Masterclass with Ross McElwee 


The School of Arts is once again a partner of the Doclisboa festival. Ross McElwee's masterclass comes as part of the festival's screening of his latest film, Remake. It will be a pleasure for the School of Arts and a unique opportunity for its students to host one of the most prestigious documentarians in the history of cinema.

23rd october · 18h30 · Ross McElwee
Auditório Ilídio Pinho, EA
Moderation: Carlos Natálio

"It’s been fourteen years since I premiered my last film, Photographic Memory, in Venice in 2011. What animated that film was the sense that I no longer understood my only son, Adrian, the way I once thought I did. As a child, Adrian liked being filmed, and I liked filming him. It was a process that linked us.  But as the years went by, things changed—for him and for me.  The footage he shot as a young filmmaker, footage which I have incorporated into Remake, profoundly reflects how different our life experiences were. 

When Adrian died, suddenly and unexpectedly, in the winter of 2016, I wasn’t sure I could make another film. But eventually I started watching my home movies again – movies which  sometimes captured little moments featuring my son.   

Remake  explores how the filmed image of someone changes in meaning once that life  has been cut short .  As Christian Metz wrote, “The absence becomes a presence.”

Remake charts the parallel life and times of a father-filmmaker and his filmmaking son – two very different perspectives unfolding within the same timeframe.

Remake is about the confounding and at times comic tangle presented by navigating between fiction  and nonfiction as Hollywood attempts to adapt one of  my documentaries into a fiction feature.

Remake raises questions about the ethical validity of a parent filming  his kid and then exposing those images in public – a rampant strain of videomaking in the current media landscape.

Remake offers a  personal perspective on how in the world the opioid crisis was allowed to reach its present level – a million US deaths and counting.

But Remake will first and foremost be about a father’s love for his son, and the fragile bond that the camera created between us.  It represents both my attempt to hold onto my son, and to let him go."

Ross McElwee