Tag: Brazilian

Beyond the Breasts (Para Além dos Seios)

Posted on by victorfraga

All humans begin as female. The Y chromosome – which is only present in males – is not activated in the first five to six weeks of embryonic development. This why all men have nipples. Beyond The Breasts is a bold documentary that investigates what it means being a woman in Brazil nowadays. Director Adriano Soares interviewed Brazilian women and some men of various races, creeds and sexualities, and the outcome is delightful, to say the least.

Brazil is teeming with contradictions, despite that clichéd view that it’s a liberal country. Women showing their breasts during Carnival is not necessarily an expression of freedom. In December 2015, a wave of sexism flooded the Brazilian Congress, as legislation making abortion illegal in all circumstances was proposed. Gynaecologist Jefferson Drezett, a vocal pro-choice campaigner and coordinator of a large and exemplary abortion clinic, stated: “Brazil abandons their women”. Beyond The Breasts also spoke to women at the Brazilian SlutWalk. The march was an intense revival of the feminists protests from the 1960s. Except that there were no more bras to be burnt; women protested topless.

The documentary chose an artistic way to expose the deep societal wounds. The director is never didactic, taking a more fragmented approach. He suddenly interviews a blind man about gender and machismo. He reveals the astonishing reaction of a street artist who had a mastectomy. He frames bare breasts while his subject tells she was a victim of rape. He captures a lady talking the pleasures in masturbation. All the characters in Beyond The Breasts are very brave in their testimonies.

Identity is a key aspect in the film. Interviewees establish a bond with viewers while dissecting their own interpretation of self. A secret is not a secret until it is revealed. It’s the disclosure of intimacy that distinguishes each individual. Somehow Beyond The Breasts reminds us of what connects us. It is not the shape of our body. We are all mammals, both males and females have glandular tissue within the breasts. What is it then that makes us different?

DMovies, in a partnership with Infinita Productions held a screening of Beyond The Breasts in East London on October 26th, 2017. It’s available for digital streaming here.

Severina

Posted on by victorfraga

Felipe Hirsch is the kind of artist that I define as a “man who’s got an itchy issue”. By that I mean an artist that likes to venture into your discomfort zone. Is there any other explanation for a successful Brazilian playwright, who suddenly decides to film a movie in a foreign land? Moreover, working with actors whose mother tongue is neither his own nor English (the natural choice for those aiming for commercial success in the cinema industry)? Severina, which is entirely spoken in Spanish, is the outcome of this uncomfortable feeling.

The movie is a melancholic story of a certain Latin America. It is not by chance that its title resonates with a Brazilian cult play in verse, “Morte e Vida Severina” (The Death and Life of a Severino), by João Cabral de Melo Neto. The book is a Christian tale about an ordinary and suffering migrant in the Northeast of Brazil. The film, on the other hand, portrays an Uruguayan bookseller and aspiring writer whose small business is raided daily by a muse who steals his books. The muse (Carla Quevedo) is also an immigrant, from Argentina.

That certain Latin America that Severina shows is dying. The film is set in a decadent centre of Montevideo, where there are no 24 hours convenience stores. Its once glorious Art Deco buildings lacks life. Still, the main character (Javier Drolas) resists. He lives where he works but almost no one comes in in order to buy books. His solitude sometimes is broken by three or four friends. They come in to drink wine, talk about politics and read fragments of books. Does that happen anywhere else nowadays?

The feature is divided in chapters, or parts, in an order that challenges the spectator to define what is real and what is surreal. The second part is called “A loving delirium”, an obvious hint to a clever audience. The sound of the oboe and the Nouvelle Vague-ish cinematography sets the surrealistic tone. The characters, later, quote the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, probably the most significant figure in Spanish language literature since Cervantes. Borges also had his elusive and surrealistic muses.

Hirsh is not telling a story set in a distant and small country. Instead, the filmmaker describes what is happening just now in the digital world. Bookish geeks and literature lovers are a threatened species. Just walk down Regent Street or Oxford Street, the popular two commercial streets, in search of a bookstore. You will find only one amidst tons of fancy clothes, colourful shoes and mobile devices outlets. The world’s largest trade fair for books, Frankfurt Book Fair, is now reduced to an exchange of copyrights.

The beauty of the movie lies precisely in its moribund quality. Watching Severina is like taking care of a sick relative you love. You watch your old daddy falling asleep and you feel in peace because he is safe at home with you.

Severina is dedicated to the late Brazilian/Argentinian filmmaker Hector Babenco, and it premiered this week at Locarno Film Festival. You can watch it for free until August 20th, courtesy of Festival Scope.

Body Electric (Corpo Elétrico)

Posted on by victorfraga

Brazilians are expressive, colourful and gregarious by nature. Homosexuals embracing Camp in this movie lend these characteristics an yet more vivacious and boisterous outlook. In other words, this is Brazil in a leopard print leotard. Body Electric takes an intimate look at a racially and sexually diverse LGBT group living in São Paulo, revealing their high spirits, joy and exuberant sexuality, and how they find comedy in every day ennui.

Elias (Kelner Macêdo) is a very good-looking 23-year-old working working as an assistant manager in small clothes factory. He’s very popular with other members of staff, and he often cross the work boundaries (something Brazilians are particularly good at!) to develop a more intimate relationship with some of his subordinates. He has recently broken up with the older and wealthier Arthur (Ronaldo Serruya), but the two still enjoy the occasional shag. Elias seem to incorporate the sexual liberation lifestyle, that many people in Britain associate with Brazil.

The movie is populated with Brazilian Camp, and this is extremely difficult to translate. Camp is performatic, theatrical, so it’s already a subversion of language per se. Adding another another layer of subversion (the translation into a foreign language) is complex and problematic – I’m a Brazilian gay man myself, so I have been faced with this problem for 20 years, since I moved to the UK. For example, gay men often speak about themselves and refer to each with feminine adjectives, and that doesn’t work in English. The highly nasalised tone is more universal, as are the wigs, the heels and the outfits. In other words, there are plenty of elements which will enable you to relate to the film.

The camerawork in the movie is mostly static and dark. In the sex sequences, it’s difficult to make out exactly what’s happening. It’s almost as if the first-time director Marcelo Caetano wanted to tone the Camp, and keep a distance, so it doesn’t come across as vulgar and tawdry. The result is a convincing, realistic portrayal of small group of young people of all genders (masculine, feminine plus everything in between) and origins (Elias is from impoverished state of Paraíba in the country’s Northeast, while a co-worker is a Black man from Guinea-Bissau, and so on).

The film narrative is mostly observational and flat, and there is no climax, which could come as a disappointment to those searching for a fast-paced, action-packed LGBT adventure.

The best moments of the movie are the picante sex conversations, which are far more creative and interesting than the sex sequences themselves. Elias describes how flirtatious and adventurous his life can be, and he goes into a lot of graphic detail, not too different from the historical sequence from Bergman’s Persona (1966) – often described as the most erotic sequence in the history of cinema (and one which translators also struggled with a lot!!!). Sex here is highly conversation, but never tedious, in talking heads style.

It’s crucial to remember, however, that this film represents a niche group, and Brazilians in general do not have such a libertarian attitude towards sex. Contrary to general belief and clichés, the average Brazilian is far more conservative and prudish.

Body Electric showed earlier this year the BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival, when this review was originally written. It’s now available on BFI Player.

The Cambridge Squatter (Era o Hotel Cambridge)

Posted on by victorfraga

The Cambridge Squatter is a very unconventional film blending fiction and documentary. It is not a docu-fiction, though, as it doesn’t attempt to reenact a fact that belongs to the past. It is a movie about what is going on right now in Brazil. And what it tells is very urgent.

The movie is a collaboration between actors and activists – and it is not by chance that those two words have the same Latin root. The film surfaces in a historical moment in Brazil which mandates pressing and critical action.

Filmmaker Eliane Caffé told DMovies: “We came to San Sebastian International Film Festival to protest. Brazil is going backwards. There was a coup and some people built a story that what happened was an impeachment”. Caffé has joined other Brazilian filmmakers in the defense of former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, such as Kleber Mendonca Filho (Aquarius, 2016), Anna Muylaert (The Second Mother, 2015) and Aly Muritiba (To My Beloved, 2015). She has just produced the video for Lula’s statement at the opening of the 71st Session of the UN General Assembly, which happened last Tuesday, September 20th.

The Hotel Cambridge is a building in the centre of São Paulo for homeless and refugees, who only recently arrived from the Congo, Palestine and Syria. Together they occupy a building that turns into a stage for their struggles and tragicomic events. Despite mutual prejudices, their leaders work together and implement unusual strategies to surmount the problems brought about by collective cohabitation. The actors are the real refugees, the leader of the Front for Housing Organisation (FLM, in the Portuguese acronym), Carmen Silva, as well as well known Brazilian actors José Dumont and Suely Franco.

In order to create a harmonious atmosphere between actors and refugees, there was a series of workshops with them for more than a year. It was important that actors did not prevail over non-actors. The coexistence of actors and activists is the richness of this feature. As Carmen Silva states “we are all refugees from the lack of public politics”.

The Cambridge Squatter is a very subversive movie in many ways, not just in its unusual blend of fiction and documentary. It denounces a state of war in a country known for never being at war. Many refugees from Africa, Palestine and Europe chose to come to Brazil precisely because of the country’s tradition of pacifism. Lula’s government opened the borders for them, but there was no inclusion strategy. After three months – usually the time spent to give them papers -, they are left on the streets. That is why they search for associations such as FLM, which supports them in their squatting activities. The problem is that refugees don’t have the right to protest in public.

The film narrative is a poem about the disorder of the system. The Palestinian man agrees: “All my life I lived in an occupied country. Now for the first time I am occupying somewhere”.

The Brazilian sense of humour, even under high-pressure situations, pervades the screen. The memories of the characters, their dreams and their scars are all part of a complex urban mosaic. The reality endows the film with an epic quality and what is evident is that there is still room for art and resistance.

The Cambridge Squatter showed at the 60th San Sebastian Film Festival in 2016, when this piece was originally written. The film is showing in London on Sunday October 1st (2017), as part of an event organised by Alborada. Just click here for your tickets.