/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILM-BRAZIL: Diversity Consolidates Industry Upswing

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 31 2000 (IPS) - The variety of good films targeting audiences that are themselves diverse stands out as a trait that could fortify the latest upturn of the Brazilian movie industry.

This seemed the case at the marathon Rio Film Festival 2000, which included a division for new, nationally produced works among the 410 films from around the world shown during the two-week event in Rio de Janeiro last month.

A similar series, now underway in Sao Paulo, is providing film buffs there with a broad sampling of international cinema, and includes the Brazilian movies, which are to make their commercial debut in the coming months.

The audiences in Rio chose ‘Tainá, uma aventura na Amazonia’ as the best film of the festival, earning it a 105,000-dollar prize. Intended for young audiences, ‘Tainá’ is the story of an indigenous girl who fights the illegal trafficking of animals taken from the Amazon forests.

‘O Sonho da Rose, dez anos depois’ (Rose’s Dream, Ten Years After), by the journalist-turned-filmmaker Teté Moraes, is a collection of images and interviews that portrays the drama of Brazil’s landless peasants. The film won the prize for best documentary, and 52,500 dollars.

The film shows how the peasants are living today, who 10 years ago were the stars of Moraes’ first feature-length film ‘Terra para Rose’ (Land for Rose), a documentary on the fight for agrarian reform in Brazil.

Rose, though physically absent from the second film, is still the star. In the first, she was the leader of the landless who lived in a camp in southern Brazil, organising marches on the rural roads and in cities to demand the distribution of fallow lands.

Rose became a symbol of the peasant dream to work one’s own plot of land. She was killed during a protest, run over by a vehicle in a supposed accident, though many believe it was intentional.

The prize will help to promote the commercial showing of the film, said director Moraes. She was caught off guard by the popularity of her film, one that attracted some of the largest audiences at the Rio festival.

“O sonho da Rose,” a militant work that does not hide its support for the Movimento dos Sem Terra (landless movement), will surely have a parallel career being shown at public meetings and other such gatherings in favour of agrarian reform.

The same is to be expected of ‘Tainá,’ which in addition to the young audiences assured during the upcoming austral summer, could serve as a tool for environmental education and aid in the fight against the trafficking of wild animals, an illegal activity experts calculate is a 2.0 billion dollar business in Brazil.

‘Tainá’ also calls attention to the plight of Brazil’s indigenous cultures, as does ‘Brava gente brasileira’ (Brave Brazilian People), about native resistance against Portuguese colonisation. It was much applauded at the Rio festival, and at another in Canada, and is greatly anticipated in Sao Paulo.

The film tells the story of an historic event that occurred in the centre-west of Brazil over two centuries ago, when an indigenous group killed a garrison of 50 Portuguese soldiers defending a fort. The theme is the “cultural clash” between two civilisations, says director Lucia Murat.

Meanwhile, ‘Bicho de sete cabecas’ (Seven-Headed Beast), by Lais Bodanzky, is a fictional work based on real-life events of a young man sent to a psychiatric hospital, forced by his father who caught him smoking marijuana.

The film is a critique of the horrible treatment to which people who are considered different – often misdiagnosed as insane or anti-social – are subjected in some of Brazil’s psychiatric institutions.

‘Tolerancia’ is another among the new crop of Brazilian films. Shot in Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul state, its director, Carlos Gerbase, takes stock of the 1960s generation, the revolutionary young people who today express a cynicism that stands in stark contrast to their former beliefs.

The new wave of Brazilian film re-establishes documentaries as an important genre, responding to the widespread desire among the movie-going public to better know their own country. Two non-fiction films currently showing are “2000 nordestes” (2000 Northeasterners), in which two young directors reveal the diversity of Brazil’s poorest region, and “Senta a pua,” about the armed forces.

In addition to the variety of themes, film production has also diversified. There are movies that were made in several Brazilian states, doing away with the previous monopoly of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo as movie locations.

The national government and numerous state governments have recognised the importance of developing the country’s film industry, and have set up production incentives as a result.

Brazil currently produces around 25 feature-length films each year, which attract nine percent of the total movie-going public. The goal is to boost the numbers to 60 films per year, and 20 percent of the audience, declared José Alvaro Moisés, who is in charge of the audiovisual division at the Ministry of Culture.

But Luiz Carlos Barreto, Brazil’s top filmmaker, said that goal is too modest, pointing out that in the 1970s Brazilian-made films brought in 35 percent of the nation’s total box-office take.