In partnership with Icarus Films, Spectacle is thrilled to host this tribute to the late and great documentarian Heddy Honigmann, who passed on in May of 2022. Her 1992 documentary METAL AND MELANCHOLY – about taxicab drivers in her native Peru – was a surprise Spectacle hit when we showed it in 2012; this miniature tribute reprises that film plus four others, representing a small taste of Honigmann’s overall filmmaking career, which spanned four decades and several continents. Honigmann was renown for her incisive perspective on the foibles of humankind, and her ability to seek answers to delicate questions without probing or harassing her subject-collaborators. Taken in sum, they represent a vision of nonfiction filmmaking equally as shrewd as it is compassionate. “I don’t do interviews,” Honigmann said. “I make conversation.”
METAL AND MELANCHOLY
dir. Heddy Honigmann, 1992
Peru/The Netherlands, 80 min
In Spanish w/ English subtitles
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8 – 10 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 19 – 7:30 PM
“I once read that a famous Spanish poet said that Peru was made of metal and melancholy. He was right, perhaps because pain and poverty have made us hard as the hardest of our metals, and melancholy because we are also tender and we long for better times that were lost in oblivion. “
This documentary is an offbeat “road movie” in which acclaimed documentarian Heddy Honigmann travels with, and thereby discovers the stories of, taxi drivers in Lima. In the early 1990s, in response to Peru’s inflationary economy and a government destabilized by corruption and Shining Path terrorism, many middle-class professionals used their own cars to moonlight as taxi drivers in order to weather the financial crisis. METAL AND MELANCHOLY learns how these part-time cabbies, including a teacher, a Ministry of Justice employee, a film actor, and a policeman, among others, manage to navigate through Lima’s congested, pothole-filled streets in dilapidated cars whose survival techniques are as fascinating as those of their owners.
“Offers a candid and kaleidoscopic view of the poverty-stricken metropolis through each driver-philosopher’s tale of hardship. Some of the stories are disarmingly amusing, even comical; others are poignant and sobering.” — Ted Shen, Chicago Reader
O AMOR NATURAL
dir. Heddy Honigmann, 1995
76 mins. Brazil.
In Brazilian Portuguese with English subtitles.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9 – 10 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 19 – 10 PM
O AMOR NATURAL is a documentary film about the erotic poetry of one of the greatest Latin American poets of the 20th century, the Brazilian Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987).
The erotic poems of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, a household name in Brazil, remained unpublished during his lifetime, as he feared they would be deemed pornographic. In this celebration of his poetry and sensual vision, elderly residents of Rio read his poems and comment on their graphic, voluptuous imagery with tremendous candor and enthusiasm. “We’re old. We’re not dead!” interjects one reader, as memories of stolen pleasures and bittersweet melancholy unfold. Says Honigmann: “The poems sometimes functioned as a kind of corkscrew, sometimes as a glass of water, sometimes as a glass of brandy.”
“Approaching literature not through critical analysis but through its effect on everyday people – in this case, elderly Brazilians gamely reciting the poet’s voluptuous verses – this warm, simple film uncovers a rich vein of ageless, grassroots sensuality and joie de vivre.” —Variety
THE UNDERGROUND ORCHESTRA
dir. Heddy Honigmann, 1999
108 mins. Peru/France.
In French with English subtitles.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 5 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10 – 5 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13 – 7:30 PM
THE UNDERGROUND ORCHESTRA is a glorious documentary profile of musicians who play on the sidewalks of Paris and in the Metro. Honigmann illuminates the lives and music of a ragtag group of international bohemians: an Argentine pianist, Romanian father and son violinists, a Venezuelan harpist, and singers from Mali and Vietnam. All are united by their experiences with political repression, and by a luminous spirit and boundless courage that led them to flee any number of horrendous situations throughout the world. Finding refuge in Paris, music becomes their economic lifeline, but as this film makes movingly clear, it is also a shining metaphor for their will to survive.
FOREVER
dir. Heddy Honigmann, 2007
95 mins. Peru/France.
In French with English subtitles.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 5 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13 – 10 PM
Through a leisurely tour of the world-famous Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the final resting place for legendary writers, composers, painters and other artists from around the world, FOREVER provides an unusually poignant, emotionally powerful meditation on relations between the living and the dead, and the immortal power of art. During its visits to many famous graves – including those of Frédéric Chopin, Marcel Proust, Guillaume Apollinaire, Amadeo Modigliani, Oscar Wilde, Jean-Auguste Ingres, Maria Callas, Georges Méliès, Jim Morrison, Yves Montand and Simone Signoret – FOREVER also introduces us to the Parisians and tourists who make pilgrimages to these tombs, whether to pay their respects, leave flowers or personal messages, or even to tend to the upkeep of the tombstones. The film also pays moving tribute to talented young artists who died prematurely as well as to the less celebrated deceased remembered primarily by next of kin.
Honigmann’s own artistry is also on display here, including a poetic cinematic style that conveys the melancholy beauty of the cemetery’s memorial statuary and tombstones, and her ability to elicit surprisingly intimate human-interest stories from those she encounters. As a result, FOREVER will provide every viewer the opportunity to reflect on the transcendental importance of art in our lives, on our need to commune with the spirits of the departed, and perhaps on our own mortality as well.
OBLIVION
dir. Heddy Honigmann, 2008
93 mins. Peru.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7 – 10 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 12 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16 – 10 PM
OBLIVION focuses on Peru’s capital city of Lima, revealing its startling contrasts of wealth and poverty, and how many of its poorest citizens have survived decades of economic crisis, terrorism and government violence, denial of workers’ rights, and political corruption. Demonstrating anew Honigmann’s extraordinary talent as one of the most empathetic of documentary filmmakers, OBLIVION provides intimate and moving portraits of street musicians, singers, vendors, shoeshine boys, and the gymnasts (some mere children) and jugglers who perform at traffic stops.
The film also visits with small business owners, from a leather-goods repairman and a presidential sash manufacturer to a frog-juice vendor, and contrasts the work and home environments of bartenders, waiters and waitresses employed at Lima’s finest restaurants and hotels but who live in slums in the city’s surrounding hillsides. For most viewers, who are reminded of Peru only by news reports of a major earthquake, a presidential election or the discovery of a decades-old mass grave of army massacre victims, OBLIVION introduces us to the everyday reality of Lima, celebrating a people who, albeit politically powerless, have resisted being consigned to oblivion.