Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent is a film informed by the director’s own memories. It’s not unusual for Kleber Mendonça Filho to pull from his personal experience and specific perspective in his work. Neighboring Sounds was partially shot in the apartment he lived in with his family in Recife. Born in Recife in 1968, Kleber would have been a similar age to Armando’s son, Fernando ,in 1977.
Nadine Whitney speaks with Kleber about how his life informed the film.
Nadine Whitney: I watched The Secret Agent, and then I watched Pictures of Ghosts, and then I rewatched The Secret Agent. I can see how many personal stories you’ve put into the film. For example, your mother, Joselice Jucá, recorded oral histories. And you have that aspect as part of The Secret Agent, and the projector that you worked for, Alexandre Moura is given a character in the film. Can you tell me about how you’ve used your own memories to create a portrait of Recife in that time.
Kleber Mendonça Filho: It is how I work, and I’ve never planned this, but I can only begin to write something new if I have it in my heart. I think once you work out the plot and the storyline, that’s technical, and that’s something that you can do. I really felt that I could write the script for The Secret Agent after so many years looking at archive material in Pictures of Ghosts. That film really reconnected me, in a very emotional way, to Alexandre the projectionist at the cinema, and to my own mother, because I found archive material of her.
When you lose someone so early, my mother died quite young at 54, and years go by and then you find a treasure trove of archive material with pictures and audio and video and film of her speaking it becomes a major emotional punch. I was very moved to see that her work as a historian so many years ago was basically talking about the same things that I do now as a filmmaker. I found that really moving. I think it probably explains the young historian character in The Secret Agent.
And with Alexandre I spent many hours looking at literally 16 hours of video footage that I shot with him, and this was about six years ago. So, twenty years after his death, I was spending mornings and afternoons watching myself talk to a friend who had died a long time ago. All these things gave me an expanded mind in terms of going into The Secret Agent. One thing is the storytelling, which is fine. I enjoy it. But the other thing is, you need to bring in the emotional basis on which you are going to build a story. I’m so happy that this year so many people have felt, I think, what I felt when I was writing and making the film.
