Tag: Brazilian

Madame Satã

Posted on by Paul Risker

Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s Madame Satã, celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This groundbreaking LGBTQ film is a racially and sexually charged piece of cinema. Raw and intense, it belongs in the present as much as the past. Blessed with a timeless aura, even if the cinematography gives away its age, the film will resonate with today’s audiences, for the hostility it depicts towards the expression of one’s racial and sexual identity.

The story is inspired by the real life figure João Francisco dos Santos, who passed away in 1976. Played by Lázaro Ramos, Aïnouz undoubtedly takes creative licence in the portrait he crafts. Who was this icon of Brazilian culture? The short and simple answer is that he was a groundbreaking gay performer, who shattered accepted conventions, and fulfilled his dream of being a star. In keeping with his aspirations of stardom, his costume designs drew inspiration from Hollywood, including Cecil B. DeMille’s musical comedy, Madam Satan (1930).

João Francisco dos Santos the man, had a dramatic life offstage to rival his onstage character. A convicted reoffender, he was a fierce street-fighter and a father. He gave a home to prostitute Laurita (Marcelia Cartaxo) and her baby daughter, and was friends with Tabu (Flavio Bauraqui), a vibrant hustler and prostitute.

Madame Satã has a contradictory vibe. It’s visually alive with the movements of the bodies, but the emphasis on the spoken word leaves the audience with the feeling that we’re witnessing a flamboyant hybrid of cinema and theatre. It’s an echo of João’s personality, that sees the aesthetic connect with the character. Laurita tells him in one scene, “You’re like a wild animal.” While João only aspired to be a star on the stage, his vibrant persona feels as if it were destined to appear on the screen.

The character captivates, yet there’s a restraint. Aïnouz refuses a critical exploration of dos Santos and Madame Satã. Some audiences will perceive the absence of a deeper character study, and accuse the director of being seduced by the personality of his protagonist. The point, however, is to become lost in the frenetic lifestyle of dos Santos, that allows the quieter and intimate moments, particularly with Laurita and Amador (Emiliano Queiroz) who runs the Blue Danube Club, to take us deeper into his persona.

Aïnouz effectively captures the internal conflict, which emerges gradually, rewarding the patient viewer. It slowly opens itself up to the audience, and by its conclusion, we are rewarded with an interesting insight into a captivating man, far from at peace with himself, and is seen as provocative by others.

The 20th Anniversary celebration of Madame Satã plays at the BFI Flare on March 20th 2022, in a joint screening with DMovies and African Odysseys. Just click here for more information, and secure your ticket as soon as possible!

Dead Volume (Volume Morto)

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM THE TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL

Seven-year-old Gustavo has been acting weird during his English lessons. He does not speak at all, despite his lips moving. His colleagues have therefore nicknamed him “dead volume”. His drawings include a mysterious Japanese character, and his illustrations of mum and dad suggest there’s something wrong at home. Perhaps domestic violence? Otherwise, Gustavo is intelligent and gregarious. One evening, his seemingly sweet and doting teacher (Fernanda Vasconcellos) invites his parents (Julia Rabello and Daniel Infantini) for a discussion after everyone else has left the school and the building is seemingly empty.

Virtually the entire film takes place inside the classroom, packed with desks, books, children’s drawings stuck to the blackboard. Dead Volume would work as a theatre play, with just one setting and four characters (teacher, mother, father and a fourth one who I cannot reveal without spoiling the story; the boy himself is never seen). Both parents and the teacher seem genuinely concerned about the well-being of the child, an they suspect that the other side is hiding something from them. A real teacher versus parents battles ensues. Tension escalates and the three people resort to extreme measures in order to elicit information from the other side. Viewers keep guessing who is being dishonest.

Sadly, it isn’t just the school that is primary. The film script is on a very similar level. It starts out as an interesting psychological drama (with a very convincing Vasconcellos), but it quickly slips into a pool of random narrative devices. The plot is entirely absurd and incoherent, blending so many artifices that I’m never entirely sure where it’s trying to get. There is a drawing of a sexual nature, there are flavours of horror (the drawings of the mysterious Japanese character are rather creepy), an altercation on whatsapp, talks of bullying, fainting, a very strange telephone conversation and even violence. It gets so confusing that I lost interest for the final closure halfway through the 77-minute minute. The ending, perhaps unsurprisingly, is also silly and pointless.

Dead Volume is showing in Competition at the 23rd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. I doubt it will snatch any major prizes.

The Brazilian resistance speaks up!

Posted on by victorfraga

A little town in the arid hinterlands of Northeastern Brazil has been erased from the map. Literally. Locals can no longer locate it on the various online applications. Someone (or something?) is killing the locals. There have been seven murders in one day. Small UFOs monitor the town from above. The locals are prepared to fight back for their survival. They also wish to protect their their identity and cultural heritage.

The fictional struggle depicted in Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s Bacurau has come to symbolise the very real struggle that Brazil is experiencing at present, as the country grapples with a profoundly authoritarian and obscurantist government. Bolsonaro has vowed to eradicate left wing ideologies, and he’s currently attempting to implement measures that are tantamount to censorship.

Bacurau premiered at the BFI London Film Festival to a lot of glitz and glam, on a Friday night red carpet gala event. Kleber and Juliano delivered a passionate speech, explaining that Brazilian artists and culture are being demonised. Meanwhile, Brazilian activists demonstrated on the red carpet, asking for Lula’s freedom [pictured below]. The highly popular left wing leader and former Brazilian president is currently a political prisoner.

Our editor Victor Fraga (who’s also Brazilian) sat down with Kleber and Juliano the following day. They talked about the state of Brazilian cinema, censorship, the armed struggle, movie genres, the role of the Brazilian Northeast in the resistance and much more!

Don’t forget to check our review of Bacurau here (written earlier this year, when the film premiered in Cannes).

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Victor Fraga – Bacurau won the Jury Ex-Aequo Prize in Cannes, a brand new achievement for Brazilian cinema. Karim Ainouz’s The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao also won a novel prize, the Un Certain Regards. Could you please talk about the significance of this double achievement, particularly in the light Brazil’s obscurantist and anti-culture government?

Juliano Dornelles – We are currently experiencing what’s perhaps the most important moment in the history of Brazilian cinema. That’s thanks to two things. First of all, the decentralisation of cinema, which moved away from the Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paulo axis, and started being produced in other states and regions. Secondly, there are more ways to make films thanks to technology developments. That said, we have been making films for many years, in my home state of Pernambuco, in the states of Ceara, Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais, plus of course Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

And then this awful situation happens. The new government extinguished the Ministry of Culture in its first day in office. Plus he started talking about censorship as if that was a reality, but it’s not, because the Brazilian constitution establishes that it does not exist. These prizes mean that we have a lot of visibility, and the interest in Brazilian culture grows, impacting our pride and self-esteem.

Kleber Mendonca Filho – This is indeed the best moment that Brazilian cinema has ever experienced. When two films win memorable, historical prizes in Cannes. In the same year, it has a massive presence in Rotterdam, Berlin and Locarno. The newly-elected far-right government, however, decides to go in the opposite direction, destroying this very careful construction of Brazilian culture. We have been working for 15 years in a very democratic fashion in terms of filmmaking, with new policies which see funding being shared in a fair way, geographically speaking. There are more films being made in places where they were never made before, such as Pernambuco. We did not have a film community in our state 25 years. We had a few sparse productions. And of course Ceara and Minas Gerais. Right now we have an amazing moment that’s being basically deconstructed and destroyed, and that’s very sad.

VF – The Wild Wild West helped to define American counterculture. Will the Wild Wild Northeast define Brazilian counterculture? Is there a parallel?

KMF – The Brazilian Northeast has always defined Brazilian culture. It’s the very structure of Brazilian literature, cinema and music. The history of the Northeast explains a lot of what we do in Brazil. So it’s only natural that we should now come full circle with a film where most of the crew come from the Northeast, particularly from the state of Pernambuco. It’s not really a film about the Northeast, but it has a very strong social flavour and the historical aesthetics of the region. It’s interacting in such an amazing fashion with Brazil as a country, a nation and a society. The film has become a part of the conversation. It has become a mean. It’s a moment that we witness in awe, and that’s the most beautiful thing that can happen to us.

We share with the US many notions of landscape and of occupying the landscape. And that of course includes a lot of violence. Plus we are all Americans, we come from the Americas. The American West is known for its violence, and the genocide of the indigenous populations. And that’s also happening in Brazil. We just came from New York and the reactions to the film was astounding. There’s a very clear parallel. It’s like the mirror image.

VF – Locals have to resort to extreme violence in order to resist against colonialism and other reactionary forces. Do you believe in the armed struggle as a resistance weapon?

JD – I think that any person deserves respect as a human being. There are limits to your survival, to your life. Bacurau is just a film. I’m not in favour of violence. I don’t think that’s the way forward. At the same time, however, I’m also in favour of equality between people. And when someone is being threatened or unfairly treated, the reactions are unpredictable. Our film is about solidarity and respect.

KMF – Someone as a viewer should be able to differentiate between reality and a fiction film – with actors, special effects and a reasonable budget such as Bacurau, a piece of artistic expression and entertainment, and which draws from history. History informs us what we can do and write about, how we can look at society. Violent events are part of history. The Warsaw Ghetto informed us in order to write a movie about survival. Genocide was carried out The Jewish population were isolated in an area of the Polish capital, and systematically asphyxiated and killed. At which point, a group of people from inside the Ghetto decided to do something, and there was some violent action.

VF – The regional divide in Brazil is a prominent topic in your film. Southerners see themselves are racially and culturally superior, aligned, even sycophantic towards Americans and Europeans. Can Brazil overcome this divide, or will the Northeast have to continue to fend for itself?

KMF – The divide is historical. It is what it is. It’s how society develops, and it developed in all the wrong ways. The capital was unevenly divided, all the money went to the South and the Southeast, and this has been so since the 18th century in Brazil. Now we see the consequences. We have an invisible and yet very-much-present social, racial and economic divide. That’s not something that we made up for the film, it exists. We come from the Northeast, so we know what we are talking about!

I don’t know whether this will ever change. It takes many generations to promote change. Sadly I don’t see anything happening right now.

VF – Censorship is biting in in Brazil, with films such as Wagner Moura’s Marighella prevented from being shown, plus the film agency Ancine potentially turning into a propaganda machine. How can we fight back? Is private funding the way forward? Or international co-productions?

KMF – It’s very hard to answer that question because we’re treading on new ground. I have never been through what Brazilian cinema is going through right now in terms of basically being extinct. What I can say, and I’ve been talking to a lot of young filmmakers, very talented men and women in the their twenties, and late teens, and they are very passionate about Bacurau, and it’s an amazing moment to make films. You can now shoot a film with an iPhone like yours [he points to the device being used in order to record the interview] and with a simple computer you can get it done. You just have to say something about the situation in Brazil; just f**king say it with cinema!

It’s an amazing moment. Every time cinema is banned, something good comes out of it. That’s something Ariel Schweitzer from Cahiers du Cinema wrote last month, when Bacurau was in the cover of the magazinee. He devoted 25 pages to talk about the crisis of Brazilian cinema.

JD – The big question for me is: just fucking do it! That’s very important. That’s how this moment that we’re experiencing right now began. Because technology changed, and enabled people without the traditional production structure to make cinema. That’s how we can ensure that production doesn’t stop and vouch for our future.

The problem are the people who have become professionalised in the past 20 years, they are industry workers. What are they going to do now? That’s a question without an easy answer. If it wasn’t for Bacurau, I would be far more concerned about my career. Fortunately, our film is doing very well in terms of box office, but sadly many other good films haven’t had the same luck.

VF – To finish off our conversation, can you please talk about the role of cinema and the other media as a weapon of resistance?

JD – The biggest problem that we have face right now are the fake news. No one anticipated this would happen. We must be present various points-of-view, and cinema is very good at that. But other media can also be used. Even sitting down with someone, being patient and having a conversation at home can change a lot of things. We need to show that a lot of information that people are getting isn’t real. And that requires a massive effort. Nowadays you have to look at six or seven sources before you know whether the information is true. That includes the left wing media. Fake news are on both sides of the spectrum. You must be very careful, and people are not accustomed to checking information.

The two images above are stills from Bacurau

Our dirty questions to Karim Ainouz

Posted on by victorfraga
Picture: Denny Sachtleben

The year of 2019 has been a very difficult year for Brazilians, with reckless neo-fascist president Jair Bolsonaro coming to power. Brazilian cinema, however, begs to differ. Two Brazilian movies won two brand new prizes in Cannes. Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles won the Jury Prize Ex-Aequo with the ultra-violent and highly-politicised sci-fi Bacurau, while Karim Ainouz took the Un Certain Regard award for Best Film for the very feminine melodrama The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao. That’s the highest accolade bestowed upon movies showing outside competition. Ainouz’s film has also been pre-nominated for an Oscar, and we think that it could become the first Brazilian film ever to snatch the statuette.

The 145-minute epic drama follows two sisters from Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s who are tragically separated throughout the decades thanks to a society that subjugates females in more ways than one. The story investigates the subtle and also the not-so-subtle oppression mechanisms that males use in order to perpetuate their position in society. The story forwards to present days at the end, and there’s a dirtylicious surprise in store for you.

Our editor Victor Fraga (who’s also Brazilian) travelled to Berlin, where Karim has lived for many years. They met in a local cafe and talked about The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao, the role of women in the resistance, what it means being a Brazilian immigrant in Europe, the failure of capitalism, religion, Netflix and much more!

The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao is in cinemas on Friday, October 2021. This interview was originally conducted in 2019,

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Victor Fraga – Your latest film won a major prize in Cannes, and so did Bacurau. Can you please talk about the significance of such double achievement for Brazilian cinema, particularly at a time when censorship is biting in?

Karim Ainouz – It’s very important in general because it’s the first time we had such a big number of Brazilian films in Cannes, and that we won the Un Certain Regard as well as a major competition prize. It’s important historically but also contextually because it’s a prize for both the movies and the trajectories (Juliano is a bit younger, but Kleber and I are from the same generation). And not a trajectory as directors and auteurs, but a trajectory of policies that made the films possible. It’s a coronation of the films but also of the political work that has been done throughout the years. It’s like winning the World Cup. But you don’t win the World Cup without practising.

VF – Who created these policies?

KA – The film supported was discontinued in the Collor government of the early 1990s. Embrafilme was completely shut down. There was a struggle to bring back public funding. Things began to change with the Audiovisual Law brought in by Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The real beginning of the renaissance of Brazilian cinema was in the nineties and the noughties. What came afterwards were the decentralisation politics, moving away from Rio de Janiero and Sao Paulo towards other regions of Brazil. This started in the first Lula government.

VF – During a speech in Cannes (and I was there) you dedicated The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao to Brazilian women. Can you please talk about the role of Brazilian women in the family, in the film and also in the resistence?

KA – My film is a shout against patriarchy. It’s also a continuation of my first short film Seams (1993), a portrait of a my grandmother. My grandmother was a single mother, my mother was also a single mother. I was talking to a friend yesterday about the French Revolution, and the role of women. The moment the women invaded the Paris City Hall was a pivotal one because women could not be shot. There’s no one with more leverage and legitimacy than women to fight against the establishment.

When the film began in 2015, it was the year my mother passed away. She was a scientist, and she raised me on her own. So it was a very personal project. Of course any project has a political agenda, nobody’s a fool. But it was a very personal journey to me. When my mother died I realised how difficult it was being a single mother, supporting a family. This film was about shedding light on women of that generation. The political relevance of the film became much bigger as the years went by. If you think of the crisis we’re going through today, it’s all because of patriarchy. Women have a pivotal role in challenging this.

VF – Your film is set in the 1950s. Do you think that your protagonists Guida and Euridice would be just as oppressed and ostracised had the story taken place at present?

KA – No, I don’t think so. I think it would have been very different. Oppression is still there, but it’s played out in a different way. It depends on class, geography, a lot of things. I don’t think that a middle-class woman nowadays, if she had a boyfriend, left him and came back pregnant, would experience the same cruel behaviour from her father. But I’m not saying women are under less discrimination and pressure than back then. It’s just that the mechanisms are different.

When you look at Brazil, it’s the fourth of or fifth country in the world in terms of violence against women. I think that the toxicity of patriarchy is the same, or perhaps even worse. Men are desperate to cling to power, and this makes things worse. The tactics, the context and class have changed. But also there’s much more resistance, and this resistance is visible.

VF – Do you fear for the future of Brazilian women, given the current situation in the country?

KA – I fear for the future of the world. We are in a place I never thought we would be. I of course fear for the future of my country. We’re undergoing a tragic moment, to put it lightly. It’s pathetic. I fear for the new generation. I think we should fear but we should also have hope for the future. I prefer to think of Brazil as the country that has elected the greatest number of black women in congress and senate. I prefer to think of the Brazil as the country as Linn da Quebrada and Marielle. There’s a lot of fucking resistance! Those are the people who we need to celebrate![Linn da is pictured below, in Kiko Goifman’s documentary Bixa Travesty]

In other words, I fear for the future, but I’m also deeply in love with human beings. We are repeating the same mistakes as 50 years ago, but at the same time I prefer to look at people who are somehow making a difference. It might sound naive, but I do prefer to celebrate the people who have been raised and made conscious of who they are in the past 15 years. We must give credit to the resistance taking place.

VF – There are two types of female oppression. The father Antonio is the clear-cut type of oppressor, but there’s also Euridice’s husband Antenor, the subtle oppressor, who seems more kind and yet frowns upon his wife having a successful career. How to we extricate ourselves from such pervasive patriarchy?

KA – It’s very difficult no answer. This patriarchy is very deeply ingrained. The first thing is education, as obvious it may sound. But education in the sense of critical thinking. But also when you look at Antonio and Antenor, I don’t think that they are not absolute villains, they are just a byproduct of the time

VA – What about Bolsonaro, is he not a villain. Is he too just a byproduct of the time?

KA – No, Bolsonaro is a real villain! It’s more complicated than that. It’s a question of human ethics.

VA – Do you think that religion plays a role in the oppression of women? In Brazil we have a female minister called Damares, who also happens to be an evangelical priest. She argues that women should stay at home and not play a role in politics at all.

KA – That’s a very good question. There’s an issue with my film. I think that I could have paid closer attention to the role of religion in the life of the family. Religion plays an enormous role in control, in perpetuating power structures. I do have a hard time dealing with religion because I don’t believe in it. So in every film I make I feel that there could be more religion as an antagonist of what’s happening. I also think we shouldn’t just point fingers at the evangelicals, and at the bad qualities of religion. In stead we should be asking ourselves: “why are people turning to religion?”.

The population of Brazil feels completely abandoned, and it’s no coincidence that the evangelical Episcopalians are so successful right now. These are religions that are very much linked to success and achievement. The perfect religion to a moment when a lot of people felt betrayed. They feel liked they were promised something, I was reading an article, like they were going through a revolving door and then get suddenly thrown out. They are angry. Religion helps them to come to terms with that. In late capitalism people feel very alienated.

When people talk about global warming, it’s about industrialisation and capitalism. In 1983 there was a talk about the whole planet suddenly freezing. What I’m saying is we need to ask ourselves: “does the world need to be so industrialised? What’s the root of the problem?” Capitalism is always at the root of the problem.

VF – Is it correct to say that capitalism failed Brazil?

KA – It is correct to say that capitalism failed humanity. What’s happening in Brazil is really about that.

VF – Yet communism seems to be the real enemy. Brazilians who voted for Bolsonaro are not scared of capitalism, it’s the old ghosts of communism that they’re afraid of.

KA – I think we need to come up with something new. What’s happening in Brazil is a race for natural resources, that’s what at stake, it’s as simple as that. What’s really despairing (and also inspiring, at the same time) is that we don’t have a new model. What’s the new economic model? That’s very exciting for me, because I came from a place of privilege. But for people in despair this is not exciting.

VF – Immigration is a topic very close to you heart. More specifically, the desire to flee from Brazil to Europe. It’s a central pillar in Futuro Beach (2015, pictured below), and again in The Invisible Life. Can you please talk about your experience as an immigrant, and how that helped to shape your career?

KA – I feel like I was born in a strange place. I was born in Northeastern Brazil from a mother called Iracema and an Algerian father. Imagine the confusion. You feel like your [Arabic] name doesn’t belong to that place. This is something very close to my private life. I was closing up my mother’s house the other day and I found this writing exercise for school from when I was eight. I was already talking about travelling to Argentina, Netherlands, etc.

VF – Wanderlust?

KA – Totally. That has marked anything I do in life. This dream of fleeing, going somewhere I don’t know. It was also the dream of meeting my father, who was never there. He was living in France, then Algeria. This was very strong a feeling in my upbringing.

VF – Did you eventually fulfil the dream of meeting your father?

KA – I did! But I also realised that the places were I feel most at home are the places where I feel most foreign. The sense of home to me is connected to being uprooted and then rooted again. That’s something that was not easy for me to come to terms with, but it was also very liberating when finally happened. I get more pleasure from being in Greece than Italy because I have no fucking clue what they’re saying! I don’t understand a word, the alphabet. So there’s a sense of freedom in not belonging, and that’s also in my films.

VF – It’s a pleasure being an alien?

KA – Yes, that’s a huge pleasure! It’s a pleasure not belonging anywhere and at the same time belonging to a lot of places. Anywhere can become home to me.

VF – A few years ago, out then Prime Minister Theresa May shunned the idea that people could have multiple nationalities, and that multiculturalism could work. She infamously said “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere“. Are you a citizen of nowhere?

KA – Absolutely. I love being a citizen of nowhere!!! I think she’s probably talking about legal rights, while I’m talking about sensations. Not being able to understand what’s happening around me is really inspiring! Not being able to decipher allows you to experience things in a different way.

In Invisible Life, what was very interesting to me was to look at Brazil as a place of immigration [the father Antonio is a Portuguese immigrant in Brazil], and the consequences for the first generation [Antonio’s daughters Euridice and Guida]. These girls needed to succeed, to be the perfect role model. This is much clearer in the book [the eponymous Marta Batalha romance upon which the film is based]. That’s a very important subject to me, but also to the world in general.

Brazil is one of those cultures where people are really happy with what they are. There’s a real love for the land, despite all the shit that’s been going on for 500 years. I wish I could see more stories about Brazil as a place that people go to! Once you get there, the identity from where you came from is erased and you instantly become Brazilian.

On the other hand, the desire to leave has to do with queerness. The queer diaspora. The feeling of going away is something that we as queer people have faced from day one. The smaller the place, the more control they exert over your body and your life. That’s also played a big role in the way I work and in the way I have travelled around the world.

VF – Let’s go back to the topic of resistance. Brazilian television is not doing a sterling job for historically marginalised groups. Black people are constantly criminalised, while LGBT and female representation isn’t very accurate. Will Brazilians have to turn to cinema instead as tool of resistence?

KA – I don’t know! On one hand, I feel like a dinosaur. Does cinema make sense? Does it make sense to make films? Who watches them? But then, that’s all I know how to do. I have to believe it makes a difference, otherwise, how will I wake up in the morning?

It is horrendous how in television – no matter what channel – we Brazilians present ourselves as a white nation. And we are not! That also has to do with who’s owning and running the media in Brazil. And it’s part of an elite who like to think of themselves as white and European. This has nothing to do with what the actual country is.

I don’t know where the frontline is. My frontline is making films. But maybe the frontline is neither in cinema nor television. Maybe the frontline is on the Internet. Maybe it’s on long narratives called series, or something else. When you look at Porta dos Fundos [a Brazilian comedy YouTube channel], it’s brilliant. Maybe that’s the frontline.

VF – Is it on Netflix? Did Petra Costa get it right launching her documentary The Edge of Democracy (2019) there?

KA – No, I don’t think it’s Netflix at all.

VF – But Netflix gave Petra’s film available in more than 200 countries, and people around the world the opportunity to understand the tragedy that’s befallen Brazil.

KA – I didn’t see the film. I think Netflix and Amazon are great, but I also think that we need to be more creative. I’m not entirely sure where the future is, but I’m not convinced it’s not in a big corporation. I hope there are other ways we can communicate with people. We need diversity. We need diverse platforms with diverse outreach that support diverse voices.

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Click here for our previous interview with Karim, back in 2016!

All images in this interview are from ‘The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao’, unless stated otherwise.

Your Turn (Espero tua (re)volta)

Posted on by victorfraga

It all starts in 2013. Sao Paulo students take to the streets in order to demand that a R$0.20 (circa £0.04) price hike in the bus fare gets slashed. These young people are part of broader movement called MPL (Free Pass Movement, in free translation), which demands that transport is free for all. The protests quickly grow and take place in virtually every corner of Brazil. Suddenly, millions of Brazilians are out on the streets. The movement culminates in the peaceful invasion of the Brazilian Congress. In response to the national commotion, president Dilma announces that 50% of oil revenues would be spent in education.

The outcome of such political activity, however, was double-edged. On one hand, young people felt more energised, ready to demand better education and equal opportunities. On the other hand, many ugly beasts are let out of the cage. Reactionary movements seized the opportunity in 2013 and joined the protests with a very different agenda. They were not concerned about the R$0.20, education and equality. Instead, they wanted to remove president Dilma and the Workers’ Party from power, and to implement an ultra neo-liberal agenda. We learn that shortly after the 2016 coup d’état that removed Dilma from office in 2016, education and healthcare spend was frozen for 20 years.

Your turn focuses on the continuous activity of the student movement since, in the country’s largest state of Sao Paulo. It follows the footsteps of three students activists and union leaders Lukas Koka Penteado, Nayara Souza and Mariana Jesus as their struggle against the state’s authoritarian and oppressive establishment. They occupy one, two and then suddenly thousands of schools and universities in protest against the education expenditure freeze. A corruption scandal involving school lunches is also at the top of their agenda. Their encounter police violence, get beaten up and humiliated along the way. Stun bombs are constantly thrown at at the studente. Each bomb represents 500 school lunches. Throughout the film, we see more than 16,000 school lunches “being exploded”.

The duality of grassroots activism is exposed in Your Turn. The government and the media attempt to present these young revolutionaries as violent vandals and troublemakers. The images beg to differ. The violence is invariably carried out by the police. And the activists do not destroy any of the buildings occupied. They are claiming what belongs to them, and demanding “a better future”. Race, gender and sexuality is also a central topic. These people believe that their body is central to their struggle. “Body freedom is a revolutionary act”, we are told. Marginalised Brazilians – women, Blacks and LGBT – are at the frontline of the battle.

The incarceration of young Brazilian – particularly the Black and poor – represents a major challenge. The number of prisons in Sao Paulo quadrupled between 2008 and 2015. Similarly to the US. This did not have a positive impact on crime rates, which continue to soar. Brazil now has the third highest prison population in the world, while also being in the top 10 most violent countries. Something clearly isn’t right. Lukas, Nayara and Mariana believe that the solution is building more schools, instead of more prisons.

The film montage is exquisite. Talking heads interviews are blended with street and television footage, and part of the film is narrated almost like a funk song, with electronic beats and strings. Your Turn is energetic and young at heart.

The final message, however, is bleak. We are reminded that extreme right wing Jair Bolsonaro became Brazilian president this year, and that he vowed “end all types of activism” in his first day in office. A sequence in the middle of the movie epitomises its tragic closure. A woman is bleeding the floor after being clubbed down by policemen. It looks like she’s about to die, presumably due to a concussion. Those around her try to console: “you survived the military dictatorship”. She then laments: “I can’t believe it’s happening again”. Images of the military are then shown.

There is also a message of defiance. The movie title itself is a call-to-action. Now it your turn to take to the streets and fight against fascism!

Your Turn premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2019, where it won two prizes: the Amnesty International Film Award and the Independent Peace Film Prize. Stay tuned for UK dates. It shows at the Sheffield Doc Fest in June.

Pixote

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Late Héctor Babenco transposed Brazil onto the silver screen in a very honest and raw style. He was born and raised in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and died two years ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil. His mother was a Polish-Jewish immigrant and his father was an Argentinian gaucho of Ukrainian origin. Babenco settled in Sao Paulo in 1969 and worked on several documentaries before he filmed Pixote in 1981.

Babenco chose Fernando Ramos da Silva – who lived with his mother and nine brothers in the slums of Sao Paulo – to play the titular Pixote. The director believed that casting a non-professional for the main role would make the violence more realistic, lending more credence to the film. This was a common practice for the Cinema Novo movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The movie Favela Five Times (Carlos Diegues/Joaquim Pedro de Andrade/Leon Hirszman/Miguel Borges/Marcos Farias, 1962) was a very important reference to Babenco. The movie, which was divided into five episodes, exposed the hardship of shanty towns dwellers in Rio de Janeiro.

François Truffaut’s famously cast a non-professional to play a marginalised child in his first feature The 400 Blows (1959). A 14-year-ols Jean-Pierre Léaud answered a newspaper casting call. The difference between Truffaut and Babenco is that Pixote is not an autobiographical film. This is instead a Latin American auteur investigating a Brazilian social problem. Pixote is a homeless boy who commits crime and has to live under custody in the now-defunct young offenders’ institution Febem.

Pixote isn’t just a denunciation of poverty. It goes much deeper, revealing the sheer cruelty of a system that legitimates and perpetuates violence. Drug lords hired minors to sell drugs or rob banks because they would not face criminal action. If caught, they would spend some time in a police or a Febem reformatory, being freed at the age of 18 without a criminal record.

Pixote opens with intense music and no imagery. The symbolism of darkness continues throughout the film. Nothing is lighthearted: boy rapes boy, prison wards are corrupt, Pixote smokes, sniffs glue and kills. The colours of life in the margin are not bright. Even the brothels are somber. There are no red neon lights. The prostitutes Silvia and Debora are unstylish and downtrodden. They are cheap.

Despite the sheer horrors of Pixote, Babenco also inserts sensibility and humanism into his movie. Silvia is tormented by successive abortions and lingering loneliness. Pixote insists that she becomes a maternal figure, but her selfish survival instincts prevail. In the film’s strongest sequence, Silvia and Pixote bond very much à la Michelangelo’s Pieta (pictured above). This image has become an epitome of Brazilian cinema.

The sordid environment in Pixote transcended fiction. Sadly, years after the film was made, Fernando Ramos da Silva returned to poverty and criminality. He was killed by the police at the age of 19. Tragic reality emulates tragic fiction.

Pixote shows as part of the 62nd BFI London Film Festival taking place between October 10th and 21st.

DMovies joins the fight for Brazilian democracy, as we get working at the coalface!

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This one has been in the oven for a year, and it’s now beginning to happen! DMovies is supporting its first filmmaking project, a documentary about the reactionary and anti-democratic developments in Brazil in the past few years, and the enthusiastic support of TV Globo (the largest media conglomerate in the continent). The movie will be called The Coup d’État Factory.

You too can support the project by clicking here.

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The world needs to find out about TV Globo’s dirty game!

In 1993 the British Channel 4 produced the emblematic documentary Brazil Beyond Citizen Kane, which denounced the anti-democratic and manipulative tactics of TV Globo, the largest television and media conglomerate of Brazil.

Now two Brazilian journalists based in London, Victor Fraga and Valnei Nunes, decided to give continuity to the 1993 movie, establishing a dialogue between the past and the present. The new film, which will be called The Coup d’État Factory will reveal that TV Globo has hardly changed throughout the decades, retaining its highly biased and unethical journalistic practices, aligned with the interests of large capitalists.

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The new documentary

The new documentary The Coup d’État Factory will have a duration of approximately 75 minutes, and it will establish a dialogue between the past and the present. It will include footage from its predecessor Brazil Beyond Citizen Kane, as well as images collected in the past couple of years (mostly with the support with alternative of Brazil). Brand new and exclusive interviews will represent the most important pillar of the movie.

Interviews already confirmed or in the process of being requested include: elected president Dilma Rousseff, former president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, senator Roberto Requião, congressman Jean Wyllys, congresswoman Benedita da Silva, senator Gleisi Hoffman, music composer Chico Buarque, British-Australian Human Rights Lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, artist and activist Brian Eno, British MP George Galloway, writer Naomi Klein, lawyers Cristiano e Valeska Martins, producer of Brazil Beyond Citizen Kane and media professor John Ellis, city councillor Leonel Brizola Neto, homeless activist Carmen Silva Ferreira, political commentator Breno Altman, journalist and former Globo presenter Paulo Henrique Amorim, and many other politicians, activists and intellectual from Brazil and beyond, as well as members of the public (Globo viewers).

The movie will feature an original soundtrack including artists engaged in the fight against the deeply reactionary events taking place in Brazil. They include Naked Universe and Muntchako (already featured in the crowfunding teaser above). We are currently having a conversation with artists such as Linn da Quebrada, Dagruta, L_cio & Boratto and Chico Buarque, amongst others.

The film will be partially funded through a crowdfunding effort. Just click here in order to support our campaign. The platform is in Portuguese, but all the material has been translated into English, just scroll down in the “sobre” (“about”) section and please make a donation!

Below is the short film teaser (the longer version can be found on the crowdfunding link above):

* The images in this article are from the 1993 documentary Brazil Beyond Citizen Kane, except for the one at the top which is owned by Stuckert (it is an aerial shot of Lula being protected by crowds as he hands himself in following an illegal arrest warrant).

Liquid Truth (Aos Teus Olhos)

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This Brazilian film is high on morality, but low on originality. The boundaries of a teacher-student relationship is a topic that has been filmed throughout Hollywood in high blown spectacles such as Doubt (John Patrick Shanley 2008) and lowbrow indie drama such as The Chorus (Christophe Barratier 2004), to name just a few. What Lucas Paraizo’s script lacks in originality is made up for in Azul Serra’s cinematography.

Visually, this is a very arresting film. Serra highlights the greys and blues a swimming pool inhabits (incidentally, his name means “blue mountain range” in Portuguese), bringing lighter palettes during the film’s success (brimming with children and happiness), darkening the décor and light during Rubens darker moments of self-reflection. Accused of kissing an eight-year-old by an irate parent, Rubens is aware this accusation may not only ruin his career, but also his life.

Oliveira is a commanding lead, devastatingly handsome, effortlessly charming and convincing of bringing the right level of nuance to the hard-hitting moments. Supporting actors Luisa Arraes, Gustavo Falcão and Luiz Felipe Mello are all solid as supporting characters, leading the audiences to suspect, doubt, question Rubens in a film that offers few answers.

Surprisingly, for a film that treats its audience with such intelligence, it’s tame in its display. The cordiality of male teacher and student is one that resonates worldwide, whether connecting to those in Catholic Ireland (the sexual abuse cases) or those watching the legions of actresses making a stand at the Oscars in support of #MeToo. Liquid Truth is simply too tame at points. For a film with such a hard-hitting theme, it simply hints at dramas and the consequences of actions. It sometimes a little too fey and passé for a film that has a Scottish release in 2018.

But film is primarily a visual medium and Carolina Jabor is an accomplished stylist. Silhoeuttes of Rubens by the pool evokes the magnetism of sixties icons Brando and McQueen, the leit motifs of women showering display the harsher effects of a tidal rain and there is a nice contrast of light and shade coming from the dirtier décor and luminous pools (for reference, its visually reminiscent of the excellent eighties thriller Manhunter). It’s an engrossing piece of visual cinema, hampered by a script that, at times, is undeserving of such cinematic measures.

Liquid Truth is showing at the Glasgow International Film Festival.

Hard Paint (Tinta Bruta)

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The largest country of Latin America has a vibrant queer culture and big cities like Porto Alegre (the Southernmost Brazilian state capital, where Hard Paint takes place) are open and diverse enough for gay men to live out their lives without concealing their sexuality. But the country is also riddled with violence, and loneliness is no stranger to young homosexuals.

Pedro (Shico Menegat) is young and good-looking. But he’s also extremely laconic and introverted, and his looks are careless: his attire is ordinary, his hair is long and dishevelled. He lives with his sister Luiza. He makes a living of performing on Cam4, a pornographic live sex application. He rubs glow paint over his body and dances under UV-A light (black light) for mostly anonymous and lascivious men. His username is the very descriptive NeonBoy. Pedro was kicked out of university and is awaiting trial after a violent episode of homophobic bullying in which he harmed the bully.

Then one day Luiza departs leaving Pedro on his own. He develops a romantic liaison with Leo, another “neon” performer, but it seems that Leo too could be about to leave the city. When you are young and lonely, the departure of a dear person feels a lot like a bereavement. Could Pedro once again be left on his own, in what’s probably the most difficult moment of his life (he could receive a jail term in his impeding trail)?

At first, you will find it difficult to connect with the insular and shy Pedro, who’s only able to “open up” in front of the cameras. Porto Alegre doesn’t come across as an inviting place, either. The concrete jungle surrounding the lower middle-class flat inhabited by Pedro is grey and soulless. The streets are impersonal. Neighbours on the windows are hardly visible, except for their shadows and profiles. The chat rooms are also deeply dehumanised. Pedro is treated as merchandise, and his clients are unwilling to meet him even for a friendly conversation. He has no one to turn to, it seems.

This is a film is full of small symbolic elements. Water is a central theme. There’s a leaking faucet, heavy rain and a powerful shower, and all of them seem to bring about change in his life. And there are doors with heavy locks and metal bar gates, emphasising the violence and the loneliness of the young gay man in Porto Alegre. Ironically, it’s one of these metal bar gates that saves Pedro during a very scary episode in the final third of the movie

The marketing collateral of Hard Paint may suggest this is a post-porn experiment, but it’s not. This is a film with emotional depth. A lot of emotional depth, even. By the end of the 118 minutes, Pedro’s candour and quiet charm will have won you over. Plus there are some credible and surprising twists. And Anohni’s song Drone Bomb Me in a very beautiful moment of liberation and redemption.

Hard Paint showed at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in 2018, when this piece was originally written. It won the Teddy Award (LGBT) Prize. In cinemas across the UK on Friday, August 2nd (2019).

Sol Alegria

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The title of this ultra-subversive, thought-provoking and downright filthy Brazilian movie translates roughly as “sun happiness”. Yet there’s nothing sunny and cheerful about the chaos portrayed in it. Tavinho Teixeira’s Sol Alegria follows an extremely unusual rebellious phalanx – composed mostly of queers, armed nuns and other colourful creatures – as they move across the countryside aiming to recruit more members in order to resist some sort of reactionary junta ruling the country. Their anuses are their biggest weapon: “more powerful than 70,000 rifles, 100,000 cannons and any chemical weapon you will ever see”.

The film narrative isn’t entirely straightforward. A plethora of flamboyant characters with very distinct personalities compose a kaleidoscope of sociopolitical plots strands and narrative arcs. All in all, this is a libertine allegory of what Brazil has become since the coup d’état two years ago: a reactionary and authoritarian regime controlled by prudes and religious fundamentalists (mind: the Catholics here are libertarians; the dangerous bigots are the antediluvian evangelicals). A few days ago, a bill was introduced proposing to criminalise genitals in arts in Brazil (in Portuguese). The film is a purposely freakish and aberrant call to action. It time to fight the grotesque dictatorship that seized Brazil with the most ludicrous militants. Fight fire with fire!

The location of the armed conflict is never named in Sol Alegria. It feels a lot like the Eldorado in Glauber Rocha’s 1967 Land in Anguish (an allegory of the dictatorship ruling Brazil then). Sol Alegria openly refers to Eldorado. Plus the speeches delivered by the Father (played the director Tavinho Teixeira himself) have clear traces of Porfírio Diaz (Paulo Autran), the main character in Glauber Rocha’s film. Even their bulgy loony eyes are similar (see above).

This is not the only reference for dirty cinephiles and television fans. The film also alludes to Oshima’s Realm of the Senses (1976) and the series Lost in Space. The twisted nuns feel a lot like a tribute to Almodóvar Dark Habits (1983). Plus Link Wray’s song The Swag, which played famously in John Water‘s Pink Flamingos (1972), also features in the movie.

The aesthetics of the movie are also very plural and heterodox. They are ethereal, Camp, decadent and chic, all at once. Images range from a plush and bright Pierre et Gilles-ish sequence of gay sex in the woods (with a very beautiful and graphic fellatio) to stationary Hollywood cars and airplanes with back projections. There are also jump cuts, faux raccords and various filters and techniques, making the cosmetically complex and multilayered. Oh, and there’s a performance by iconic 77-year-old queer Brazilian singer Ney Matogrosso, including a passionate kiss with the Father.

Paraphrasing a character in the film itself, this is a “divinely amoral” movie. It is made to provoke and instil some sense of rebellion into sheepish Brazilians. It’s a crude and exceptional film. Made for crude and exceptional times.

Sol Alegria is available to view online until February as part of the Rotterdam International Film Festival, offered by Festival Scope. Just click here for more information about the event and here in order to view the film.

Bingo: The King of the Mornings (Bingo: O Rei das Manhãs)

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We regret to inform you that Pennywise has been uncrowned and also stripped of his title as the dirtiest clown ever. The accolade has been rightly claimed by Brazilian Bingo. The difference is that instead of scaring and killing children, his South American counterpart subverts childhood in a very unusual way. He infuses it with swagger, malice, sensuality and a dash of naughty humour. And he’s also a little Camp. Most Americans and Europeans would cringe at the teachings of this very unusual prankster.

The character is in based on the real story of Arlindo Barreto, the first Bozo (The American clown character, which never featured on British media) on Brazilian television, back in the 1980s – his name was changed to Bingo on the movie in order to avoid legal trademark issues, and also for the sake of more artistic freedom. Bingo: The King of the Mornings is a partly fictionalised account of how Barreto had to twist the American clown in order to fit in with Brazilian culture.

Instead of the well-behaved American presenter, his Brazilian franchise actively encouraged children to be naughty and used bizarre antics, which would be mostly frowned upon nowadays. He ordered children at home to engage in pillow fights, invited the Brazilian Bum Queen Gretchen to shake her booty, and occasionally challenged, mocked and even humiliated the small members of the audience of the TV show, which was transmitted live every morning for about four hours. At first, the producers panicked at the unorthodox practices, but the soaring rates mandated that they allowed Augusto to carry on.

This is a masterpiece of Brazilian cinema, blending nostalgia, sensuality and failed fatherhood. Vladimir Brichta delivers an energetic and profoundly moving performance as Augusto/ Bingo, a young performer keen to make it big in order to please his mother (an artist of yore who feel into oblivion, played by an equally touching Ana Lucia Torre), while also neglecting his own child. His son Gabriel regrets that his father has time for every child in the world, except for him. To make things worse, he’s not allowed to disclose his father’s job to his friends, as Bingo’s real identity is legally protected. The child actor Caua Martins also does an outstanding job, not particularly easy for a multilayered and complex role.

Bingo: The King of the Mornings delves with a topic familiar to Brazilians and the world: the hyper-sensualisation of pop culture in the largest country of Latin America. Brazilians exude passion, suggestiveness and even voluptiousness, and a children’s TV show is also game. The real-life children’s TV presenter Xuxa Meneghel had to adapt her sexy wardrobe once recruited for a American show, in a classic example of how Brazilian sensuality is often a no-go abroad.. The film doesn’t discuss this, except that it quickly alludes to Xuxa, replacing her real name with “Lulu”.

This sensualisation, however, is not synonymous with sexual freedom. Brazilians are not as sexually liberated as the world perceives. In fact, Brazil is a very conservative society, in many aspects. Augusto himself encounters such paradox when he tries to bed his beautiful producer Lucia (Leandra Leal). She’s an evangelical who refuses to have sex before marriage.

The second half of the film sees an abrupt change in Augusto’s life, as his relationship with his son collapses and another tragedy suddenly strikes. He quickly hits the bottle and also begins to snort copious amounts of cocaine, in preparation for his show. This is no laughing matter. Brichta’s performance is impeccable. He’s sexyand , he’s able to make audiences laugh and also cry. The trappings of fame and a sudden fall from grace will have a major impact on his life. Will Augusto have to abandon television? Will his character live on? You might be surprised with the answer. Go watch Daniel Rezende’s first film. It’s simply unmissable!

Bingo: The King of Mornings is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, December 15th. Stay tuned for our exclusive interview with the filmmaker in the next few days.

This film is in our top 10 movies of 2017 – click here for the full list.