This is one of the most exciting times of the year for me.
In 2012 I’ve created a show to celebrate the lives of Brazilian singer/songwriters. In 2014, after Maria Bethânia’s celebration, I made the decision to transform it into a musical, and since then the magical show includes more than a dozen Brazilian artists celebrating International Women’s Day.
Researching to write the script of the Brazilian Heart Celebration is like a puzzle. This year’s theme kept changing in my mind until all seemed to focus and make complete sense. In the beginning I wanted to celebrate 50 years of 1969, so I found out about the Brazilian hit parade of that year. Then, the political vibe of the present moment pushed me towards songs of protest and change in Brasil and the US. I read many books. 33 Revolutions Per Minute, Marching for Freedom about MLKJr, Gilberto Bem Perto about Gilberto Gil, and many biographies. I watched DVDs about Woodstock, Harry Belafonte and the Civil Rights Movement, Caetano and Gil’s exile in London, interviews with Belchior, Geraldo Vandré, documentaries about Woody Guthrie’s life, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and the music festivals in Brasil. After awhile, my brain usually mixes everything and I don’t know how to start. Then, I go through a restless period waking up in the middle of the night with vivid ideas of connections among composers, stories, and transition songs. Finally a light bulb comes on! Here we are: Songs of Protest and Change plus Honoring Gilberto Gil.
Since 2012 the show also celebrate the International Women’s Day. This year I invited singers Diana Purim and Emina Shimanuki, bassist Poliana Magalhães (just arrived from Portugal,) and drummer Ana Barreiro. I also invited Kanami (Kanushka, my Russian sister) to be our Vocal Director. I strongly believe in the power of group energy so artists stay on stage during the whole show. Nothing more intense than 12 women singing, playing, and acting with open hearts.
The moment is definitely asking for revisiting our acts of social and political change through music. Each singer will be singing two solo tunes, one in English and one in Portuguese. I suggested historical songs and after they were chosen, I worked on the stories and quotes around them, adding transition songs as well. My friend and actress Mariana Leite collaborated with me.
For many years I wanted to pay homage to singer/songwriter and Tropicália master Gilberto Gil. I admire him immensely and had the honor of opening his show at the House of Blues in Hollywood many years ago with my old band Sambaguru (thank you, Tita Lima.) When I went to see his duet with Caetano Veloso two years ago in downtown Los Angeles, I finally felt it was time to pay homage to him. Gil is a philosopher and a visionary. It was not hard to choose some of his songs, but I was left with the feeling that I would miss not playing many more.
I remember watching Gil at Canecão (show place now gone) in Rio about 30 years ago. The audience asked him to come back on stage three times. When he returned for the last time he said: “I’m getting old, guys,” and then laughed. What a charming and loving man. In his manners, words and actions.
Every year I invite new artists who besides being talented, are also kind and supportive. It’s fundamental that they enjoy sharing their craft and emotions with each other. I think this cast trust my ideas and opinions as well. The theme made us open up and face different political opinions, what I consider a great opportunity to practice compassion. The show requires one meeting to read the script and two musical rehearsals. I consider this experience a miracle!
Another miracle is to find sponsors who believe in your vision. I’m blessed for I’ve found some angels! The sponsors come in all shapes and forms. First, Marcia Argolo and Jorge Vismara who are with me since 2012. They open their home with smiles and excitement, take pictures, listen and also feed us! No words to thank them. Peter Lownds is always there when I need a translation or an English version, besides helping us with our pronunciation, and appearing on stage as well. Deborah Edler-Brown (who had been part of two celebrations with us) was so kind in correcting and suggesting changes to the press release.
Another couple of angels are Dolores and David Mead, who take care of the lease of the theater. This year Dolores invited two other couples to share the costs of it. Friends helping friends. :-)
And finally, thank you to Miriam Pellegrino of Ubatuba Açaí (present since 2017), Odete Pashaie of Brasilian Blow Dray Hair Salon (thank you, Sonia,) Judy Mitoma (who understands the importance of a helping hand after many years producing The World Sacred Music Festival,) John Crahan (who always shares links of Amy Goodman and Democracy Now with me,) Bengi and Peter (Turkey and Belgium represented), Mandy and John (East coast supporters,) Melinda Kelly (I call her Mel=honey), Paula and Phil Glosserman (Phil was part of the Brazilian Heart group I started in 1998), Cecilia Noel (my Peruvian sister who I had the honor of sharing the stage in my beginning years in Los Angeles), Suzanne Alpert (you never forget who visits you when you go to a hospital,) and Nicole Wesley, a lawyer who loves to support the Arts and showed up at the last minute by the hands of Sarah Pontes. And last but not least, my husband Neal Barbera with whom I learn every day.
A successful performance is a product of sweat, talent, luck plus joy and respect among all involved. I’ve been at fault thanking every supporter for my memory fails once in awhile with the responsibilities my dream entitles. So, let me take the opportunity to thank Brasil Brasil Cultural Center (Amen and Nayla Santo), Ana Laidley (the best samba teacher and therapist ever!), Soul Brasil (Lindbergh Junior and Magali), Ana from the Brazilian Consulate, Maggie Lalique, Sergio and Sasha (KPFK FM), Patricia and Tatiana, Thiago Barreiro, Maria Alice Jacob, Viver Brasil Dance Company (Linda Yudin and Badaró), Beto Gonzalez and Samba Society, Bob Easton, Thalma de Freitas, Fabiano do Nascimento, Simon, Fabio, Bill Brendle, Flavio Medeiros, Isaías Elpes, Clarice Cast, Felipe Fraga, Antonio de Sat’Anna, Leo Costa, Mitchell Long, Ted Falcon, Catina deLuna, Anna Beatriz, Mariana Goulart, JP Mourão, Carla Hassett, Mi Medrado, Maria Jacob, Caro Pierotto, and every artist who I collaborated with in the previous celebrations. I’m forever grateful.
If you still didn’t get your ticket, do it now. Witnessing magical moments do wonders to the soul. CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
Thank you, for taking the time to read this story. Each one of us love what we do, and I’m sure you will feel it on Saturday, March 2nd.
Assim que obtive contato com a Párrafo Magazine,
um fascínio diante da pluralidade de sua composição ocupou-me. Tal
vislumbre acerca da abrangência temática, solta, flutuante, esparsa,
dotada de certa complexa leveza, me embriagou. Também chamou-me muito a
atenção, o modo como a brincadeira parráfica procura explorar o
espaço-lauda entre as imagens e as textualidades, sempre no intento por
transgredir a celulose e vazar-se folha afora. Brincadeira esta que
convida e sugere a problematizarmos o jogo da contemplação das palavras e
a leitura das imagens. Para além das tais características que se
enunciam latentes em sua razão de ser, algo de marcante que aos meus
olhos (como pesquisador das revistas, jornais e folhetins dadaístas do
início do século XX), lançou-se em piruetas, cambalhotas e rodopios,
trata-se do caráter pluri-idiomático.
A marca pluri-idiomática ou pluri-vernacular da Párrafo Magazine
encontra-se em vital consonância para com uma das primeiras revistas
dadaístas publicadas em maio de 1916 por Hugo Ball (1886-1927). Tal
revista, que traz a insígnia do mais radical movimento artístico da
história, possui em seu nome a designação de um recinto recreativo, um Cabaret, onde
os mesmos arteiros-anartistas ensaiavam seus espetáculos, somado ao
pseudônimo de François-Marie Auret, um dos mais importantes filósofos
franceses da era do esclarecimento, o sátiro e polêmico Voltaire. Assim,
quando nos debruçamos sobre a nota dos redatores da revista (pág. 33),
encontramos o seguinte esclarecimento: “Para evitar uma interpretação
nacionalista, o editor desta coleção declara que não possui nenhuma
relação com a mentalidade alemã. Os colaboradores da coleção CabaretVoltaire pertencem
às nações […]”, e a partir deste ponto, os mais notáveis nomes das
artes vanguardistas aparecem juntamente às suas nacionalidades.
Além de apontar contra a política nacionalista, a Párrafo Magazine, assim como a CabaretVoltaire
foi em tempos de outrora, mostra-se como uma poderosa arma de
resistência política para com histeria nacionalista e seus regimes
promotores de apartheid, em que nos deparamos com sua face contemporânea mais medonha de Trump e seus lacaios. Enquanto os anartistas da Cabaret Voltaire
rebelaram-se contra o enfadonho e assassino chauvinismo europeu,
implodindo as barreiras promovida pelo ódio nacionalista e beligerante
de Guilherme II, a Párrafo Magazine afronta a cultura
nomo-idiomática imperialista contemporânea e se arrisca em explorar
outras matizes vernaculares em sua composição: o espanhol, o português e
o inglês. Quanto ao arriscar-se, há um dado distintivo em ambas as
produções que vale salientar: enquanto a CabaretVoltaire
foi editada e publicada em Zurique, Suiça, região neutra durante a
primeira guerra mundial, ou seja, sua possibilidade de publicação só foi
possível fora dos limites do conflito, a Párrafo, encontra-se
literalmente dentro do território inimigo, mas que um dia já foi a
Cidade dos Anjos dos Irmãos Magon e Zapata.
Alguns
poderão indagar: “Mas essa revista é financiada por uma das maiores
universidades do mundo (UCLA), localizada em um dos estados americanos
mais ricos do mundo”. Sim, evidente, mas em se tratando de um pais cujo
seu passado atroz se faz mais que presente, expondo seu ethos beligerante para manutenção de seu Life Style,tendo a supor em meu último Parágrafo que…
Párrafar
sedutores Párrafos latinos em uma relação erótica-imagética-literária
com o puritano vernáculo anglo-saxão é PULAR O MURO, é imprimir na
parede de concreto as infiltrações, é lançar-se nosso escarro e banhá-lo
com a língua úmida na erótica-erosão do concreto desmanche da pureza
linguística. É ousadamente lançar-se ao mar e sorrateiramente ofertar à
Flórida um ar caribenho.
*Mestre em Ciências Sociais.Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Instragram: @palentete
In
1944, a policeman turned father turned rebel turns up dead, shot in
the head, taste of Japanese metal in his mouth. So my mother says,
but she does not remember her grandfather’s name. Only that it
starts with a Kang,
like hers, like the Korean word for river and ginger, and strong. I
imagine the minutes before his death. The swath of sweaty Japanese
soldiers unseen, spread deep and thick in the ambushing brush. The
pace of his fatherly march. A tremble through his strong, much too
narrow shoulders as he thinks about his son - my mother’s father -
for the last time. Then the night caves in with its many terrifying
machine noises.
In 2002, I am
almost seven, deathly scared of death. I discover that Maru, my pet
hamster, has eaten her children and run off outside. She is presumed
dead. I crawl up on my mother’s lap, where she swabs out earwax
from deep within my ear. From next to the empty, bloody hamster cage
comes urgent news on TV, of two Korean middle school girls crushed to
pulp underneath a U. S. Army tank. The girls’ parents cry as if
that is the only thing they can do. The court martial declares the
soldier in charge not
guilty of negligent homicide,
but these are big, heavy words I do not comprehend.
My father
comes home, takes half-hearted shots of soju,
sits me on his lap, tells me to man up and forget about Maru, tells
me three years in the military will do me good. Each night, he
recounts a memory from his time in mandatory service, the rite of
passage for Korean men. Tonight, it is the story of the first time he
lobbed a hand grenade. He says he will never forget how it felt, says
it
puts life in perspective,
having
the power to wipe out an entire family in one hand.
I fail to ask what kind of perspective that is.
Next
day, a big bus takes us on a field trip, to a job fair, where I try
on a soldier’s helmet and a life-size model of an assault rifle.
You
look so brave,
says my homeroom teacher, as she takes a picture on her Polaroid
camera. When I come home, Dad frames the picture and places it next
to my bed, a reminder that I will make a good soldier, when I am old
enough to drive a tank, to wield a loaded rifle, to kill.
Now, in 2018,
it is autumn, it is America all over, everywhere. It is a long time
since I have run away here, away from my picture of combat helmet and
assault rifle, from Maru, still missing. Autumn is, as the saying
goes, chun-go-ma-bi,
the season of high skies and fat horses, and I am deeply affected by
a man with strawberry blond hair from a continent over. When I tell
my mother this across the Pacific, she hesitates on a sobering sigh
before saying, you
will die, you know that? From AIDS and Western diseases. Your
great-grandfather, dead, just to have you turn out so sick. If you
ever bring him here, I will kill myself.
I think about
it, two times over, which is close to the number of bullet holes
found on my great-grandfather’s skull. After I hang up, on the
latter half of midnight, I sit and wonder if I will ever bring him
home and lead her to death. I am curious if I will be charged for
negligenthomicide.
But it will not be negligent. It will be gingerly premeditated
manslaughter.
I wish the
most blessed, painless demise on my selfish mother, and ache awhile
in a melancholy utopia in which she is dead and I am married. Then I
lie in bed next to the sleeping boy, kiss his chin good night. His
beard is soft, furry. In the flat dimension of darkness, our two slim
bodies look vaguely like the girls on TV from 2002, seconds after
they are unearthed from beneath the tank.
I
fall asleep, and I think there is not a thing I wouldn’t kill, nor
a death I wouldn’t die, for this fair-haired creature slumbering in
my bed.
“I will be waiting for you”, photo by Sean Ahn
Sueño
en la frontera
By
Irving Barrera López
Nadie
aquí en la tierra se queda. Lo tangible se devuelve. La gravedad te
doblega. El tiempo te reduce como el monte merma en arena. Como el
oro se rompe, o como la casualidad estrella el brillo de tus ojos de
obsidiana. Tu piel de papel santo se marchita. El sol decae, el sol
se levanta y tú, Karina, sigues dormida ¿En qué sueñas? ¿Ves las
aguas del Mictlán arremolinarse hacia tus pies y te aturullas porque
hace poco que sorteaste las del Río Bravo? ¿Te piensas aún
caminando por aquel laberinto de veredas, flanqueadas por saguaros,
que desorienta con mejores porvenires? No lo sé. Y tampoco lo sabe
el temiquiximatli que curioso picotea tus dedos ahora vueltos piedra.
Sueñas.
Soñabas. Temblabas. Se te ponía la piel chinita mientras pasabas
por Ciudad Juárez. Una ciudad acuchillada, dividida en dos, donde
los que llegan se van y los que se quedan se convierten en
espejismos. Aquella ciudad que no conocías ni volverás a conocer,
pero que se encuentra a pocas millas de tu lecho perene.
Antes
de partir de Ocotepec tu mamá te dio dos billetitos de a quinientos.
Llorando le dijiste que estuviera al tanto del Western Union; que,
dentro de un mes, Reyna ya te habría conseguido trabajo y que le
llamarías pronto para mandarle dinero. Subiste al autobús, y aunque
tenías poco resuelto, tenías una idea de lo que vivirías las
siguientes semanas. Pero nunca se te cruzó por la mente que pasarías
los cuatro días sagrados de tu entierro en un desierto. Al menos,
por tu funeral, no te apures. El desierto te guarda luto.
Los
coyotes te plañen con aullidos de inframundo. El viento perfuma tu
recinto con su olor a salvia. Las hormigas, marchando derechitas en
fila, uno, dos, uno, dos…recorren tu ataúd de mezquite. Descansa.
Que las sombras del zacate se toman turnos para velarte durante el
día. Y durante la noche, el espejo hueco de Tezcaltlipoca te cubre.
Te refleja. Te recuerda de la soledad de vida y de la eternidad de la
muerte.
Mas
bien, preocúpate Karina, por la ofrenda que harás a la entrada del
noveno cielo. ¿Qué obsequiarás? Tus esperanzas, los dólares en tu
cartera, tus tenis, un puñado de pesos… Tal vez ofrecerás aquel
papelito donde apuntaste el teléfono de Reyna. A quién le marcarías
una vez llegaras a la carretera en las afueras del Paso; con quien te
reunirías una vez acabada tu odisea. Pero creo que se te hizo tarde.
Y al parecer, a tus polleros, que apresurados te dejaron en medio de
la caminata, también se les hizo un poco tarde.
Karina.
Aunque te alejes más del Norte, cada día te acercas más al Sol. Tu
piel desnuda lentamente tu esqueleto. Las lagartijas te embalsaman al
comerse la melcocha en tus clavículas de azúcar, y los escarabajos
devoran con sus pincitas el pan de tu carne. Tu sepulcro está casi
listo. El epitafio ya quedó grabado en los guijarros y sólo falta
esperar a septiembre, para que las lluvias bendigan tus restos y
sacien la pesada sed que cargabas antes de irte a dormir.
No
te angusties, querida. Siempre has vivido desesperada. Mortificada.
Cansada de tanto sufrir, de tanto caminar…Mejor reza. Y aquí entre
nos, antes de rezarle a cualquier santo escondido entre las piedras,
rézale a La Muerte. Porque La Muerte es segura. Siempre te cumple.
Ella no pone trabas, no te pide papeles, ni visas, ni entrevistas.
Ella nunca te rechaza, y te abraza con sus manos menudas para
llevarte a cielos sin fronteras, ni muros de hojalata.
Calma.
A tus sueños los habrán enterrado contigo, pero les brotaron
raíces. Y aquellos sueños. Tus sueños, Karina. Son los que mejor
se arraigan. Germinan de lo profundo del manto, penetran la arcilla
más dura, y se elevan a lo alto del cielo. Que las semillas de tus
sueños, Karina, vuelvan fértil la tierra estéril donde reposas. Y
florezcas cada primavera en pitayas pulposas y tunas carmesí. Que
tus frutos, provean a aquel desamparado que, como tú, recorre este
desierto para llegar a campos menos espinosos. Que es incierto el
destino de aquel que cruza esta frontera
___
Photo
by Daniela Joseph
Hannah
Fussell, Yeheon Hong, Sean Ahn, Irving Barrera and Daniela Joseph are
students from Earlham College, they are winners of Earlham’s short
story and photography contest “Día de los muertos”.
Uma entrevista com o escritor João Pedro Canda organizador do I Encontro Internacional com Escritores Africanos
Por Michelle Medrado
No dia 5 de agosto de 2018, no Centro Cultural Olido, em São Paulo, ocorrerá o primeiro Encontro Internacional com Escritores Africanos, no Brasil. Pelo segundo ano consecutivo, o projeto Literafrica Brasil - conhecer a África através da Literatura, em parceria com a TM Editora, a Secretária de Cultura da Prefeitura de São Paulo e com o apoio do Centro Cultural Olido e outras instituições, reunirá escritores de Angola: Amélia Dalomba, Isidro Sanene e Marta Santos; Cabo Verde: Moustafa Assem, Camarões: Alexandrine Biyouha; Congo: Prosper Dinganga; Moçambique: Marcial Macome; Nigéria: Sunday Nkeechi e Otunba Adekunle Ademonmu.
Michelle Medrado: Quais foram as motivações para organizar o Encontro Internacional com Escritores Africanos - 2018 em São Paulo ?
João Pedro Canda: Esta iniciativa cultural é o resultado da querência em ressignificar a presença africana no Brasil, reconstruir seu imaginário e celebrar as conquistas atuais pelos afrodescendentes. Com o projeto Literafrica Brasil 2018, nossa motivação é materializar no cenário literário e trazendo a tona a necessidade de celebrar e conhecer África por meio da cultura literária, num contato direto com os agentes culturais, os escritores africanos, que, por meio da literatura, fazem abordagens sobre os africanos, suas relações sociais, a vida quotidiana, anseios, lutas, realidades vividas contadas na primeira pessoa.
Michelle Medrado: Como trabalhou na curadoria e na escolha dos escritores que estarão presentes?
João Pedro Canda: Procuramos nessa primeira experiência trabalhar com escritores dos países africanos de expressão portuguesa, selecionando alguns escritores de países como Nigéria e Camarões que falam a língua portuguesa, sem deixar de considerar o trabalho que fazem dentro da mesma visão que norteou a criação do Projeto Literafrica. Temos como objetivo tornar a literatura africana uma referência a nível local e internacional; ambicionamos incentivar e divulgar os autores de todos os gêneros literários e levá-los além-fronteiras, dando assim a conhecer nossa história e cultura.
Vale salientar que já confirmaram presença participantes de diversas partes do Brasil e do mundo: Angola, Argentina, Chile, Estados Unidos e Moçambique. Para Canda isso “reflete o envolvimento e importância do evento, que será palco de um encontro interessante e único, reunindo o maior número de escritores africanos num mesmo espaço de intercâmbio.”
Marielle Franco (1979- 2018) was a Brazilian Social Scientist, politician, feminist, and human rights activist. On
March 14, 2018, after delivering a speech on “Young
Black Women Moving Structures”, Franco and her driver were shot multiple
times and killed by two assailants in another vehicle, North in Rio de
Janeiro. Marielle Franco had been an outspoken critic of police
brutality and extra judicial killings, as well as the February 2018
federal intervention by the unpopular president Michel Temer (first
president of the parliamentary coup d'etat era) in the state of Rio de
Janeiro.
The Academy Awards are Hollywood’s Swarovski crystal-bedazzled barometer of the film industry and the culture at large. This year, the Me Too movement and revelations of abuse by the producer Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men in Hollywood served as the backdrop for the awards. Even before the ceremony began, Me Too was front and center in the form of Ryan Seacrest, the host of E’s red-carpet show. Seacrest is facing allegations of sexual harassment by his former stylist. In a move that reassured no one, E aired the coverage on a thirty-second tape delay, allowing the network to cut away from any uncomfortable moments.
Whereas Seacrest’s presence reflected the entrenched power of alleged harassers and abusers in Hollywood, the onstage appearance of the actress Annabella Sciorra, a survivor of Weinstein’s abuse, represented a symbolic recognition of the damage done by sexual harassers and abusers in Hollywood. In the most moving and symbolically powerful moment of the evening Sciorra, standing next to her fellow actresses Time’s Up declared: “This year many spoke their truth.”
Jimmy Kimmel reprised his role as a genial and self-aware host. He poked fun at the stars and acknowledged the Me Too movement, joking: “If you are a nominee who isn’t making history, shame on you!”. Among the history-making nominees was Rachel Morrison, the first woman nominated for Cinematography in the ninety-year history of the Oscars. The Chilean film Una mujer fantástica, which tells the story of a transgender woman (played by Daniela Vega) dealing with the loss of her partner, also broke ground with its Best Foreign Film win.
Reprising a joyful moment from last year, Kimmel brought Gal Godot, Armie Hammer, Emma Stone, Guillermo del Toro, and other Hollywood stars to a movie theater across the street from the Dolby Theater where they surprised an audience mid-movie. However, the visit to the theater carried a deeper significance, reflecting anxiety about the disjuncture between films recognized by the Academy and those favored by the movie-going public.
The only surprise at this year’s show was Jordan Peele’s win for Best Original Screenplay for the social satire-cum-horror film Get Out. Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, with its broad allegory of outsiders in an unforgiving world, was a fitting winner of the Best Picture award. However, Coco, which won the award for Best Animated Feature, a transnational production with stars from across the Americas that represents a profitable and inclusive future for Hollywood.
Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock
ecoou criança nos porões do navio. ecoou lamentos de uma infância perdida.
A voz de minha avó ecoou obediência aos brancos-donos de tudo.
A voz de minha mãe ecoou baixinho revolta no fundo das cozinhas alheias debaixo das trouxas roupagens sujas dos brancos pelo caminho empoeirado rumo à favela.
A minha voz ainda ecoa versos perplexos com rimas de sangue e fome.
A voz de minha filha recolhe todas as nossas vozes recolhe em si as vozes mudas caladas engasgadas nas gargantas.
A voz de minha filha recolhe em si a fala e o ato. O ontem – o hoje – o agora. Na voz de minha filha se fará ouvir a ressonância o eco da vida-liberdade.
Pray is a short story under the premise of no dialogue storytelling.
It was shot on 35mm and natural light. The cinematographer Andressa Cor, who holds an Engraving and Photography background, collaborated with the director Chloe Okuno on the piece while pursuing her Masters degree in Cinematography at American Film Institute. “Shooting on film speaks to a lot to my art background. Engraving is the art form where the artist works on a medium instead of the final piece. Almost all the engraving techniques are about working the negative and printing the positive.” Cor recalls. “In a way, cinematography can be perceived as an engraving technique. And shooting on film always brings me home”.
“Pray” was produced by Lisa Gollobin and edited by Michael Block.
During this tumultuous year, the movie theater was a site of refuge, introspection, and conflict. The year began with Donald Trump’s travel ban, an executive order which represented a challenge to openness and freedom of exchange. In response, the filmmakers nominated for the Best Foreign-language Film at the Academy Awards released a defiant statement, in which they extolled film as a cosmopolitan remedy to the politics of nativism: “So we’ve asked ourselves: What can cinema do? Although we don’t want to overestimate the power of movies, we do believe that no other medium can offer such deep insight into other people’s circumstances and transform feelings of unfamiliarity into curiosity, empathy and compassion – even for those we have been told are our enemies.”
The second half of 2017 was no less tumultuous. The revelations of dozens of allegations against Harvey Weinstein, first revealed in The New York Times and The New Yorker, ushered in the most significant reshaping of the power dynamics of Hollywood in the industry’s history. Rose McGowan, Ashley Judd, Annabella Sciorra, Salma Hayek, and the hundreds of other brave women and men who have come forward with their stories of abuse at the hands of Weinstein and other men in Hollywood have brought about a sea change in the culture at large. Ultimately, reforming the film industry’s toxic workplace cultures and practices, will require fixing the longstanding discrimination against and lack of opportunities for women and minorities in Hollywood.
Amid the charged partisan atmosphere of the country and the fallout from the Weinstein scandal, the film industry continues to adapt to an increasingly digital world. The proposed merger of Disney and Fox is a response to the growing clout, budget, and subscriber base of Netflix. This mega merger may well as a sign of things to come as studios consolidate to stave off competition from Amazon, Apple, and Netflix.
The list that follows is the product of my year at the cinema (and in front of my TV). I did not have the chance to see every one of the acclaimed or terrible films (here’s looking at you Geostorm) released in American cinemas this year, but all the movies listed here are worthy of your time.
10. Endless Poetry
Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Throughout his peripatetic career, Jodorowsky has returned time and again to his favorite subject: himself. Endless Poetry is a filmic memoir, which unfolds in nineteen-fifties Santiago, as a young Jodorowsky (played by the filmmaker’s son, Adán) comes of age as a poet. As occurs in The Dance of Reality (2013)—which is based on Jodorowsky’s youth in a small town in northern Chile—, Endless Poetry features repeat, direct interventions by Jodorowsky himself. In Endless Poetry Jodorowsky conjures imaginative sequences, production design, and characters amid his oppressive home life. One memorable sequence depicts the bedroom walls of fellow poet Enrique Lihn’s bedroom covered from floor to ceiling in scribbling. This three-dimensional page serves as a mirror to the film itself, in which present, past, and future intersect.
9. Ladybird
Director: Greta Gerwig
Greta Gerwig’s first film is a coming-of-age story about a young woman in Sacramento in the early 2000s. The film follows Lady Bird (Saroise Ronan) during her senior year at Catholic school as she takes up theater, loses her virginity, and goes to prom. The film is laugh-out-loud funny and features a stellar cast, which includes Laurie Metcalf, Beanie Feldstein, and Tracy Letts. In addition to portraying the pratfalls of young adulthood, the film depicts the frustrated pursuit of respectability and economic insecurity among middle-class Americans in the years leading up to the Great Recession.
8. I Am Not Your Negro
Director: Raoul Peck
Raoul Peck’s documentary is based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House about the civil rights leaders Medgar Evars, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Like Now(1965), another film about race in America by a director from the Caribbean, Peck’s film is a confrontational call to action. Peck juxtaposes the Black Lives Matter movement and police violence against African Americans with Baldwin’s searing analysis of race in twentieth-century America. The film underscores the connections these two periods by bookending the film with images of recent protests against police brutality, but leaves viewers to draw their own conclusions about where the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter intersect. In his voice-over narration, Samuel L. Jackson channels the author’s stoicism and resolve and delivers one of the most potent performances of his career.
7. Icarus
Director: Bryan Fogel
There is always a certain lack of control in documentary filmmaking. The limited control filmmakers have over the ways their narrative unfolds is part of what distinguishes documentaries from fiction films. Bryan Fogel’s Icarus is a wonderful example of the ways in which documentary filmmaking is an adaptive art form. What begins as a story about an amateur cyclist who subjects himself to a rigorous doping regimen, transforms mid-way into a geopolitical thriller about a Russian sports scientist at the heart of one of the biggest scandal of modern sports: the systematic, state-sponsored doping of Russian athletes across decades. The scientist in question, Grigory Rodchenkov, is the kind of colorful character— his wardrobe includes bright orange shorts—that documentary filmmakers dream of. As the danger for Rodchenkov increases, Fogel grapples with how to intervene and tell a story that is no longer his own.
6. After the Storm
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
After the Storm tells the story of Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), a divorced father and novelist as he grapples with how to be a father after his recent divorce. Ryota works as a private detective, while struggling to write a second novel. However, instead of paying his alimony, the gumshoe spends his salary on his gambling habit. Abe communicates the protagonist’s sense of perpetual exhaustion and weariness with his slouched shoulders and hangdog expression. Ryota loves his son, but struggles to be a good father. The distance between father and son is exemplified by a memorable scene in which the author and detective watches his child play baseball with binoculars while sitting in his car. The film climaxes during a nocturnal summer storm which traps Ryota, his ex-wife, and son in the same apartment. As the rain falls, the fractured family renews the terms of their relationship and Ryota forges a closer bond with his son by sharing memories of his own childhood.
5. Call Me By Your Name
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Luca Gaudagnino is a master of the contemporary melodrama. His previous films I Am Love(2009)and A Bigger Splash(2015) unfold in settings heavy with symbolism—an old house, an island in the Mediterranean—and Call Me By Your Name is no exception. Guadagnino transforms a villa in Northern Italy into the site of first romance for Elio (Timothée Chalamet). The arrival of the handsome Oliver (Armie Hammer), who is there to assist Elio’s father with archaeological research, elicits a potent mixture of self-doubt, shame, and desire from the cosmopolitan teenager. Although the film depicts Elio’s emotional turmoil with an earnestness that may grate on some, its emphasis on naked feeling and passion is all part of its bittersweet fun. And if you need one reason to see Call Me By Your Name, stay for Michael Stuhlbarg’s monologue on life, love, and the loss, which is the single most memorable scene of the year.
4. Frantz
Director: François Ozon
François Ozon’s Frantz follows Adrien (Pierre Niney) and Anna (Paula Beer), two characters who are bound together by the same man, the recently deceased Frantz. Set in the aftermath of World War I, the film is an allegory of Franco-German relations, but also an exploration of guilt and the horrors of war. Shoot in gorgeous black and white, the film’s visuals are a departure for Ozon, who uses color to great effect in Potiche(2010) and The New Girlfriend (2014). Like these earlier films, Frantz features magnificent costumes (designed by Pascaline Chavanne), and a healthy dose of melodrama. And, as in In the House(2012), Frantz revels in the slippery nature of fiction. Ozon challenges viewers to discern the reason for Frantz’s visit to Germany and the meaning of the sentimental stories the interloper tells Anna’s grieving family.
3. The Shape of Water
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
The Shape of Water had been swimming around in Guillermo Del Toro’s head for years, before he got the idea that made it all click: the story had to pass “through the service entrance.” Set in the 1960s, the film follows the mute Elisa (Sally Hawkins) works as a janitor at a top-secret research facility—a recurring setting in Del Toro’s films—where scientists study a creature they captured from a river in the Amazon. Elisa falls in love with the creature, who like her cannot speak. Together with her gay artist neighbor (Richard Jenkins) and black co-worker (Octavia Spencer), Elisa sets out to free the creature from the lab and its vicious director of security (Michael Shannon). The film is an allegory of being different in a world built on the principles of order and knowing your place. Working with a budget of under twenty million dollars, Del Toro makes a film that looks many times more expensive. The production design incorporates art deco and modernism, with acute attention to detail. The special effects are also remarkable. For the underwater scenes, Del Toro used the dry-for-wet method, which involves suspending the actors and props on wires, pumping in smoke, using fans to create the illusion of movement, utilizing light caustics (projecting images of light in water), and shooting it all in slow motion.
2. Get Out
Director: Jordan Peele
A horror film and social satire, Get Out is an incisive depiction of race and racism in early-twenty-first century America. The film follows Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams) as they embark on a weekend visit to Rose’s parents. As Chris and viewers see more of this WASPy household, which is seemingly haunted by a silent black maid and gardener, the manicured lawn and colonial style house transform into a nightmarish prison. The hypnosis sessions with Rose’s mother (Catherine Keener), in which Chris travels to the “sunken place,” is a frightening and vivid metaphor for black experience in America. The allegorical qualities of the film are enhanced by its pitch-perfect incorporation of the horror genre, from the eerie drive through the woods to the hidden laboratory in the basement.
1. Wormwood
Director: Errol Morris
The genre and medium-bending Wormwood is a film of the streaming age. This documentary-cum-series with a running-time of four hours was produced and released by Netflix in six parts and released in a limited run as a stand-alone film. Wormwood centers on the death of Frank Olson (played by Peter Sarsgaard in the fictional scenes), an Army doctor who died after falling to his death from his New York City hotel room in 1953. Errol Morris interviews Olson’s son, Eric who has dedicated much of his life to finding out what happened to his father. The Cold War, biological weapons, Hamlet, the Book of Revelation, and the misdeeds of the CIA intersect in this Russian Doll of a film. Morris offers a masterclass in the juxtaposition of sound and images, the use of split screen (the scenes with Eric Olson were shot with ten cameras), and, as A.O. Scott puts it, dogged cinematic sleuthing. The film’s use of fictional sequences alongside the talking head interviews and archival footage that are standards of the documentary genre, add depth to a film about the nature of truth and the pain of the search for truth. Towards the end of Wormwood, the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh tells Morris: “But don’t you know how wonderful it is not to have an ending?” In lieu of offering closure to the story of Frank Olson, Wormwood douses the viewer in a bitterness for which there is no salve.
Tommy Wiseau’s The Room(2003) is one of contemporary cinema’s most notorious cult films. Fans of The Room celebrate its extraneous subplots, continuity errors, and histrionic dialogue. Wiseau’s exemplar of paracinema was released in one theater and grossed less than two-thousand dollars. Yet despite its inauspicious beginnings, the film has since become a midnight movie sensation.
The Disaster Artist, directed by the hyperactive writer, director, and actor James Franco, tells the improbable story behind the making of The Room. Franco’s film is based on the memoir by Wiseau’s co-star and best friend, Greg Sestero (played in the film by Franco’s brother Dave). Franco plays the mysterious Wiseau with the intensity of Daniel Day Lewis and the measured crazy of Wild at Heart-era Nicholas Cage. Franco brings technical skill and a real admiration for Wiseau to his performance. The filmmaker and actor replicates his subject’s vaguely Eastern European accent, permanent slouch, and tendency to omit definite articles from his speech with uncanny precision.
The Disaster Artist opens in San Francisco in 1998. Greg and Tommy are enrolled in the same acting class. After Greg botches a scene from Waiting for Godot, Tommy volunteers to take the stage. The camera tracks him from behind as he shuffles onstage. His menacing silhouette, crowned with shoulder-length black hair, gives way to a tragicomic vision as the camera cuts to reveal Tommy from head-on. Dressed like a swashbuckling glam rocker by way of Nosferatu, Tommy proceeds to wail and trample across the stage, a mortally wounded creature set loose from the shadow world.
After the acting class, Greg approaches Tommy in the parking lot and asks if they can do a scene together. Tommy agrees and they plan to meet up to rehearse. Tommy picks Greg up at his parents’ house, and proceeds to pursue the handsome Greg in an absurd day-long courtship in which the duo rehearse a scene at full volume in a restaurant, toss a football, and sip Redbull.
Later, the pair make a late-night pilgrimage to the site of James Dean’s death, the aspiring actors seal their friendship with a pinky-swear. While returning from Dean’s memorial, Tommy suggests that they move together to his “pied-a-terre” in Los Angeles to pursue their dreams of stardom together. After relocating to Los Angeles, the two struggle to break into show business. Greg gets an agent (Sharon Stone, in one of the film’s many celebrity cameos), while Tommy, ever oblivious as to the limits of his talent and how others perceive him, pursues auditions for “All-American” roles.
After a disastrous encounter-cum-audition with a producer (Judd Apatow) at dinner time in busy restaurant, Tommy despairs for his future. Greg offhandedly suggests that his friend takes matters into his own hands and make his own movie. Tommy, a master of doing things his own way, embraces the idea wholeheartedly. After completing a script and casting himself and Greg in the lead roles, Tommy assembles the rest of his cast and crew.
In addition to faithfully recreating scenes from the original film, Franco depicts Tommy’s transformation from an earnest first-time filmmaker into a megalomaniacal director. By the end of the much-delayed shoot, Tommy turns abusive. The director berates his on-screen love interest, refuses to furnish water to the crew, and alienates Greg by insisting that his co-star and best friend owes him a debt of gratitude.
The film’s final act takes place during the night of the premiere of The Room and depicts the reconciliation of these two unlikely friends. Retaking their courtship, Tommy picks Greg up in a white stretch limo to take him to the theater. As Tommy’s film plays for an audience for the first time, the camera alternates between the screen and the audience. As the film progresses, the audience reaction changes from uncomfortable silence to howling laughter. We are witness to the the construction and reception of the film as a so-bad-it’s-good cult comedy. Wiseau, who conceives of his film to be a heartfelt portrait of human emotion, is driven to tears by the audience’s laughter and abandons the theater. Greg follows him to the lobby and coaxes him back inside, telling him that Hitchcock never made an audience laugh with such force. Tommy, embracing the audience’s reaction, accepts a triumphant curtain call.
The friendship between the voluble director and his good-natured co-star lies at the core of The Disaster Artist. Although the film repeatedly alludes to the homoerotic nature of Tommy and Greg’s relationship—exemplified by pinky swears and Tommy’s “Babyface” nickname for Greg—it primarily plays this suggestion of romantic love between the two men for comedic effect. The film is more interested in the power dynamics between the two men. Tommy is both Greg’s friend and his benefactor. Tommy knows that Greg’s friendship is not unconditional: his apartment and money undergird their friendship. Ultimately, Tommy’s poorly executed melodrama, which centers on two friends, mirrors his own convoluted relationship with Greg. In Franco’s film, friendship, a phenomenon rooted in sympathy and reciprocity, becomes a metaphor for filmmaking.
These same tenets of friendship inform the relationship between The Disaster Artist and The Room. Franco treats Wiseau’s film as a source of pleasure (and laughter) and depicts the process of making the film as an earnest, though misguided and poorly executed endeavor. Even as Franco depicts the muddled script and slipshod creation of The Room, he treats it as a production worth dialoguing with and recreating. Like a good friend, The Disaster Artist sets out to make light of its cinematic inspiration, and in the process, cannot help but burnish the myth of the man who made a virtue of indulging his instincts and realizing his dream, not with talent or skill, but with cash. The Disaster Artist depicts Wiseau as a later-day Norma Desmond, determined to bring himself and “Planet Tommy” to the screen for all to see.
Eu aprendi a ser puta vendo filme, aprendi a putaria toda em filme.
Aprendi a beijar, a foder e a gemer vendo filme. E nem pense que foi
filme pornô porque não foi. Era filme, filme mesmo, filme-filme!
Daqueles em preto e branco. Filmes me ensinaram muita coisa. Eu até
aprendi a falar direito. Falo agora português e mexo a boca como se
eu estivesse falando inglês, bem do jeito que é nos filmes…
Aprendi a fumar vendo filme. Filme e novela. Meu pai sempre dizia que
novela é coisa do diabo, que só ensina o que não presta ao povo.
Mas eu assistia… filme e novela. Meu pai dizia que eu também sou
coisa do diabo. Daí eu aprendi a mentir, a cuspir e a matar vendo
filme.
Disso tudo, o que eu curti mais mesmo foi ser puta. As putas estão
em quase todo filme. Então, eu pensei ‘a onda é essa! A onda, é
ser puta!’. Só que no filme é tudo mais bonito.
Eu tenho é que aprender a fazer filme, porque assim eu tento fazer o
meu e aproveito pra ficar por lá mesmo, falando português e mexendo
a boca em inglês para o resto da vida.
Ass.: Rosália Marginal
PS: A minha história é onde começa a raiva com a vida. Se eu tiver
de começar a contar, começo sendo puta. Porque se gozar tem um
prazer que é de verdade verdadeira, o meu maior gozo é quando me
gritam ‘vadia!’. Eu gemo feito a porra.
Marília (Marie) Goulart é mestre pelo Programa de Meios e Processos Audiovisuais
da Escola de Comunicação e Artes da USP, com a dissertação “Um Salve
por São Paulo – imagens da cidade e da violência em três obras
recentes”. Graduada em Ciências Sociais pela Escola de Sociologia e
Política de São Paulo onde realizou pesquisas relacionadas a violência
nas cidades tanto através da Antropologia Urbana quanto da Sociologia da
Comunicação. Atua também como editora audiovisual e na realização de
curtas-metragens.
Por Mi Medrado
Bruxelas, 30 de Julho de 2017.
Mi Medrado: Como a professora vê o papel do áudio visual na vida metropolitana?
Marília (Marie) Goulart: Há uma ligação bastante estreita entre cinema e a vida metropolitana, ao ponto de alguns teóricos definirem o cinema como uma arte urbana. É claro que o cinema não é exclusivamente urbano, há uma filmografia incrível e essencial que passa ao largo das metrópoles, como o Cinema Novo brasileiro, por exemplo, com filmes emblemáticos realizados no sertão. De todo modo, há uma conexão histórica, de origem, entre cinema e vida metropolitana que marca o audiovisual.
As metrópoles são um produto da modernidade, do crescimento do capitalismo e da transformação no modo de produção que ocorrem após as Revoluções Francesa e Industrial. Essas transformações alteraram as mais diversas esferas da vida. A ciência, a arte e atos cotidianos como o deslocamento e a experiência sensível são também revolucionas com a modernidade. Nesse contexto, o cinema, cujo nascimento é datado em 1895, não cria, mas participa ativamente da nova cultura metropolitana que também surge na virada do século XVIII.
O cinema tem um papel fundamental na consolidação da vida metropolitana, por exemplo ao fazer da experiência frenética algo aprazível ou ao contribuir com a formação de um público anônimo e indiferenciado, das massas. Ao lado do conjunto de “novidades” e inventos que caracterizam a vida moderna, como o telégrafo, o trem, as vitrines, e as exposições internacionais, o cinema é talvez a mais completa síntese dessa nova sociedade. Além de simular o movimento e a experiência da vida urbana, o cinema é uma tecnologia que reuniu as principais características da vida moderna: experiência efêmera, representação/ fixação do real, aceleração, estímulo, técnica de circulação e movimento são características que irão marcar a linguagem audiovisual ao longo de toda história.
Essa conexão “de berço” se mantém ao longo de toda história do cinema em obras que demonstram fascínio, vertigem e também críticas contundentes às metrópoles. As sinfonias urbanas da década de 1920, o expressionismo, o cinema moderno dos anos 1950, o cinema noir, o neorrealismo, as Retomadas Cinematográficas dos anos 1990 e 2000 e também a produção recente são alguns dos exemplos que expressam com clareza a intensa conexão do cinema com vida nas metrópoles.
MM: Como as imagens do cinema podem ser consideradas “expressão privilegiada para discutir a vida nas metrópoles”? Marília (Marie) Goulart: O cinema é testemunha e participante ativo da consolidação e do desenvolvimento das metrópoles e ao longo de sua história sempre manifestou seu interesse pelo espaço e pela vida urbana. Esse interesse resulta em um considerável conjunto de obras que permitem assistir hoje, no ano de 2017, a saída dos trabalhadores de uma fábrica da Paris de 1895, o despertar dessa mesma metrópole nos anos 1920, vagar pela Itália do pós-guerra, ouvir e percorrer trajetos e ângulos inimagináveis da cidade onde vivemos.
Para o estudo das cidades, o cinema é uma fonte extremamente importante. Dentro da noção ampliada de documentos, o cinema exprime os sujeitos, suas maneiras de ser e de se relacionar. Em sua espontaneidade e despretensão acadêmica os filmes são impregnados por uma experiência, por uma espontaneidade que o rigor da produção científica não permite. Desse modo o cinema é, muitas vezes, responsável por fazer ver e ouvir situações veladas no cotidiano, problemáticas urbanas e sociais que só depois serão objeto das ciências humanas.
Além de testemunha, discurso e reflexão sobre as cidades, o cinema é fundamental para entender os imaginários urbanos. Ao lado da literatura, publicidade e diversas outras expressões que atravessam o cotidiano urbano, o cinema participa ativamente da composição das múltiplas, e às vezes contraditórias, imagens da metrópole e da construção do senso do lugar. Um ponto de vista que partilho, e que será proposto no curso, é pensar o cinema como uma prática arquitetônica, isto é, como uma prática que constrói espaços – ainda que espaços na tela e no imaginário. Que dizer, por mais “realista” que seja a linguagem de um filme, ele nunca reproduz estritamente um espaço real, mas reapresenta, reinventa esse espaço, interpretando e conferindo sentidos à ele.
Como expressão artística, mais do que “documentar” as metrópoles de seus tempos, o cinema, ou parte da produção cinematográfica, faz do espaço um meio de expressão. Por exemplo, o cinema expressionista, o neorrealista e o cinema moderno fazem do cenário urbano um potente elemento expressivo e dramático. Então, a espacialidade, a própria cidade desses filmes tem muito a dizer sobre as metrópoles, ou sobre determinadas visões sobre as metrópoles. Por tanto é fundamental pensar no cenário dessa filmografia para além do suporte da ação, observar a composição, ritmo e montagem, enfim, o filme como expressão audiovisual que desde seus primeiros fotogramas vem discutindo a vida urbana.
MM: Sei que estão abertas as inscrições para o curso de extensão Cinema e cidade: panoramas sobre o urbano, na Escola de Sociologia e Política de São Paulo. Pode nos contar quais filmes estão na lista de ‘leituras’? Marília (Marie) Goulart: Como homenagem às origens do cinema o curso propõe uma visão panorâmica que destaca cinco importantes momentos da história do cinema e do desenvolvimento urbano. A escolha da abordagem panorâmica busca aproximar o “primeiro cinema”, as vanguardas, o cinema moderno e a realização contemporânea como momentos significativos para compreender as metrópoles do passado e do presente. Exibir um escopo amplo e diverso de filmes tem também o objetivo de apresentar aos participantes um escopo amplo de linguagens e poéticas do cinema em sua abordagem do urbano.
Da extensa filmografia que será discutida no curso alguns exemplos representativos do debate proposto são: Panorama from Times Building, New York (Americam Mutoscope/ Biograph, 1905), Um homem com uma câmera (Vertov, 1929), A chuva (Joris Ivens, 1929), Housing Problems (Edgar Anstey, Arthur Elton, 1935), 5 vezes favela (Marcos Farias, Miguel Borges, Cacá Diegues, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Leon Hirszman, 1962), São Paulo S.A. (Sérgio Person, 1965), O Invasor (Beto Branti, 2001), Medianeiras (Gustavo Taretto, 2011), A cidade é uma só? (Ardiley Queirós, 2013) e Obra (Gregório Graziosi, 2015).
MM: Como as “cidades latino-americanas no cinema contemporâneo – a centralidade do espaço” são representadas?
Marília (Marie) Goulart: A questão espacial atravessa de diferentes formas o cinema da América Latina. Uma das características que aproxima a produção latino-americana é a presença de realizadores engajados no debate e no enfrentamento das problemáticas que assolam o assim chamado “terceiro mundo”, território transformado em estados-nação por meio de processos violentos de colonização e dominação. Esse engajamento presente no Tercer Cine, na Estética da Fome, no Cinema Novo, no Cinema Social, etc. esteve ligado a uma questão do território e do espaço, questão presente não apenas como tema, mas como forma, poesia e política. Por exemplo, filmes como Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel, 1950), Rio 40 Graus (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1955) e Memórias do Subdesenvolvimento (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968) apresentam, ou constroem, o espaço urbano como pedra fundamental da trama e também como elemento político.
O olhar atento ao espaço, ao espaço urbano, está presente na filmografia latino-americana contemporânea, com um conjunto considerável de ficções e documentários que se debruçam sobre as metrópoles para compreender, denunciar e remediar tensões que marcam a vida nas cidades. Essa filmografia contemporânea contém especificidades que a diferencia da produção latino-americana dos anos 1990 e início dos anos 2000, quando o espaço urbano também aprece com força. Diferente de uma filmografia empenhada em entender as problemáticas que rompem e se afirmam nas cidades, mais recentemente, a mirada dos filmes tem se lançado para a própria configuração do urbano.
A centralidade do espaço urbano se expressa na produção contemporânea tanto pelo papel decisivo que o ambiente tem na trama, impulsionando situações e conflitos, quanto pela forma como é retrabalhada audiovisualmente. É interessante notar também a presença de personagens ligados à edificação e comercialização dos espaços, como arquitetos, corretores de imóveis e trabalhadores da construção.
Outra característica que marca parte desses filmes contemporâneos é que neles a construção espacial (visual e sonora) das cidades é estruturante para expor as tensões históricas e sociais que marcam as metrópoles. Por exemplo, o espaço fílmico de A cidade é uma só?, Obra e AU3 - autopista central (Alejandro Hartman, 2010) é parte fundamental da discussão sobre as marcas deixadas por regimes e dinâmicas autoritário nas cidades de Brasília/ Ceilândia, São Paulo e Buenos Aires. Mobilizando o espaço como elemento político, esses filmes tornam visíveis (e audíveis) personagens, dinâmicas e espaços muitas vezes invizibilizados.
Assim, em linhas gerais, essa filmografia contemporânea reforça e renova a conexão entre cinema e cidade e sugere a centralidade que a organização espacial possui nas configurações das novas e antigas problemáticas que marcam as metrópoles latino-americanas, se aproximando ainda desse engajamento cinematográfico que comentei.
MM: Quais aprendizados podemos ter ao utilizar as expressões visuais para pensar a estética e a arquitetura no espaço urbano? Marília (Marie) Goulart: Essa sensibilidade e atenção do cinema sobre os espaços urbanos nos recorda que os espaços da cidade carregam sentidos, significados simbólicos dos sistemas de valores das diferentes sociedades que atravessaram e viveram ali. Os espaços urbanos dão corpo, isto é exprimem as tensões entre as diversas forças que operam e se enfrentam na configuração das cidades. Os espaços construídos cristalizam processos sociais, ou, como afirma Mies Van der Rohe, a arquitetura é a vontade de uma época concebida em termos espaciais.
Observar a cidade através do cinema e de outras expressões visuais nos ajuda a entender e a discutir as batalhas, nem sempre visíveis “a olho nu”, que estão implicadas na construção do espaço urbano. O cinema, e outras re-apresentações do espaço urbano, como a fotografia, pintura, etc., operam como lentes que permitem ver e ouvir as fissuras e as diferentes camadas que compõem as cidades. Esses são lócus privilegiado tanto como documento, testemunha, imagem, imaginário, lente e discurso sobre o urbano. Dessa forma, o cinema e os estudos visuais têm muito a contribuir com as ciências humanas, com áreas empenhadas em entender o ser humano e a sociedade de diferentes épocas e em diferentes dimensões, como a história, a sociologia e a antropologia, disciplinas que se se apegarem exclusivamente ao texto, “tropeçarão” na compreensão das cidades onde as imagens têm um papel central.
Michelle Mattiuzzi é formada em Comunicação das Artes do Corpo, na Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, PUC-SP; Tornou-se devir Musa em meados dos anos dois mil, numa cidade muito próspera localizada ao nordeste do Brasil: Salvador de Bahia. E foi daí que ela ganhou o mundo. Mattiuzzi, vive sem pedir passagem. Atualmente reside na Grécia onde participa do Programa de Residência Capacete em Atenas junto à Documenta 14. Em Atenas segue mirando e desobedecendo com orgulho e graça, fazendo outro corpo (referência à música de um cantor carioca).
Mi Medrado: O que é arte contemporânea para você? Michelle Mattiuzzi: Por meio da arte contemporânea, vejo a possibilidade de pensar assuntos acerca da decolonialidade, necropolítica, racismo e questões da filosofia negra. Não posso deixar de frisar que esse “mundo” que me cerca de possibilidades é cis supremacista, logo branco. Então penso que é um lugar passível de criar estratégias de como viver em comunidade. Ocupar esse “mundo”, é fazer uma retórica e desfazer a narrativa do opressor. Nós pessoas racializadas também criamos conhecimentos mesmo com brutalidade compulsória que a colonialidade expressa em nossas vidas.
MM: Como você acha que as telas/screen tem influenciado (para o bem ou mal) a performance no cenário brasileiro? Michelle Mattiuzzi: Eu nunca tive uma exposição individual numa galeria/ museu. Meu trabalho em performance ao vivo, já esteve em coletivas. A minha produção foi idealizada nas ruas de Salvador e para democratizar o acesso às minhas produções as telas/screen foi uma saída.
MM: Diante aos raios da tela como você se define?
Michelle Mattiuzi é uma garota grosseiramente fofa, gosto de desobediência, vive as luzes
do fracasso. (Des)empoderada lidera o crime desorganizado da vida. Viva
corre o medo da morte. Em comunidade vive o patriarcado assolado pelo
discurso coletivo. É preta, é mulher, e lésbica … vive nas ruínas sob a
paisagem da desordem do mundo.
MM: Qual é a importância de ter mais artistas brasileiras pelo mundo? Michelle Matiuzzi: São inúmeras. Eu poderia escrever algumas laudas sobre a importância de viajar, e ainda argumentar o que isso faz na cabeça de um ser humano qualquer. É claro, que tem inúmeras formas de fazer viajem. Mas penso que estar pelo mundo é necessário para perceber o abismo que a civilização promove durante os tempos.
Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of cinema’s most idiosyncratic voices. Throughout his filmmaking career, the Chilean-born director has had a playful relationship to the medium, inserting himself directly into his films and drawing attention to the porous divide between reality and fiction.
After a two-decade hiatus from filmmaking, Jodorowsky returned to the screen with The Dance of Reality (2013), a fictionalized account of Jodorowsky childhood in the northern Chilean town of Tocopilla during the dictatorship of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo in the late 1920s. Endless Poetry, continues the story of Jodorowosky and his family in early 1950s Santiago.
Endless Poetry begins with young Alejandrito (Jermias Herskovits), his father Jaime (Jodorowsky’s son, Brontis Jodorowsky), and his opera-singing mother Sara (Pamela Flores) departing Tocopilla for the Chilean capital. In Santiago, Jaime opens a small shop called “El Combate” where the motto is “at war with high prices.” During the day Alejandrito works at the store with his violent and demanding father. In the evening the young Jodorowsky reads Federico García Lorca and dreams of becoming a poet. His father wants his son to become a doctor and decries his obsession with “faggot” poetry. The strained relationship between father and son reaches a breaking point when Alejandrito, in a fit of rage, takes an axe to the veritable family tree while visiting his relatives’ house.
After the tree incident, Alejandrito declares himself a poet and moves into a bohemian artists’ collective. Signaling his transformation into adulthood and a poet, the character Alejandrito becomes Alejandro (played by another Jodorowsky son, Adan). The aspiring poet finds a muse in the form of the real-life red-haired and bombastic poet Stella Díaz Varín—played, in a subversive and ingenious bit of casting by Pamela Flores, the same actress who plays Alejandro’s mother. The intimidating Stella, who insists on holding onto Alejandro’s genitals when they go out together, is the author of explosive poetry-in-action (“you are nobody!” she screams at the sleeping patrons of a bar) that contrasts with the protagonist’s meditative verses about illuminated virgins and burning butterflies.
The scenes depicting Alejandro’s friendship with Enrique Lihn (Leandro Taub), another real-life poet and denizen of Santiago, are the most compelling parts of the film. In one memorable scene, the two poets’ decide to traverse the city in a straight line, which entails passing through a disconcerted woman’s home and then over her bed. In another act of mischief, the poets paint a statue of Pablo Neruda black and rechristen it the statue of the invisible man. The character of Lihn is also responsible for the funniest moment in the film, when he delivers a searing, hilarious insult poem in a drunken stupor. From Enrique and Stella, Alejandro learns that poetry and the act of living are one and the same.
Endless Poetry was shot by the renowned cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who uses a muted color palette and lighting throughout much of the film. This restrained visual palette reflects the protagonist’s struggles to realize his artistic ambitions. In the few occasions when Doyle floods the screen with color and natural light, like in a street carnival scene, the result is fleeting visual ecstasy. Complementing Doyle’s work is Jodorowsky’s production design. The director revels in surreal and vulgar flourishes like urinals in plain sight in a bar, giant black and white photos of old storefronts covering their modern day counterparts, and a giant water buffalo head. However, the most compelling piece of set design in the film is Enrique’s bedroom, where verses scribbled in black letters across the walls and floor. Elsewhere in the film, Jodorowsky employs figures dressed head to toe in black as stage hands. This visible manipulation of the mise-en-scène underscores the artifice of a film that melds memory and fantasy.
As in The Dance of Reality and The Holy Mountain (1973), Jodorowsky appears as himself several times in the film. In each of these occasions he speaks directly to the camera, reflecting on his younger self from the vantage point of old age. In the film’s final scene, the director offers words of compassion and reconciliation for his unforgiving father—who, in true Jodorowsky narrative-shape-shifting fashion, is also his child. “Giving me nothing, you gave me everything” the filmmaker tells his fictional father. In Endless Poetry, Jodorowsky shows that poetry takes root even in the darkest and most obdurate corners of the heart.
Just before it begins its descent, the roaring motor of the V-1 or “Vengeance Weapon 1” rocket shuts off. It falls silently for a few seconds before exploding upon impact. This monstrous weapon heralded the advent of new and frightening technologies of death. Nazi Germany fired thousands of V-1 and the even more fearsome V-2 rockets against targets in the United Kingdom and Western Europe in the final two years of World War II. In his 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon captures the abject terror and hopelessness of those at the mercy of these flying missiles: “There is no way out. Lie and wait, lie still and be quiet. Screaming holds across the sky. When it comes, will it come in darkness, or will it bring its own light? Will the light come before or after?”.
The imminent threat of the V-1 hangs over Heron’s Park Hospital, a requisitioned Elizabethan manor that is the setting of Sidney Gilliat’s 1946 mystery thriller Green for Danger. The doctors and nurses of the makeshift hospital treat a steady stream of victims of the “buzz bombs.“ Life in the hospital maintains a semblance of normal life, with office romances and parties, but it is also a closed-off and stressful place where casualties might arrive at any time, day or night.
The film opens with a shot of an Underwood typewriter and the voice-over-narration of Inspector Cockrill (Alastair Sim) who begins to dictate a report on his investigation of a series of mysterious deaths at the hospital. The inspector’s investigation is set in motion by the death of the post office worker Joseph Higgins (Moore Marriott), who is interned at the hospital after suffering injuries from a V-1 rocket. The unfortunate postal worker meets his demise in the operating room while undergoing anesthesia. His death prompts an inquest and the investigation of the sharp-tongued inspector from Scotland Yard.
At the time he made Green for Danger, Sidney Gilliat was already an established screenwriter, director, and producer. Together with Green for Danger’s co-producer, Frank Launder, Gilliat wrote the screenplays for Alfred Hitchcock’s mystery film A Lady Vanishes (1938) and Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich (1940), a prescient thriller set in Nazi-occupied Prague. These three films all feature byzantine plots and use psychological tension of their characters and confined settings to generate suspense. Among these films, Green for Danger stands out for the deft camera work by Director of Photography Wilkie Cooper. One notable scene is a point of view shot from the injured post officer as he is wheeled prostrate into the operating room. The camera, slightly out of focus like the disoriented patient, points upwards to the ceiling where the bright lights and air ducts deprived of their functional capacities, become strange and disturbing sources of piercing light and disembodied conversation, respectively.
The disorientation and confusion experienced by the mumbling patient Higgins permeates the film. From the very beginning, Gilliat keeps the viewer off balance. The main characters (and suspects) in the film are introduced in a long take in the operating room. As the inspector recites their names, the camera pans counter-clockwise, presenting a close-up of each suspect wearing a surgical gowns and face mask. In the context of the film, their uniforms are not just markers of their profession, but also cloaks of anonymity to hide behind.
The identities and personalities of the men and women first seen in the operating room are revealed as the body count piles up. They are the playboy surgeon Doctor Eden (Leo Genn), the brooding Doctor Barnes (Trevor Howard), the traumatized Nurse Sanson (Rosamund John), the distraught Nurse Bates (Judy Campbell), the gregarious Nurse Woods (Megs Jenkins), and the charming Nurse Linley (Sally Gray). Like Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None (1939), the film derives suspense from the mutual suspicions and conflict among this coterie of colorful characters in close quarters. They are bedfellows and neighbors living together under the stress of war and the deadly parabola of German rockets.
Although he does not appear until the film’s second act, the supremely self-aware Inspector Cockrill is the film’s most captivating character. In his voice-over narration, he delights in his powerful and disruptive role: “Voices were hushed and all eyes turned upon me. Who was the guilty one? When will he be arrested? Who will be next? That is what they were thinking. I found it all tremendously enjoyable.” Like a cross between Inspectors Dupin and Maigret, Cockrill mixes enlightened reasoning with a keen social awareness. However, it is his passion for detective fiction that enables him to solve the murders. Fashioning himself into an author of the mystery novels he so enjoys, Cockrill restages the initial crime. Although he solves the crime, the results are tragic. The inspector’s intervention precipitates a final spasm of violence that demolishes the characters’ façades of stoic endurance and calm. Beneath the V-1, there is only naked fear.
Director: Sidney Gilliat
Running Time: 91 minutes
Country: UK
Photos: Individual Pictures
* Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow. New York: Viking Press, 1973.
