All
films in Portuguese with English subtitles, except as noted.
All screenings at: Two Boots Pioneer Theater
155 East 3rd St. (at Avenue A) Tel. (212) 254-3300
Wednesday,
January 9, 8:00 pm
Saudade do Futuro
Marie-Clémence & Cesar Paes, Brazil/France, 2001
Party
will follow at Two Boots Den of Cin (44 Avenue A at 3rd St.)
”The
immigrants from the Northeast tell us the beat of the megalopolis. They
came to São Paulo to escape drought in the North or to make their
fortune. With a guitar or a tambourine, like everyday life columnists,
the Nordestino repentistas improvise rhymes and sung poetry on the spot,
seeking inspiration in their audience's concerns. The urban cacophony
mixes with music, and the repentes, forerunners of rap music, tell us
the south-American megalopolis with humor and rhymes.
"An infectious delight." - Dennis Harvey, Variety
It's Not All True / Nem Tudo É Verdade
Rogerio Sganzerla, Brazil, 1986
"It's Not All True" works Sganzerla's obsession with Orson Welles' documentary "It's All True," rediscovered in 1985 when a studio technician happened upon the film in a Paramount Pictures vault. Though sound and image collage, combining documentary-style material with staged reconstructions, Sganzerla's recreates Welles's Brazilian experience during his visit to Brazil in 1942 to make a Pan-American documentary under the auspices of Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy.
Special thanks to
the Guggenheim Film and Video department for their assistance in facilitating
this program. This film was originally presented as part of the "Brazil
on Screen" series.
Wednesday,
January 23, 8:00 pm
The Charcoal People / Os Carvoeiros
Nigel
Noble, Brazil/USA, 1999
Director will be present for discussion
Party will follow at Two Boots Den of Cin (44 Avenue A at 3rd St.)
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Nigel Noble documents the workaday lives
of Brazilian peasants who cut down trees in the Amazon rain forest and
burn the wood in earthen kilns to make charcoal, an essential ingredient
for the manufacture of pig iron in the US These "charcoal people,"
including children as young as five, live and work in appalling conditions
in a toxic environment with no sanitation or potable drinking water. The
workers are systematically subjugated by debt, since they are charged
more for their food than they receive in wages. The laborers and their
families discuss the backbreaking and dangerous work, which involves the
despoliation of their natural surroundings, and we witness the toll it
takes on their own health and the global environment.
Denying Brazil / A Negacao do Brasil
Joel Zito Araújo, Brazil, 2000
"A poignant denudation of a reality which we insist not to see." - Estado de Sao Paulo
A documentary about the taboos, stereotypes and struggles of black actors in the Brazilian Television "soaps." The director, based on his own memories and on a sturdy body of research evidence, analyses race relations in Brazilian soap operas, calling attention to the influence this might have on black people's identity-forming processes.
Special thanks to ArtMattan and African Diaspora Film Festival for their assistance in facilitating this program. This film was originally presented at the African Diaspora Film Festival.
All screenings at: Two Boots Pioneer Theater
155 East 3rd St. (at Avenue A) Tel. (212) 254-3300
