Visions of Resistance:
Recent Films by Brazilian Women Directors
February 8–9
Museum of the Moving Image
Co-presented by Cinema Tropical
Throughout Latin America, women struggle to crack the glass ceiling. Yet despite historical prejudice and neoconservative backlash, a new generation of Brazilian women have broken through, producing bold, politically engaged, formally adventurous works of cinema. Visions of Resistance: Recent Films by Brazlian Women Directors spotlights recent documentary and hybrid films, with a particular focus on the lives of black Brazilians.
Both Fabiana Assis’s eloquent documentary, West Park, and the collectively produced Tell It to Those Who Say We’ve Been Defeated center on the homeless (sem teto) movement. But while the former does so through a personal narrative of trauma, the latter uses a more distanced approach of coordinated stealth action. A number of films, such as Grace Passô’s Wandering Flesh, Glenda Ninácio and Ary Rosa’s Coffee with Cinnamon, and Everlane Morães’s Pattaki hint at otherworldly realms evocative of Afro-descendant traditions. Others attend closely to the ins-and-outs of social protest, as in Victória Álvares and Quentin Delaroche’s documentary feature, Block, or to the historical black Brazilian communities, as in Amaranta César’s lyrical short, Mangrove. Meanwhile, Cris Lyra’s Quebramar and Juliana Rojas’s The Passage of the Comet address the brutality of women’s lives with a sense of cosmic and mythic wonder. Lastly, in Elena Meirelles and Livia de Paiva’s Tremor Iê the ultra conservative backlash faced by LGBTQ communities and widespread social unrest takes a dystopian turn.
Organized by film critic Ela Bittencourt.
All screenings at Museum of the Moving Image
36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria, NY
(718) 777-6888 / www.movingimage.us
BLOCK
A film by Victória Álvares and Quentin Delaroche
(Bloqueio, Brazil, 2018, 75 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
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An absorbing look at social unrest in Brazil just months before the 2018 presidential election that saw the ascendancy of ex-army captain and ultra-right politician Jair Bolsonaro. Álvares and Delaroche spend a few intense days within a massive truck driver strike, yet despite this show of evident solidarity, despair makes some participants doubt the democratic process and call for military intervention.
Preceded by TELL IT TO THOSE WHO SAY WE’VE BEEN DEFEATED
(Aiano Bemfica, Camila Bastos, Cris Araújo, Pedro Maia de Brito, 2019, 23 min.)
The film follows a landless group as they occupy an abandoned lot under a cover of darkness. The handheld camera and muted audio perfectly capture the tense coordination of bodies that must act in absolute secrecy.
Saturday, February 8, 2pm
WANDERING FLESH
A film by Grace Passô, and Ricardo Alves, Jr.
(Brazil, 2019, 50 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
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One of Brazil’s most brilliant contemporary dramaturgs and actors, Grace Passô—known for starring in such films as André Novais Oliveira’s Long Way Home and Mauríio Martins and Gabriel Martins’s In the Heart of the World—co-directs with Alves, Jr. a film adaptation of her internationally touring drama, Wandering Flesh. On an empty stage, a disembodied voice speaks of a case of spirit possession, or a reincarnation. Passô acts as the bodily host for the erudite, angry spirit—and slowly, miraculously, conducts the viewer into a world poisoned by arbitrary notions of gender, sex, and race, which end in violence.
Preceded by MANGROVE
(Amaranta Cesar, Brazil, 2018, 22 min.) and Pattaki (Everlane Morães, Brazil, 2018, 20 min.)
Shot in a traditional quilombo of the descendants of African slaves, Mangrove beautifully captures the affirmative power of ancestry and rural communities, but also the distant pull of city life. Meanwhile the nocturnal Pattaki, which Morães filmed in Cuba, transports us into a dreamlike world permeated by the Yoruba sea spirit, Yemaya (North American premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2020).
Saturday, February 8, 4:30 pm
WEST PARK
A film by Fabiana Assis
(Brazil, 2018, 70 mins. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Q&A with director
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Eronilde lost her partner and was wounded when West Park—an area on the periphery of the capital, Brasilia, that was being occupied by the sem teto (lit. “[those] without a roof”)—was attacked by the military police. Returning to the site, which symbolizes not just government-sanctioned aggression but also her community’s resistance, Eronilde relives her personal trauma while striving to rebuild her confidence in the future. Assis’s powerful documentary mixes first-person testimony with clandestine audio and raw video captured under duress, to reveal a community taken hostage by unfulfilled political promises—a theme that reverberates throughout contemporary Brazil.
Preceded by QUEBRAMAR
(Cris Lyra, Brazil, 2019, 26 min.)
This poignant film follows a group of friends on a beachside vacation where they share stories of discovering their lesbian identity. Firmly rooted in the experiential reality, Quebramar (lit. “breakwater”) nevertheless hints at the dreamy atmosphere of the mythical Lesbos.
Saturday, February 8, 7pm
COFFEE WITH CINNAMON
A film by Glenda Ninácio and Ary Rosa
(Café com Canela, Brazil, 2017, 102 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Widely discussed and praised in Brazil for its compassionate presentation of a black Brazilian middle-class rarely portrayed on the big screen, Coffee With Cinnamon was also the first feature co-directed by a black Brazilian woman (Ninácio). Young Violeta cannot shake off a desire to help her grieving former teacher, while one of her neighbors also suffers an irredeemable loss. Set in Salvador, Bahia, this gentle, multilayered story about a tightly knit neighborhood coming together ranges from understated realism tinged with humor to the edge of horror.
Sunday, February 9, 2:15pm
TREMOR LÊ
A film by Elena Meirelles and Livia de Paiva
(Brazil, 2019, 88 mins. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Introduced by programmer Ela Bittencourt.
A different twist on the futurist, dystopian, heavily militarized Brazil that some viewers may recall from the films of Adirley Queirós (White Out, Black In; There Was Once Brasilia), this is a passionately, angrily conceived portrait of lesbian love set against the backdrop of social protests in Fortaleza (similar protests, with economic demands, engulfed the whole country in 2013). This “impatient hymn to blind fury" (FIDMarseille), takes a beat from the opening rap lyrics that call on all to get politicized and to resist paralysis.
Preceded by THE PASSAGE OF THE COMET ( Juliana Rojas. 2017, 20 min.)
One of Brazil’s most promising young filmmakers (Good Manners) Juliana Rojas brings inflections of genre to pointed social critiques. In The Passage of the Comet, set in a clandestine abortion clinic, women gaze at the skies to catch a glimpse of the historic passing of Halley’s comet.
Sunday, February 9, 4:45 pm
