The Jacob Burns Film Center, upstate New York’s independent art house multiplex cinema in Pleasantville, New York, will host the special series ‘Maite Alberdi: In Focus’ celebrating the work of the rising Chilean star documentary director. The series will take place November 3-5, with the filmmaker in person for the closing night event.
With a precise eye toward detail and character-driven storytelling, the young Chilean filmmaker has established herself by giving audiences a fly-on-the-wall observational view of the human condition, leading us to contemplate our relationships with one another and appreciate slice-of-life looks into worlds different from our own.
Alberdi’s latest film The Eternal Memory / La memoria infinita won the Grand Jury Award in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023, it was also recently announced she will headline the opening gala of next year’s edition of the festival alongside Christopher Nolan and Celine Song. Her prior film, The Mole Agent / El agente topo (2018), was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards in 2021 and is currently being developed as a fiction series for Netflix (starring Ted Danson).
As her films win a growing number of awards, they have also been a success at the box office—with The Eternal Memory selling 102,696 tickets in its first 10 days in Chile, the high-grossing doc feature in Chilean history.
In this retrospective, the curators have focused on the arc of Alberdi’s filmmaking career. The series kicks off with her 2011 film, The Lifeguard, that follows a lifeguard who tries make everything run according to his rules. Her first feature-length film shows the beginning development of her observational style and her knack for following interesting but ordinary people with a story to tell. Alberdi’s debut feature was the winner of the Cinema Tropical Award for Best Documentary.
Tea Time / La once (2014), shows the beginning of Alberdi’s interest with death and memory. Filmed over 5 years it is a charming and poignant look at how a seemingly mundane routine of tea and pastries has helped five elderly women who have religiously gathered for tea once a month for the past sixty years. A celebration of the small things that help us endure, the film, illuminates a beautiful paradox: As familiar worlds slip away, friendships grow ever stronger and more profound.
The Grown Ups / Los niños (2016) is set in a Chilean school for individuals with Down Syndrome and follows four middle-aged friends who yearn for a life of greater autonomy in a society that marginalizes them as disabled. A humorous and at times sad, uncomfortable look at the societal restrictions that diminish the freedoms of Chile's developmentally disabled population, the film was winner of Best Female-Directed Film at the 2016 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA)
Alberdi’s Academy nominated documentary film, The Mole Agent, is a tender and vivid reminder to not forget our elderly. When a daughter becomes concerned about her mother’s well-being in a retirement home, private investigator Romulo hires Sergio, an 83-year-old man who becomes a new resident-and a mole inside the home, who struggles to balance his assignment with becoming increasingly involved in the lives of several residents.
In her most recent film, The Eternal Memory, Alberdi continues her exploration of memory and aging with a profound and moving love story of Augusto and Paulina, whose lives were forever changed by Augusto’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. As one of Chile’s most prominent cultural commentators and television presenters, Augusto turns his work inward to try to retain his identity with the help of his beloved Paulina, an actress and former Chilean Minister of Culture who is ceaseless in her inventive manner of engaging with her husband.
Finally, the retrospective concludes with an evening conversation and reception with the Chilean filmmaker for an expansive look at her career, movies, and unique approach to documentary filmmaking. Alberdi will discuss her craft with Jacob Burns Film Center Curator-in-Chief Ryan Harrington.
