/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-BRAZIL: Between Piaget and Pinochet in Documentary Boom

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 28 2003 (IPS) - A football coach fired for taking off his clothes on the field, a young, unabashed prostitute and an elderly woman who decides against suicide are some of the real-life characters in "Edificio Master" (The Master Building), a documentary that marks the height of a boom in this film genre.

"I use Piaget a great deal, but if I need to, I use Pinochet," says Sergio, the manager of the 12-storey Master building, to explain how he imposes order and discipline on the 500 people who live in the 276 small apartments.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a Swiss psychologist whose theories on learning inspired new teaching methods. Augusto Pinochet is the Chilean general who led the bloody coup that overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973 and went on to rule the country with an iron fist until 1990.

Interviews with the manager and 37 residents of the Master make up the new film by Eduardo Coutinho, "father" of a new generation of Brazilian documentary filmmakers, whose output has grown recently, with works gaining unexpected success among critics and audiences.

A great deal of humour mixed with personal tragedies, emotional moments and abundant frankness might explain the positive reception of "Edificio Master" since its premiere at the end of last year.

An elderly woman living at the Master had resolved to commit suicide after losing all her savings when an assailant forced her to withdraw all her money from the bank, under threat of a supposed hidden gun. But at the last moment she decides against jumping out her apartment window because she "couldn’t die leaving debts behind."

The "garota de programa", as "high-class" prostitutes are known in Brazil, is not ashamed to admit to her profession on camera, saying she needs the work in order to take care of the daughter she had when she was 15.

"This is all normal" in a world with so much corruption, violence and "the government robbing the people," she says.

Coutinho is a veteran documentarist who took more than two decades to complete – in 1984 – the film that established his career: "Cabra marcado para morrer" (Marked for Death), about the struggle for land reform in Brazil’s impoverished Northeast, before and at the end of the country’s military dictatorship (1964-1985).

But in recent times he as been able to put out a feature-length documentary almost yearly, an achievement in a country where directors tend to battle for years before making their dream of a film premiere come true.

Since 1999, Coutinho has filmed "Santo forte" (Strong Saint) and "Babilonia 2000", the former about the religious beliefs found in a ‘favela’ (shantytown) and the latter about the expectations of favela residents for the new millennium.

In "Edificio Master", the director continues his traditional method of choosing a community and then interviewing its residents. But this time he did so without a core theme.

The resulting documentary shows a great human diversity, but one in which the elderly predominate.

The Master is located in Copacabana, the famed beach neighbourhood of southern Rio de Janeiro and also home to the favela of "Babilonia 2000" – and to a high concentration of retirees.

Another successful documentary being shown in Brazil this Southern Hemisphere summer is "Onibus 174" (Bus 174), by director José Padilha. The film recreates and provides analysis of an incident that shocked the country in June 2000.

Sandro do Nascimento, a young man who seven years earlier had survived a massacre of street children committed by the police, hijacked a bus in a middle-class neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro. Armed with a pistol, he took several people hostage.

The police cordon and the negotiations for the release of the hostages lasted for more than four hours and were broadcast live on television throughout the country.

The incident ended in tragedy.

Nascimento stepped off the bus with a hostage and the police shot at him twice at close range. But the gunshots missed the target, and the woman hostage was nicked instead. Nascimento immediately fired twice, killing her.

The young man was arrested unharmed, but he died from asphyxiation in the police vehicle that was transporting him to jail.

The disastrous police intervention and the story of the life and death of Nascimento, who never knew his father and whose mother was stabbed to death when he was just six, give Padilha a structure in which to underscore the social injustices and insecurities that reign in Brazil.

The directing, the drama of the incident and the variety of viewpoints included in the analysis hold the audience’s attention for the 130 minutes of "Onibus 174", a long film, especially for a documentary.

Also surprising is the success of the documentary "Janela da alma" (Window of the Soul), directed by Joao Jardim and Walter Carvalho, shown in theatres in previous months. It tackles the philosophical, aesthetic and social questions associated with those who have limited sight or are blind.

Documentaries are becoming the rage in Brazil, and the explanation seems to lie in the fact that Brazilians want to know and understand themselves.

"Brazil doesn’t know Brazil", says a popular song in the 1970s and 1980s by Mauricio Tapajos and Aldir Blanc, performed by Elis Regina. Now it appears the country is trying to make up for lost time, and is looking in the mirror of documentaries, wiped clean of the metaphors of fiction.