Premiere Brazil!
July 23–28, 2003
In 1998,
The Museum of Modern Art’s comprehensive Cinema Novo and
Beyond retrospective brought New York audiences up to date
on the ever-changing Brazilian film scene. Since then, with the
increased popularity of the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival
(the sixth largest cinema fest in the world), the Brazilian film
industry has grown ever stronger, witnessing the emergence of several
new talents as well as making it possible for many of its veteran
directors to continue working. Now MoMA introduces the first of
what will be an annual film presentation, Premiere Brazil!,
whose title is drawn from the name of a section of the Rio festival
that presents the most original and accomplished new films coming
out of movie-happy Brazil.
This brief view into the creativity and diversity of contemporary
Brazilian cinema was selected by Jytte Jensen, Associate Curator,
Department of Film and Media, The Museum of Modern Art; Ilda Santiago,
Director, Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival; Claudia Dutra,
Brazilian Film Festival of Miami; and in consultation with Fabiano
Canosa.
The program is a collaboration of the
Department of Film and Media, the Rio de Janeiro International
Film Festival,
and the Brazilian
Film Festival of Miami. The opening night’s outdoor screening
and event are produced by Socrates Sculpture Park as part of their
fifth annual international film series, and is presented in collaboration
with the American Museum of the Moving Image and Cinema Tropical.
. 2002. Brazil. Written
and directed by Jorge Furtado. With André Arteche, Ana Maria
Mainieri, Pedro Furtado, Júlia Barth. Chico, a teenager on
vacation at the “biggest and worst beach in the world,” in
Rio Grande do Sul, meets Roza at a pinball arcade and falls head
over heels in love. They have sex on their first night, but she vanishes,
only to turn up again later. Until the following summer she will
appear in and out of his life many times over. A breezy summer charmer
of a film about young people and their silly yet serious games of
love and leisure. In Portuguese with English subtitles. 75 min.
. 2002. Brazil. Directed by José Joffily. With Débora
Falabella, Roberto Bomtempo. This sensitive film explores the relationship
between
Paco and Tonho, two of the many illegal Brazilian immigrants barely
holding on to the fringes of New York City. Tonho is shy but determined
to return home a success, while the outgoing Paco is an artist with
a devil-may-care attitude and a strong belief in her talents as a
musician. The volatile yet tender feelings between these two very
different people mirror the conditions of the city where they try
to survive. In Portuguese with English subtitles. 100 min.
. 2002. Brazil.
Written and directed by Anna Muylaert. With Ary França, Etty Fraser, Isabela Guasco,
Marisa Orth. In this detective story with a surrealistic flavor,
Durval and his mother, Carmita, have been living for years in isolation
at the back of a record store. Durval decides to hire a maid but
the low wages attract only Celia, a strange woman who vanishes after
one day, leaving behind a five-year-old girl named Kiki and a note
explaining that she will be back. Durval and Carmita become charmed
by the child, but they are soon made aware of the real story….
In Portuguese with English subtitles. 96 min.
. 2001.
Brazil. Written and directed by João Jardim, Walter Carvalho. An engaging and charmingly
thoughtful film brimming with beauty and ideas. Nineteen people with
varying degrees of visual impairment—from mild nearsightedness
to total blindness—discuss how they see themselves, others,
and the world. A great cast of characters, including writer and Nobel
laureate José Saramago, musician Hermeto Paschoal, filmmakers
Wim Wenders and Agnès Varda, the blind Franco-Slovenian photographer
Evgen Bavcar, the neurologist Oliver Sacks, the actress Marieta Severo,
and the blind city councilman Arnaldo Godoy give their personal and
surprising insights into various aspects of vision and the meaning
of seeing or not seeing in a world saturated with images. In Portuguese,
English, and French with English subtitles. 73 min.
. 2002.
Brazil. Directed by Eduardo Coutinho. For seven days, a film crew
headed by Coutinho, Brazil’s master of documentary filmmaking,
shot the everyday life of people living in “the Master,” a
building located in Copacabana, a block away from the beach. This
monstrous edifice has a total of 276 studio apartments housing some
500 people. All of the thirty-seven residents interviewed are gifted
storytellers with exceptional lives and often outsized personalities
that belie the extremity of their cramped quarters. In Portuguese
with English subtitles. 110 min.
. 2002. Brazil. Directed by
Domingos Oliveira. Screenplay by Oliveira, Priscilla Rozenbaum. With
Oliveira, Rozenbaum, Ricardo Kosovski. A delicious romantic comedy
about the four stages of a breakup—denial, negotiation, revolt,
and acceptance—set among talkative, self-involved cariocas.
The much older Cabral is married to Glorinha. They decide to take
a break from each other, but the separation becomes real when Glorinha
falls in love with Diogo. Cabral realizes his mistake and will do
anything to win her back. Most everybody gets involved in the process,
following the not-always accurate maxim, “Better regret what
you’ve done than what you’ve not done.” In Portuguese
with English subtitles. 116 min.
. 2002. Brazil. Directed by Alain
Fresnot. Screenplay by Fresnot, Sabina Anzuategui, based on the
novel by Ana Miranda. With
Simone Spoladore, Osmar Prado, Caco Ciocler. It is 1570, and the
queen of Portugal has sent a group of orphans to Brazil to marry
the first colonizers. Among them is the sensitive and religious Oribela,
who reluctantly follows her new husband Francisco back to his sugar
plantation to be mistress of the house and mother to his white sons.
The farm is also home to Francisco’s mother and younger sister.
The film captures the strange and incestuous family life as well
as the uneasiness and casual cruelty shown toward the indigenous
people of that time. In Portuguese with English subtitles. 100 min.
.
2002. Brazil. Directed by Carlos Adriano.
Between 1874 and 1887 the Brazilian photographer Militão (1837-1905)
made The Three Ages, a series designed for magic lantern. These six
images and his self-portrait are a rare prototype of pre-cinema in
Brazil. “Militância is over the top in its statement
of erotic cinema love, this mad displacement of libido into images
that straddle life-gone, gone gone, but present as a trace-and thingness,
chemical dispersion of light-galvanized silver halides, machinery,
especially machinery that’s evident as such and not black-boxed” (Ken
Jacobs). 10 min.
.
1969. Brazil. Directed by Glauber Rocha. With Maurício do
Valle, Othon Bastos, Odete Lara, Hugo Carvana. Glauber
Rocha was named Best Director at Cannes in 1969 for this “revolutionary
folk epic...one of the most original works of the Cinema Nôvo” (Amos
Vogel). “
Part samurai, part Sergio Leone, and just as obviously influenced
by no one...Antonio das Mortes, a hired gun for the landowners, is
the most notorious killer of cangaceiros, peasant rebel-bandits in
the backlands. In open-air opera and silent shuffling ballet, spoken
verse and sung lore, melodrama of the absurd and gritty Western,
Rocha transforms the lore of the cangaçeiros to his own flamboyant
use to show ‘the two faces of vengeance-hatred and love’.”(Pacific
Film Archive). In Portuguese with English subtitles. 95 mins.
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