/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILM-BRAZIL: Television Provides Material for the Big Screen

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 13 2001 (IPS) - “Caramurú”, which premiered last weekend in movie theatres throughout Brazil, is seen as a test of the consolidation of a formula in which a popular television series is made into a film, reversing the normal route in which the big screen serves as the foundation for a new TV show.

Guel Arraes, considered among Brazil’s most creative television directors, has already tried this route. “O Auto da Compadecida” (roughly, ‘religious pageant of the compassionate one’, in reference to Brazil’s Catholic patroness, who is black) was a popular soap opera made into a movie that drew more than two million Brazilians to the theatres.

That box office success, unprecedented in the last seven years of Brazilian film, allayed fears that the show’s television success would undermine the public’s willingness to pay to see many of the same images on the big screen. It also paved the way for a much- anticipated alliance between the two media.

“A invençao do Brasil” (Inventing Brazil) is the series with which Rede Globo, the country’s leading television network, marked the 500th anniversary of the arrival of the Portuguese in what is now Brazil. The programme has been adapted to film with the title “Caramurú” amid great hopes that it will repeat its small screen success.

The film takes a humorous approach in recounting Brazil’s origins through the story of Diogo Alvares Correia, a Portuguese sailor who is shipwrecked on the Brazilian coast in 1510. He then remains to live among the Tupinambá Indians in territory that today belongs to the northeastern state of Bahía.

The natives nickname him Caramurú, after a local fish, and he marries Paraguaçú, the Tupinambá chief’s daughter. Thus begins the racial mixing of the Brazilian population, a process that later includes the Africans brought across the Atlantic as slaves.

The film’s story develops through the a battle for Caramurú’s heart, fought by Paraguaçú and her sister Moema, and through the plotting of the Portuguese who hunger for the supposed riches to be found in the New World. The thematic backdrop is the encounter between two civilisations that look upon each other with some suspicion.

The fact that the television soap operas are cast with famous actors assures from the get-go that the film version – with the same stars – will attract a good number of moviegoers.

Selton Mello, recognised as one of the best TV and film actors of Brazil’s younger generation, plays the protagonist who triggers a battle between the two sisters, played by Camila Pitanga and Débora Secco, who are admired for their acting abilities as well as their beauty.

The commercial premiere of “Caramurú” has been compared to the launch of Hollywood productions in Brazil, with 120 copies distributed among the major cities, an unusual quantity for a film “made in Brazil”.

“To study the country through comic means” is a favoured approach of director Arraes, who was a founder of Rede Globo’s innovative core. Arraes has directed TV programmes and miniseries with a great deal of creative freedom – and ample production resources – which gives his works a cinema-like quality.

There has always been speculation that he might turn to film production fulltime, but he has said he sees little difference between movies and television.

The reality is that he has discovered the key to doing both at the same time, but reversing the normal trend of films being turned into TV series after achieving box office success on the big screen.

Rede Globo has ended up with its own film studio, with Arraes TV- to-movie productions and other films made specifically for the theatres.

This has occurred just a debate has begun between Brazilian filmmakers about how to build alliances with the television industry in order to ensure the sustained development of Brazilian- made movies.

An attempt to charge televisions networks an obligatory contribution for financing the film industry failed. The mechanism had been established by a law passed in September that created the National Film Agency.

Unlike the experience of North American and European countries, where television was born hand-in-hand with film, Brazilian TV developed independently and became the country’s most powerful communications media.

With the role TV plays in Brazilian culture, it is a mistake to attempt to collect a tax to benefit the film industry, says veteran movie director Roberto Farías.

It is natural that a country where soap operas are a major phenomenon with massive audiences both nationally and internationally would not follow the usual path in which films feed the television industry, he said.