CINEMA-BRAZIL: Berlin Prize Marks Rebirth of National Film-making

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 24 1998 (IPS) - The success of “Central Station” – winner of the coveted “Golden Bear” award at the Berlin International Film Festival – has provided a shot in the arm for Brazilian movie-makers and their commitment to social criticism, say local critics.

The audience in Berlin gave Central Station a 10-minute standing ovation after its first showing and judges at the festival also awarded the prize for best actress to Fernanda Montenegro – star of movie.

“It is a small miracle,” said the film’s director, Walter Salles, in a televised interview from Berlin Sunday. He was also surprised, he said, by “the communion with the German public,” which he said revealed the film’s universality.

“Central Station” tells the story of Dora, a retired teacher who earns a little money writing letters for illiterate people in the train station whose name provided the film’s title. Hundreds of thousands of poor residents from the shantytowns on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro pass through the city’s central station every day.

The elderly lady promises to send the letters, but never does. But her life changes when she meets Josue, a boy whose mother died and who wants to find the father he never knew.

Dora sells the boy to drug traffickers, who are increasingly turning to children in Brazil in their attempt to evade police. She later regrets what she did and rescues him, but is forced to leave the city to flee her pursuers.

Dora and Josue travel together to northeastern Brazil, an inexhaustible source of poor migrants, in search of the lost father. The film draws a moving portrait of the millions of families broken up by poverty in Brazil.

The film focuses on “the rediscovery of affection” by the woman played by Montenegro and the country seeking its origins and identity, said Salles.

Ten-year-old Vinicius de Oliveira is all too familiar with the plight of poor children in Brazil. Before being chosen to portray Josue, he was a shoeshiner in Rio de Janeiro’s central airport.

“Central Station” returns to the aesthetics and the central issues of Brazilian cinema, as well as the paths trod by Brazil’s “cinema novo”, commented Nelson Pereira dos Santos, one of the leaders of the Brazilian cinematographic movement that gained international reknown in the 1960s.

Salles admits that his film would not have been produced without Pereira dos Santos’ “Vidas Secas” (Dry Lives), which depicts northeastern Brazil’s grinding poverty, and Hector Babenco’s more recent “Pixote” which touches on the problem of abandoned children who turn to crime.

“Central Station” was “made for Brazil,” and for that reason has had an impact abroad, according to Salles.

The success in Berlin heightened already keen expectations surrounding the film’s national debut in Brazil scheduled for April. Three years ago the screenplay by Joao Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein won in the Sundance Independent Film Festival, created and sponsored in the United States by actor Robert Redford, competing against 2,000 other screenplays.

The 310,000 dollars in prize money kicked off fund-raising for the film, whose production ended up costing nearly three million dollars.

The film’s quality and box-office possibilities had already been recognised by the big international distributors. Sony rushed to obtain the rights for showing it in the United States, and Miramax will run it in several European countries.

Brazilian cinema has won other major international prizes, but in the distant past. Anselmo Duarte’s “O pagador das promesas” won the Golden Palm at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival in 1962, and “Eles nao usam necktie” was awarded the Golden Lion at the 1981 Venice Film Festival.

Three other films took second prize in Berlin in 1964, 1969 and 1978, and two Brazilian actresses preceded Montenegro as best actress. Italy’s neo-realism and France’s “nouvelle vague” have also provided key influences in Brazil’s “cinema novo.”

Salles’ film is in a different genre than “Four Days in September”, nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign film in the United States. That movie, a thriller based on the 1969 kidnapping of the U.S. ambassador in Brazil, is seeking recognition in Hollywood, home to director Bruno Barreto.

Critics believe that winning the Golden Bear award will be a boost for Brazilian cinema in finding its true calling. The “big bucks market” of Hollywood-style box-office hits is not a viable route for Brazil, they say.