BRAZIL: From Armed Rebellion to Filmmaking

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 29 2000 (IPS) - During the colonial period, Brazil’s Guaicur Indians left their women with the Portuguese army as a sign of their interest in a peace treaty. But the women were really a Trojan horse, drawing the enemies’ attention and allowing indigenous warriors to enter the Coimbra fort and decimate the garrison.

Just four of the more than 50 soldiers in the fort, on the frontier of what is now western Brazil, along the current border with Paraguay, survived.

It is not strange that the historic episode dating back to 1778 inspired filmmaker Lucia Murat’s current endeavour, “Brave Brazilian People”. A triumph by indigenous groups fighting against the invasion of their land, with female rape victims playing an active role, is right in line with Murat’s overriding concerns.

Her first film, “Small Mad Army”, was a medium-length documentary on the struggle of Nicaragua’s Sandinista rebels before they took power in 1979.

Her first feature-length film, “How Good to See You Alive”, mixed testimony from women who survived torture under Brazil’s 1964-85 military dictatorship with a dramatic intepretation of the psychological scars.

The first issues Murat tackled as a filmmaker were based on her own life experience. Arrested in March 1971, she was tortured for two and a half months, which left her with phlebitis and a permanent loss of sensation in her legs.

A rebellious teenager and reader of Simone de Beauvoir and the classics of western literature, Murat, an economic student, participated in her generation’s revolution of customs and mores and gradually took on the role of a political activist fighting the military regime.

Murat took part in the widespread student protests in Río de Janeiro in 1968, and joined the October 8 Movement, a guerrilla group whose name recalled the death of legendary Argentine-Cuban rebel leader Ché Guevara. She was active in the underground insurgent movement from late 1968 to her arrest.

Released in 1974, Murat took a degree in economy and worked as a journalist, but was unable to sign either her articles or her work contracts due to the continuing political persecution and repression.

“The cinema entered my life as a way to reflect on the blows of fate, traumatic experiences and society,” as well as a way to bring unity to a broad-based education, which included a background in art, said Murat, who added, “I almost became a ballet dancer.”

The documentary in Nicaragua was a continuation of her career in journalism, and arose from her interest in the Sandinista rebel movement. A lack of funds kept her from making it a full-length film and inserting it into a work of fiction reflecting on the political struggle in Brazil.

“How Good to See You Alive”, a review of the suffering of survivors conceived of in 1986 and concluded in 1988, forced her to face widespread scepticism and her own fear of failure.

“You’re crazy,” she was told by people who considered the subject a pill too bitter to be swallowed. “I was afraid of fainting at the premiere, I was afraid of the reaction from the audience,” she recalled.

But her efforts were rewarded by the public and critical acclaim. Besides the usual “15,000 or 20,000 people” drawn to films on the “arts circuit” in 1989, the movie also sold well in video in Brazil and elsewhere, including Europe and the United States, and was broadcast by cable TV stations. Even today, it “continues to draw attention,” she said.

Murat’s next project, “Sweet Powers”, in 1995, tackled ethics in journalism, based on the experience of former colleagues of hers mixed up in political campaigns.

The confrontation between indigenous and Portuguese colonisers, shown in “Brave Brazilian People”, sparked her interest in illustrating a history of “racial integration imposed by fire and sword,” and the clash “between two worlds.”

She was surprised to find that the Guaicurs practiced birth control and abortion and followed sexual norms which were advanced for their day and age.

The difficulties she has run into in making her films, despite her already well-recognised talent, also affect male filmmakers in Brazil,” she pointed out.

For years, Murat has also produced TV programmes and educational videos, while accumulating scripts and ideas.

Murat was one of the few female filmmakers to emerge in Brazil prior to the 1990s, when the number began to mushroom and women filmmakers accounted for around 15 percent of national production.

Women “are more radical, they risk more in the search for new paths and aesthetic contributions, due to their different way of looking at things and more relative commitment to the system and those in power,” according to Murat.