/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILM-BRAZIL: Social Wounds Subject of Budding Genre

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 19 2002 (IPS) - “Latitude Zero”, the first feature-length fictional work by Brazilian filmmaker Toni Venturi, has joined a new cinematographic current that examines Brazil’s social wounds under the harsh light of reality.

It is a formula is a far cry from the Brazilian film industry’s major commercial productions, and makes an impact on the public without large financial investment in promotion and advertising.

In “Latitude Zero”, Venturi, a director who has won honours at several international festivals, reverses the direction of human migration flows in Brazil, expelling the two protagonists to the countryside, highlighting their social exclusion and lack of possibilities.

The only two characters in the film, which premiered in mid-March, are from an urban setting, but are forced to seek refuge in an abandoned and sterile rural environment.

They thus make the reverse trip of millions of people dispossessed of land who were part of the exodus from the country to the cities in the 20th century – and who inspired several Brazilian films.

The story begins by showing a pregnant woman who is barely surviving in a shack next to a highway in the deep interior of Brazil, on the banks of the Amazon River. The few trucks that appear on the road do not stop.

Behind her house is a mine that was at one time exploited by ‘garimpeiros’ or gold seekers. The enormous mine pit remains as a scar of a brutal activity that enriched only a few, spread malaria throughout the Amazon, and was the last resort for millions of unemployed in the “lost decade” of the 1980s.

The woman, in the final month of her pregnancy, shows her desperation in the first scenes, masturbating. The arrival of a man who is willing to stay replaces her solitude with tension as they are forced to get to know each other. A dialogue of a few words clarifies the origins of each.

She was the lover of a chief of the military police who, in order to preserve the honour of his wife and children, sent her to this exile when she became pregnant.

The man is a police officer, subordinate to the same police chief, who sent him away to avoid punishment for crimes in which the top brass of the military police were implicated.

Their total isolation and vulnerability create tension in the relationship between the woman and the former policeman. But after their initial hesitations, they move on to the satisfaction of long-repressed sexual desire, but then on to conflict.

The man abandons the woman, stealing her savings. He does so as she is giving birth, alone, in a particularly stirring scene in the film. But he returns, trying to recuperate a living situation that is no longer possible, as the following scenes prove.

The unfolding of the action within the walls of the shack is evidence of the theatrical origins of “Latitude Zero”. The film is based on “The Bad Things in Our Head” (As coisas ruins de nossa cabeça), a play by Fernando Bonassi.

The production costs totalled just one million reals (420,000 dollars). The filmmakers saved on expenses by hiring just two relatively unknown actors, Débora Duboc and Claudio Jaborandy, and holding exhaustive rehearsals in order to reduce the number of days needed to shoot the film.

“Latitude Zero” was shot near Poconé, in central-west Brazil, next to a ‘garimpo’, or pit mine dug by informal gold seekers.

Among Venturi’s previous works is the documentary “The Old Man: the History of Luiz Carlos Prestes” (O Velho), a biography of the historic leader of Brazilian communism.

The new film, say critics, joins a series of works by a generation of directors who seek a new language, with low budgets though not ignoring the box office.

From the same current, which is not yet a structured genre, is Laís Bodanzky, whose “Bicho de 7 cabeças” (Seven-headed Beast), based on a true story, made an impact last year in exposing the brutality of Brazil’s psychiatric hospitals.

The “generation” includes Beto Brant, who is winning awards with “Invasor” (Invader), and Tata Amaral, director of “Um céu de estrelas” (Starry Sky).

Venturi’s latest projects also follow the line of hard-hitting subject matter, with a television documentary and a feature-length fictional film. Both focus on the political violence during the guerrilla resistance against the military dictatorship in Brazil from 1964 to 1985.