Jack’s Ride

Susana Nobre

Portugal / 2021 / 70’

NATIONAL PREMIERE

After a hectic working life, Joaquim Veríssimo Calçada has to fulfill a paradoxical task before retiring: justify that he is in “active search for employment”, gathering stamps from employers in a bureaucratic format. In this journey from factory to the factory through a small industrial town in Portugal – his hometown – Joaquim recalls a multifaceted history with episodes of his life in New York in the 70s, where in addition to learning the key to the immigrant’s expertise – working from dawn to dusk – he was a taxi driver. The image of the taxi driver traveling through the city – a cinematographic character in himself – serves as a visual reason to blend the territory of Joaquim’s memory with the territory that passes through in the image. Susana Nobre makes the staging device visible and with it brings memory and imagination into play in a double portrait –character and landscape–, meticulously filmed on a format whose texture and nuances suggest us its inherent porosity. 

No taxi do Jack could well complete a heterogeneous trilogy in which Susana Nobre addresses the issue of the working class in Vila Franca de Xira, after Vida activa (2013) and Pruebas, exorcismos (2015), a short in which she also collaborated with Joaquim Calçada.

By Juliana Arana

AWARDS / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Documenta Madrid 2021 -Special Mention

Indielisboa 2021- Best Portuguese Feature Film Award 

Producer: João Matos | Photography: Paulo Menezes | Sound: João Gazua | Editing: Susana Nobre, João Rosas | Script: Susana Nobre

CINEMATECA DE BOGOTÁ / Theatre 3

Inauguration 23 MIDBO

Tuesday, October 26th, 6:00 pm

Available from October 26th to November 1st, on the Virtual Theatre MIDBO for Colombia.