Unfamiliar Ceiling/THE BEAST was made in February 2018, after a tough 2017. It was summer and the summers in Rio are getting warmer and warmer every year. On this particular day, it had rained a little, but without getting any colder. Gray was the color of the day, but the film is red, pinkish, as if the world itself is dusking, in its late afternoon.
Could I make a film shot entirely inside a bedroom during a a single day, trying to make you see time while at the same time understanding that the end of a perspective meant the end of a world? I had seen Chantal Akerman’s La chambre (1972) and Michael Snow’s Wavelength (1967), so this is a film that exists after them, after their experiments in filmmaking. We’re facing the dead hours of description, lack of action—and we take it seriously. Things would get worse in 2018, I just didn’t know it at this time.
