uruguaya. His routine has remained the same for years: projecting films, greeting the same six or seven audience members in line for every show, chatting with colleagues over possible series and deciding what to repair next (the projectors or the seats?). But his days in cinema, and those of his boss (played by the former head of the Cinemateca, Manuel Martínez Carril), might be coming to a sudden and life-changing end with the threatened closure of the economically unviable institution.

Jason Sanders
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Federico Veiroj
  • Inés Bortagaray
  • Arauco Hernández
  • Gonzalo Delgado
Cinematographer
  • Arauco Hernández
Language
  • Spanish
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • Digital
  • 67 mins
Source
  • BAMPFA
Permission
  • FiGa Films
Preceded By

Standard Gauge

Morgan Fisher, United States, 1984

An autobiography told through 35mm film fragments collected over twenty years as a film editor.

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 35 mins
source
  • Morgan Fisher

Luminous

Alexi Manis, Canada, 2001

A projectionist’s homage to celluloid and projection booths.

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 4 mins
source
  • Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre