Tag: Brazil

Rule 34 (Regra 34)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

Who says you can’t do it all? Simone (Sol Miranda) is a young Black bisexual Brazilian woman with two very different professions. During the day she is studying to be a public defender, protecting the most vulnerable in contemporary society; by night, she is a cam girl, performing sex acts on camera for male attention. Just by existing, she is everything Jair Bolsonaro hates.

The title shows that anything is possible, even in a country where culture is under attack by bigots like in Brazil. Rule 34 is an internet rule that if you think of something, there will be a pornographic depiction of it online (feel free to close this browser and try it yourself!). People like Simone, although often neglected, genuinely exist, and they deserve their own cinematic portrait.

The good news is that we get a cracking, sparkling, discursive and compelling character study with Julia Murat’s film, examining the boundaries of consent, what it means to seek pain, and the intersection of systemic oppression and personal choice. Simone herself is on a mission to decolonise her own depiction as a black woman online, arguing that much Black BDSM depiction has connotations of slavery. This is linked to the wider difficulties that Black people face in Brazil, as well as women and minorities.

Instead of a simple polemic however, Murat treats us to a film that pushes back against boundaries, while never settling for easy answers. Discussions between the law students are emboldened and intellectual, with few stupid questions and answers, breaking down simple binaries of black/white, male/female, endlessly looking for the grey areas that the law — by its structural nature — cannot find its way around.

But if the law cannot provide closure or liberation, perhaps sex can. Simone is in a ménage à trois with two of her fellow students, male and female alike, freely showing what can happen when people are informed of what they want to do with their own bodies. Murat makes some bold choices here, displaying full-frontal nudity, asphyxiation, spanking and choking; the likes of which could easily be exploitive in the hands of another director. All the time, however, Simone is looking to push the boundaries, resulting in a spiky feminist film that is both exciting to watch and thought-provoking at the same time.

At the centre is Miranda herself, who has no difficulty holding the attention of the camera as the film intuitively edits between different moments of her life, showing the full, complex spectrum of her character. At one point, she just sits alone and eats what appears to be an onion. It should be a kind of throwaway scene, but in the hands of an actor this assured, it had me strangely compelled. The kind of performance that can change the entire tenor of a film, it’s no wonder Murat chooses to end the film on a close-up. With a face that cinematic, it would be rude not to.

Rule 34 Locarno Film Festival plays as part of the Concorso internazionale at the , running from 3-13th August.

Coffee with Cinnamon (Café com Canela)

Posted on by victorfraga

It all starts with a very simple and effective device. The viewer is drawn into the central story through the home video of a child’s birthday, Margarida’s (Valdineia Soriano) son. We could be watching a little piece of our own family history. The sheer candidness brings us close to the story and the people that populate it. This flashback of memories is interwoven with the present day and we gradually discover that the young boy died a while ago and Margarida lives alone with only her grief as a companion.

Everyday tasks are an uphill struggle for a woman who has withdrawn to the four walls of her small house. She is unable to feed or nourish herself adequately and marks out time with cigarettes and coffee. The director Rosa and Nicacio use a range of slightly surreal imagery to paint the inner life of Margarida. The walls of her house appear to be closing in on her, tangled weeds grow up the walls, stifling the air and pressing in on this mournful woman. Blood runs down the walls and we hear one of the neighbours say “She died together with the boy”.

The spice in the tale is generously sprinkled as we dip in and out of social gatherings and see the larger than life Cida (Arlete Dias) holding court with her stories, full of life and possibly a little too much to drink. Violetta (Aline Brunne) is played with great range and sensitivity, her optimism in every situation that presents itself shines out from the screen. She makes money selling her home-made coxinhas, feeds and bathes her ailing grandmother and makes a life with her husband Paulo (Aldi Anunciacao). The couple provide comfort and care to those around them. Paulo movingly tells Viola’s Grandmother “I miss talking to you, you know” as her life draws to a close. They both provide shelter to Ivan (Babu Santana) and his partners Adopho’s dog at a critical moment. This is a community that lives and dies together in the small mundane moments and the huge tragedies of life.

One of the strongest visual moments in the film (and there are many) is the split screen depicting a morning in this neighbourhood as all the residents wake up and begin their rituals and habitual activities. We see each home from inside the main room looking through an open door onto the street. The wider population of this community are never far from the story.

The journey of Margarida’s grief comes full circle as Violetta recognises her as the teacher she once knew. A vibrant woman who is now a shadow of herself. Love is an active verb in the hands of Violetta as she assists Margarida to return to the land of the living by cleaning her house with her and sharing chocolate. The demonstration of love draws Margarida gradually back into the world. Before venturing outside she opens her son’s room and finds courage to pack away each of the objects that remind her of him, tenderly touching each one.

Margarida tells Violetta what she thinks is a good film. We have seen her earlier in the story sitting silently in a movie theatre by herself. This is meta-language, and description bodes well for Coffee And Cinnamon as a whole: “A good film is one that shows the weaknesses, the limitations and the anguishes that everyone has. A good movie wants to try you and be tried, and when that happens you lose your ground, lose your shame, lose the line and transcend.

“It’s in the dark and in front of the image and dominated by the sound that you can finally confront yourself and listen to that which you never had the courage to say to yourself. And at that moment you find yourself. You find yourself and lose yourself all at once, without a mask or a disguise and even if it is just for a few minutes. When the film ends and the lights go on, everything is different, empty. That person that sat in that seat will never get up. That person who gets up is new, different.”

Overall, Coffee and Cinnamon is a relatable film brimming with honesty, humanity, and humour. It will show in in London soon, and it will also be available on VoD. So stay tuned!

Baronesa

Posted on by victorfraga

Leid Ferreira and Andreia Pereira de Sousa, two young women in the suburban shanty towns of Belo Horizonte, exude a certain joie de vivre. They dance, they date, they talk candidly about their sex lives and the pleasures of masturbation (their five fingers are sex professionals, they reveal). But they also have to confront the harsh reality of an environment where poverty, violence and lawlessness prevail.

Leid raises her small children on her own while her husband serves a jail sentence. She can be kind and maternal, but also dire and formidable. At times, mother and children have emotional conversations reminiscing about the imprisoned father, and they struggle to decide who’s the biggest “crybaby”. Other times, Leid “educates” her children with verbal threats of violence: “I’m gonna cut off your willy and spread chilly on the wound”.

Meanwhile, Andreia dreams of moving to a less dangerous neighbourhood. The violence and 22:00 curfew seem to have taken their toll on the young and beautiful woman. She now longs for peace and quiet. In one of the most poignant moments of the film, she reads a letter from a lover who has already moved to the safer district, with the promise that “their paths will cross again”

The film title has a double connotation. Baronesa is the name the much coveted and far less violent neighbourhood where Andreia longs to live. And it is also Portuguese for “baroness”, and these women are Brazilian royalties in their small suburban dwellings. The film opens with one of females exhibiting her swing and swagger at full throttle to a Brazilian funk song. Brazilians exhibit their majesty through their movements, it’s instantly clear.

This is an insider’s view into a very perilous and inhumane facet of Brazil. Paradoxically, this environment is also teeming with beauty and optimism. This is not poverty porn. This is the fly-on-the-wall type of documentary-making, with a very feminine gaze. The filmmaker Juliana Antunes and her entirely female crew spent five years in the company of these women and their close associates, often sleeping in their impoverished and dangerous dwellings. The walls lack windows, doors and even plastering. Only bricks, cement and an asbestos roof protect these women. A bill of R$3,287 (about £500) for home improvements is just too much for them to foot. Their biggest source of relaxation is a water tank converted into an ofuro tub.

The film is punctuated with some very powerful conversations, and we are left to concoct the graphic details in our imagination. At one point, we learn how to smuggle weed into a prison inside the vagina. In another key moment, we find out that one of our protagonists survived and attempted rape and likely committed manslaughter in self-defence by stabbing the man in the neck. All in all, Baronesa is a rough yet tender ride. “You have to grow hard without ever losing tenderness”, as Che Guevara once famously had.

Baronesa is the opening film at the next Open City Documentary Film Festival taking place in London from September 4th to 9th.

Ex-Shaman (Ex Pajé)

Posted on by victorfraga

History repeats itself again and again. Ex-Shaman portrays the destruction of the tribe Paiter Surui’s, similar to what happened to other tribes in Brazil when colonised by Europeans more than 500 years ago. Deforestation, the outright killing of indigenous people and modern technology are all topics of the film, but not its main focus. The most fierce attack on the Paiter Surui is the deconstruction of their culture and beliefs through evangelisation.

The priests – which epitomise the very soul of the coloniser – “educate” (ie. convert) the indigenous people into Christians, promoting a duel between good and evil. Shamanism needs to be erased in order for the tribe to receive its blessing from Jesus Christ, and also in order to vouch for a place in Heaven. “I heard from a priest that shamans are from hell” says protagonist Perpera Surui, the titular ex-shaman.

Perpera lives his life completely surrounded by elements of modern civilisation. Film director and scriptwriter Luiz Bolognesi delves into the life of the tribe and its different generations identifying the effects of time since the tribe’s first contact with the outside world in 1969. In just two years, the tribe lost 200 of its 750 members to infections, viruses and illnesses brought in by the explorers.

The interaction gradually defaced their old customs. They now cook on stoves, have electricity and use mosquito nets while sleeping. The difference between 1969 and now is staggering and revolting. The ethnocide film is still happening without interference from the Brazilian government and other institutions. The film raises a question: what can we do in to order to stop this phenomenon and restore the dignity of the indigenous people?

The director explained in the Q&A that he faced restrictions on what he could shoot, without going into details. Bolognesi acts as a visual anthropologist without making judgements, finding the right balance so that he doesn’t make the tribe even more vulnerable. In the words of the director: “The film portrays the Brazilian indigenous experience of today from the inside out. It stays far away from romantic clichés”. It’s a film about solidarity with indigenous people and those fighting the cause. But it’s also a film about despair. Ex-Shaman urges people to stand up against injustice and ethnocide.

Ex-Shaman showed in the Panorama section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in February, when this piece was originally written. It premieres in the UK in June, as part of the Sheffield Doc/Fest.