Kitchen Conversation and Photographic Memory: A Focus on Female-Centered Narratives of Lineage and Liberation in Brazilian Film

Inspired by the significance bell hooks places on shared spaces and conversation, this essay examines how Brazilian filmmakers Viviane Ferreira and Julia Murat create spaces for intergenerational dialogue between two women, to establish a female-centered sense of agency and belonging. In Murat’s Histórias que só existem quando lembradas (Found Memories, 2011) and in Ferreira’s Um dia com Jerusa (A Day with Jerusa, 2020), the two female protagonists—Madalena and Rita, Jerusa and Silvia, respectively—serendipitously encounter one another and subsequently share aspects of their lives, building communal bonds that defy isolation and forgetfulness. Moreover, their social interactions reaffirm ancestral frameworks, oral traditions, collective memory, and the basic need for good-hearted communion. Both filmmakers present their older protagonists as understated torchbearers whose lives offer continuity through those of their younger counterparts. Their kitchen-based conversations reveal personal journeys and poignant traces of human interaction among kindred spirits. I present a braided framework that considers ageism in cinema through scholarly texts by Tordin, Medina Bañón, and Zecchi; the role of space, setting and temporal modalities supported by theorists Fernandez, Da Silva, and Cunha; and the role of photography in light of Berger and Sontag.