Cinema Was an Event

Interviewing Luiz, my father, was more than an interview. It was a dive into shared memories, into a time that, although I never lived through, has somehow always lived within me. Since childhood, I grew up listening to stories about the cinemas of Piracicaba. But sitting with him, recorder on and camera rolling, was like opening a family album where every page carried the smell of upholstered seats, the sound of trailers, and the light of the projector.

Luiz Andia Filho grew up inside cinemas, quite literally. The brother of an exhibitor, he recalls that his earliest memories already had the city’s cinemas as their backdrop. Counting tickets with his father, running between empty rows during maintenance, observing the projection booth as one might observe a temple… All of this shaped in him a relationship with cinema that was not only emotional but also existential. For him, cinema was part of everyday life. And at the same time, it was a ritual.

In our conversation, he spoke to me about street cinemas as an event. “You would plan to go to the cinema. The cinema was the programme,” he said. It was not like today, when going to the cinema has become just one item in a trip to the shopping centre, alongside lunch, buying a present, or stopping by the chemist. Back then, going to the cinema was a social happening. A collective experience. Friends, cousins, couples, endless queues. No numbered seats, just a joyful rush to sit together, to find a place, to feel part of it all.

He described in vivid detail the workings of this ecosystem: the posters of upcoming releases, the censorship notices, the trailers, Canal 100. And of course, the usher with the torch. I was moved by this figure who now scarcely exists, but who once stood as the guardian of order and experience: guiding in latecomers, discreetly reprimanding the noisy, orchestrating everything with the quiet dignity of a beam of light.

Luiz also spoke about the transition to shopping centre cinemas, and how that shift represented not only a structural change but a symbolic one. Cinema ceased to be a democratic meeting point, where all social classes would cross paths in the city centre, and became filtered instead by those who could, or could not, reach the shopping centre. “Street cinema was more democratic,” he said. And that phrase still echoes today, in so many other testimonies I gathered during the documentary.

The most moving moment, for me, came when we spoke about the emotional impact of his return to Piracicaba to take part in my project. To see him touched by the idea of being there, interviewed by me, back in the city after so many years, was a silent kind of beauty. He told me he would never have imagined it, that he would one day be interviewed by his daughter for a documentary about the history of the family, the city, and cinema.

Our conversation was filled with memories: of the endless queues at the Rivoli, of the day he watched Blade Runner six times, of the clumsy attempts to sneak popcorn from home into the cinema. But above all, it was a reunion. With himself. With his childhood. With his brother. With the city. And with me.

In the end, I realised that what Piracicaba Never Forgot preserves is not only facts or historical records. It is reconnections like this. Meetings between generations, between streets, between what was and what still endures. Because, as my father said: cinema changes, but it does not end. And memory, when cared for, does not either.

— Dara Oliver