What Now? Remind Me

When it comes to Portuguese cinema, Joaquim Pinto is an institution. He has been infected with HIV and Hepatitis C for 20 years. This is his video diary from the year in which he undertook experimental treatment. The medication weakens his body and alters his consciousness: sharpening his perception, erasing his memory, sometimes leading straight to a spiral of anxiety and hallucinations. It forces Pinto to slow down and stop, which allows him take a look at himself, his relationship, and his environment. The camera captures nuances and fleeting moments: his neighbors’ faces, his lover’s gestures, the Azorean landscape. Even a dirty window in his car becomes a subject of conversation, to the same extent as the landscape framing it. This intimate, elegiac self-portrait is as much a record of the triumph of the spirit as it is of the weakness of the body. While there is a great deal of nostalgia on the part of a human being departing the world, there are a lot of pleasant aspects as well: seeing, thinking, remembering, filming. Spiritual life – the director seems to be saying – can be equally satisfying and intense, filled with a universe of sensations.

Ewa Szabłowska