A collaboration between The Museum of Modern Art and the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, the annual Premiere Brazil! festival introduces New York audiences to original and accomplished recent work by both new and established Brazilian filmmakers.
This year’s edition opens with the New York premiere of an acclaimed documentary about contemporary artist Vik Muniz’s collaboration on a recycling project with the inhabitants of the world’s largest garbage dump—a powerful ode to the transformative powers of art. A number of evocative works (Lands; Reidy, Building Utopia; I Travel because I Have To, I Come Back because I Love You) deal with the collision between modern lifestyles, urban expansion, and the destructive power and delicate balance of the vast Brazilian landscape. This year’s classics selection, dedicated to the continued preservation and celebration of the legacy of the influential Cinema Novo movement, features newly restored prints of two of Carlos Diegues’s seminal films from the 1970s.
Several recent features introduce the strong authorial voices of first-time directors (Esmir Filho, Maya Da-Rin) or build on the promise of filmmakers with a few films under their belt (Anna Muylaert, Marcelo Gomes and Karim Aïnouz, Raphael Alvarez and Tatiana Issa).
All films are from Brazil and in Portuguese with English subtitles. All are New York premieres, and first screenings will be introduced by the filmmakers.
Organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art; and Ilda Santiago, Director, the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival.
The program is generously supported by George Gund III and Iara Lee; Marjorie Andrade and Richard Kandel; The Brazilian Ministry of Culture/Secretaria do Audiovisual; and the Consulate General of Brazil in New York.