Private Project

In Loving Memory

Luísa, Dina and Beto start yet another day at work accompanying others to their final resting place. Stories of who makes a living out of meeting death.

  • Susana Vale Lopes
    Director and Editor
  • Susana Vale Lopes
    Producer
  • Inês Nogueira
    Sound Mixer
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Eterna Saudade
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Runtime:
    14 minutes 1 second
  • Completion Date:
    September 14, 2015
  • Country of Origin:
    Portugal
  • Country of Filming:
    Portugal
  • Language:
    Portuguese
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital (1920 x 1080)
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:09
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Kino-DOC
  • Curt'Arruda 2015
    Arruda dos Vinhos, Portugal
    October 2, 2015
    Portuguese Premiere
    Best Film'Arruda 2015
  • Caminhos Film Festival
    Coimbra, Portugal
    December 2, 2015
    Offical Selection
Director Biography

Child of the 80s, Susana Vale Lopes grew up watching films on television and day-dreaming as a way of life. A psychologist, she decided to switch chairs and become a film director, after realizing what she wanted was bring to life to the images in her head. Along the way, she studied Super 8 Cinema, as well as Documentary Cinema (KINO-DOC) and Directing (RESTART) in Lisbon. [ENG]

Nascida nos anos 80, cresceu a ver cinema na televisão e a fazer do sonhar acordada uma forma de vida. Decidiu trocar a cadeira de psicóloga pela de realizadora, quando percebeu que o que queria mesmo era materializar as imagens que lhe povoavam a cabeça. Pelo caminho, fez formações em Cinema Super 8 e em Cinema Documentário pela KINO-DOC. Frequentou ainda o curso de Realização da Restart, com a qual colabora em projectos pontuais. [PT]

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

When faced with the challenge to make a short documentary on a subject of my own choice, it soon became revealing I had long been surrounded by an unique reality, I had been unaware of.

Death had become a familiar and everyday subject at the dinner table. Who died? How did they die? How old? Was it a cremation? Or a burial? As morbid as these questions may seem, they soon become an ordinary routine when you have a funeral home for a family business.

Going to my father’s office from time to time, to run some errands, there’s no room for denial — piles of coffins lie on top of each other in the warehouse, ready to be used whenever death knocks on our door. Growing up in a line of business generally perceived as eerie, many times I personally wondered, when looking at my father’s employees, what must it be like to deal with death in such an intimate way. Would I be able to perform these people’s jobs? Carry the dead, dress them, put them in their caskets and lower them into their graves? Mortality does get more mundane when you deal with it every day. However, the dead still bring an ominous feeling with them, mainly because they are a scary and painful reminder of our own end.

How do we confront our own mortality reflected across a corpse’s face? And how must it be like to do this for a job? Those were the fundamental questions that made me want to portrait the experience of the people I grew up watching. People who make a living by burying the dead.

More than a film about death, I ended up discovering this is actually a film about the living. And one I have tried my very best to be as truthful as possible to Luísa’s, Dina’s and Beto’s relationship to the dead that cross their path. It is their stories and feelings that bring this film to life. [ENG]