The Solitude of Memory / Songs My Brothers Taught Me
This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series (Dis)placement: Fluctuations of Home, Part II. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
In person: director Juan Pablo González, vice chair and head of production, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Q&A to take place after The Solitude of Memory.
The Solitude of Memory (2014)
Recounting the circumstances of his son Nando’s suicide, José seems both comforted by and unaware of filmmaker Juan Pablo González’s camera as he retells the events of that final day. The short unfolds in three chapters: each repetition feels like an excavation, grief both fresh and buried. Set against the vast farmlands he once worked on with his son, the film’s haunting soundscape and a capella cantos transform mourning into landscape, revealing how memory reshapes what remains and how loss echoes through time and place.
DCP. Director/Screenwriter: Juan Pablo González.
Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)
Chloé Zhao’s quietly devastating debut unfolds on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, where high school senior Johnny prepares to leave home until a sudden family death makes him reluctant to abandon his 13-year-old sister. Blending fiction and documentary, Zhao casts local community members without professional acting experience, grounding the film in authenticity. The result is a work of lyrical realism and emotional restraint that captures the beauty, hardship and resilience of reservation life.
DCP. Director/Screenwriter: Chloé Zhao. With: John Reddy, Jashaun St. John, Irene Bedard, Eléonore Hendricks.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
ATTENDING THIS PROGRAM?
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