DA Films has launched a special retrospective online film series of Brazilian filmmaker Júlio Bressane, a key figure of Cinema Marginal and one of the greatest of all Brazilian filmmakers. Titled “Killed the Family and Went to the Movies: The Films of Júlio Bressane,” the virtual series presents a selection of eight singularly perplexing films from the 50-year career of the Brazilian director, whose work is little known in the United States.
Born in 1946, Bressane started his film career as assistant director to Walter Lima Jr. and directed his first feature film, Cara a cara, in 1967, becoming an important figure in Brazil’s Cinema Marginal. He founded the production company Belair Movies in 1970, together with Rogério Sganzerla, before moving to London in exile. Bressane’s poetic and essayistic work is among the most exemplary of Brazilian experimental film, concentrating especially on the relationship between picture and soundtrack.
He received the Bastone Bianco Award for Dias de Nietzsche em Turin (2001) at the Venice Film Festival. In 2008, he received the honorary Eduardo Abelin Trophy at Gramado Film Festival. Educação sentimental (2013) premiered at Locarno Film Festival and was nominated for a Golden Leopard.
The retrospective series includes his 1969 landmark film Killed the Family and Went to the Movies / Matou a Família e Foi ao Cinema, in which a desperate guy kills his parents with an open razor and then goes to a cinema. At the same time, other violent events happen when two girls realize they are in love with each other.
The other titles in the series include The Angel Was Born / O Anjo Nasceu (1969), Beware, Madame / Cuidado, Madame (1970), Drumming Beat of the Stars / O batuque dos astros (2012), Beduino (2016), Seduction of the Flesh / Sedução da Carne (2018), Nietzsche Sils Maria Rochedo de Surlej (2019), Capitu and the Chapter / Capitu e o Capítulo (2021).
The films are available to rent for streaming at: www.dafilms.com
