By Dana Khromov*
Querência (Homing) is the story of a cowboy from the northeastern backlands (sertão) of Brazil that breaks with stereotypical images of the region as impoverished and underdeveloped. Your previous film, Girimunho, made with Clarissa Campolina in 2011, also takes place in the backlands but the main characters are two old women. What is the importance of the region in your work, and how is this film related to and/or distinguished from your previous films?
The backlands were almost a coincidence. I can’t deny the influence of the master of masters and my “artistic bible”: João Guimarães Rosa and Grande Sertão: Veredas (“The Devil to Pay in the Backlands”). Far from wanting to compare myself to the best artist I’ve known, but I can’t deny that his literature has sent me traveling through the North of Minas Gerais and the sertão inside and out.
Then there’s the fact that my characters don’t have a voice. They’re not black people engaged in the struggle, indigenous people in the resistance, or LGBT people affirming their identity, without land or shelter taking over some political discourse. They are so isolated and ignored by society as a whole that they can’t even think about that kind of resistance. Because their lives are already resilience from day to day.
From there comes a process of friendship and intimacy with the characters/actors/friends that lasts for a long, long time. There is mutual trust between us and my observation of the everyday is what transforms the real into fiction, the documentary into a screenplay with its dramaturgy. This process takes years of investment.
How do you see your role as a Brazilian director on the world stage at this contemporary moment?
This question is a little difficult, but I think it’s incredible that my films are always more accepted outside of Brazil than inside and there aren’t many people who can speak with so much ownership (and sincerity) about the deep backlands of Brazil as I can. But it goes back to what I said in the first question: in today’s world there’s not that much interest in my people and their stories, they don’t make the news, I don’t have the latest agenda.
Querência will have its U.S. premiere on Sunday, December 8 as part of Cinema Tropical’s Veredas: A Generation of Brazilian Filmmakers at Film at Lincoln Center.
* Dana Khromov is a PhD Candidate in Hispanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
