British Film Festival Los Angeles 2009

recife/sHIM: In 1969 the U.S. poet Terri Witek spent one year in Recife, Brazil. 40 years later I want to imagine then, there and her (myself a transplanted person: a Brazilian in the U.S. since 1999). I use her sentences/memories as directions on how to see DeLand, FL as a possible Recife (I, who have never been there). I photograph and videotape the US as travestied Brazil. We are symbiotic flaneurs on the unconscious streets of an infinite, unstable city. Astronauts of our own invented moon. HER: It is 1969, the year of Apollo 11. Although I am from the US, I am out walking in Recife, Brazil, where I will live for one year (I am just beginning to know the words for 'street,' 'city,' 'live.uFFFD) Someone is following me or just ahead--will we meet? I keep walking as far as 2009 and a small city in Florida, where I take pictures to see if I can see what he is seeing. When I do this the girl I was speaks over the great reef of time. In the breaking of her words over memory's sharpness, DeLand speaks through Recife, where Cyriaco is out walking.