LGBTQ Brazil
Museum of the Moving Image
July 28–29
Co-presented by Cinema Tropical
LGBTQ Brazil celebrates the Brazilian LGBTQ community’s contribution to contemporary cinema with a unique lineup of recent films, all screening in New York for the first time. As framed by Brazilian and American scholars, including Denilson Lopes and Ruby Rich, the early LGBTQ films of the 1980s and ‘90s were a protest against heteronormativity, a turn away from universal humanism to political pastiche, camp, and burlesque. And while Brazil may have largely missed this first wave—a key director, Karim Aïnouz, did not emerge until Seams (1993) and Madame Satã (2002)—it is exhilarating to see its LGBTQ cinema flourish today.
Brazil’s contemporary LGBTQ directors embrace plurality. Taviniho Teixeira, in Sol Alegria, demonstrates a strong satirical bend and influences from Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Pier Paolo Pasolini to Brazil’s Cinema Marginal and Tropicalismo. The film’s protagonists—renegades, circus performers, nuns, and priests touting guns and staging orgies—flaunt every cultural and social norm. Ismael Caneppele’s debut, Music For When the Lights Go Out, centers on gender performativity; Luiz Roque’s short, Heaven, depicts the demonization of transwomen in a futurist scenario, while Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Búrca’s short, Terremoto Santo, explores the complexities and perils of religious fervor.
A number of featured filmmakers experiment with mixing sci-fi, horror, music video, and the musical. In Uirá dos Reis and Guto Parente’s feverish Sweet Amianto, Leonardo Mouramateus and Andreia Pires’s choreographed Vando Vulgo Vedita, Fábio Leal’s light-spirited The Daytime Doorman, and Daniel Nosco’s fetish-driven Sr. Raposo, fluidity and play take center stage, against the poignant evocations of violence, fear, and discrimination. Meanwhile We Are All Here and Bixa Travesty are both potent love poems to trans performers’ spunk and courage.
Programmed by Ela Bittencourt.
All screenings at
Museum of the Moving Image
36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria, Queens, NY
(718) 777-6888 / www.movingimage.us
MUSIC FOR WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT
(Música para Quando as Luzes se Apagam, Ismael Caneppele, Brazil, 2017, 70 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
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This coming-of-age LGBTQ romance restages its young protagonist’s coming out and transformation with the moral support from a professional actress. This charismatic hybrid explores the possibilities of an intimate digital camera, and mixes real-life situations and persons with fictional elements. Winner of the Art Doc award at Sheffield Doc/Fest.
Preceded by TERREMOTO SANTO (Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Búrca, Brazil, 2017, 20 min.). Combining observation and performance, Wagner and de Búrca draw upon the oral richness as well as the eerie social contradictions of the Evangelical musical. Their work has been exhibited in numerous shows in and outside Brazil, and nominated for the country’s main art prize, Prêmio Pipa.
Saturday, July 28, 2pm
SWEET AMIANTO
(Doce Amianto, Uirá dos Reis, Guto Parente, Brazil, 2013, 70 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
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After being ditched by her boyfriend, a trans woman finds comfort in fantasy. Opening with a quote from Walt Whitman and dedicated to Brazilian artist José Leonilson, who died of AIDS in 1993, this glam, psychedelic meditation on love, illness, and betrayal is a darkly funny, lyrical acid trip.
Preceded by THE DAYTIME DOORMAN (Fábio Leal. 2016, 25 min.) In this situational dramedy, fraternity, fun, and sex collide with social class and race. Leal charmingly toys with melodrama in this sensuous story of a white middle-class bon vivant, who picks up his building’s black doorman.
Saturday, July 28, 4:30pm
SOL ALEGRIA
(Tavinho Teixeira, Brazil, 2018, 95 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
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This satire, aimed at Brazil’s recent tide of conservatism and religion’s widening grip on political elites, celebrates the freeing power of sex and transgression. The film’s striking images and narrative bravado recall such Brazilian directors as Andrea Tonacci (particularly Bang Bang), Joaquim Pedro de Andrade (the picaresque Macunaíma), and the master of Brazilian horror, José Mojica Marins. Special Jury Prize at Olhar de Cinema Film Festival.
Preceded by VANDO VULGO VEDITA (Leonardo Mouramateus, Andreia Pires, Brazil, 2017, 20 mins) A group of friends meets at a local barbershop in Fortaleza and travel to the beach. Bodies and desires morph in a choreographed dance in the water before being summoned back to the streets, where real violence looms. Best Short at the Tiradentes Film Festival.
Saturday, July 28, 7pm
PASSION OF JL
(A Paixão de JL, Carlos Nader, Brazil, 2015, 82 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
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Working from Brazilian artist José Leonilson's own audio records testifying to his thoughts, fears, and passions, Nader creates a unique glimpse at this talented artist, in love with many men and, perhaps most of all, with the movies—a bittersweet swan song of Leonilson, who died of AIDS in 1993 at the age of 36. Winner of É Tudo Verdade / It’s All True International Film Festival.
Preceded by SR. RAPOSO (Daniel Nosco, Brazil, 2018, 23 min.) Based on a story of Nolasco’s real-life partner, this hypnotic short combines moments of terror and ecstasy, as it looks at a life lived with the HIV virus. A fetishistic fever dream, the film revolves around both the mortification of flesh and its victorious, daily resurrection.
Sunday, July 29, 3:30pm
BIXA TRAVESTY
(Claudia Priscilla and Kiko Goifman, Brazil, 2018, 75 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
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The self-described “gender terrorist,” singer Linn da Quebrada is the star of this sympathetic and intimate documentary portrait, which goes behind the scenes of the performer’s radio show and highly charged stage acts. A film-manifesto about femininity and power, and an exorcism of hurt, Goifman’s film is delightfully tongue-in-cheek, yet also forcefully on-message. Teddy Award at Berlinale.
Preceded by HEAVEN (Luiz Roque, Brazil, 2016, 10 min.) In an apocalyptic future, a “high-risk” population is under threat of deliberate contamination and forceful quarantine. Roque’s other works have screened internationally, including in New York at MoMA PS1 and at Kunsthalle, in Vienna. He has been nominated for Brazil’s top art prize, Prêmio Pipa.
and WE ARE ALL HERE (Chico Santos and Rafael Melim, Brazil, 2017, 21 min.) Young trans woman Rosa does not have much going for her except anger and moxy. When she is kicked out from home, and sees her entire community facing eviction, her rage boils over. Santos and Melim bring their community-theater skills to collaborate with real-life performer Rosa Luz, who shines in a cathartic piece in dialogue with the music video tradition. Best Short at the Tiradentes Film Festival.
Sunday, July 29, 6pm
