Forty-five-year-old Jorge has worked his entire adult life at Montevideo’s Cinemateca Uruguaya. His routine has remained the same for years: projecting films, greeting the same six or seven audience members in line for every show, chatting with colleagues over possible series and deciding what to repair next. But his days devoted to cinema might be coming to a sudden and life-changing end with the threatened closure of the economically unviable institution. A deadpan comedy of cinema and obsolescence, A Useful Life is preceded by As Follows (Bregman, el siguiente, Uruguay 2004, 13 min), a wry, charming story of a rich Latin American subculture and a boy set on the uncertain, ambiguous cusp of manhood.


Uruguay 2010. La vida útil, 67 min.

Learn more about Federico Veiroj and his films at the Master Class From Short to Feature, to be held Saturday, November 19, 11:00 am–2:00 pm.

A Useful Life is co-presented by the Global Film Initiative and is part of the Global Lens 2011 film series.



Presented as part of the San Francisco Film Society's Artist in Residence program and made possible by a grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.