March: Spotlight on Brazil II
March: Spotlight on Brazil II, FLMTQ Releases 177-180
During the month of March Filmatique presents Spotlight on Brazil II, a collection of films from some of the most exciting voices in contemporary Brazilian cinema.
Fellipe Barbosa's Casa Grande examines the insidious effects of economic privilege in modern-day Rio de Janeiro, as a young man's coming-of-age coincides with the dismantling of his family's fortune. Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas's Hard Labor exposes the uncertain nature of middle-class existence vis-à-vis a cinematic language that teeters uneasily between suspense, genre, and neorealist aesthetics, while Caetano Gotardo's The Moving Creatures meditates on the enormity of a mother's love by lingering on empty moments—the unseen, the unsaid. Gabriel Mascaro's August Winds observes comings and goings in a coastal community during the tropical storm season, conjuring the perilousness of everyday life in the climate-change era.
Comprised entirely of first features, Filmatique's Spotlight on Brazil II series is a testament to an auspicious generation of filmmakers—formally daring and evocatively told, their works offer nuanced, intersectional accounts of precariousness both human and ecological in an increasingly fractured world.
Casa Grande, Fellipe Barbosa (2015)
Casa Grande, Fellipe Barbosa / Brazil, 2015
Jean attends an elite boys-only high school in Rio de Janeiro. Big decisions, such as his university applications, loom on the horizon—yet Jean's priority is his budding sexuality, from unsuccessful encounters at nightclubs to sneaking into the maid's quarters of his family's august estate late at night. Meanwhile, signs of the family's financial instability accumulate around him: first, the driver Severino is let go; telephone calls from his father's hedge fund associates go unanswered; his mother begins peddling luxury cosmetics to wealthy housewives she once counted as her peers. A courtship with a girl he met on the bus leads Jean into a new geography of the city, where he is also forced to confront the extent of his privilege.
Refracting a young man's coming-of-age through an entangled web of class, race, and gender relations, Casa Grande paints a searing portrait of the hierarchies governing contemporary Brazilian society. Fellipe Barbosa's narrative debut premiered at IFFR - Rotterdam International Film Festival, Taipei, and San Sebastián; CPH:PIX, where it won an Honorable Mention; Festival de Cinema Luso-Brasileiro de Santa Maria da Feira, where it won a Jury Award; Paulínia, where it won Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Screenplay; and Toulouse, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize.
Hard Labor, Marco Dutra & Juliana Rojas (2011)
Hard Labor, Marco Dutra & Juliana Rojas / Brazil, 2011
Helena's dream is finally coming true—she has found the perfect location to open her neighborhood grocery store. Delighted to share the news with her husband, she arrives home to find him depleted; he has lost his job. Helena nonetheless ventures forth, while Otávio is subjected to a series of increasingly demoralizing interviews, and the creeping knowledge that he will never recover his white-collar status. Meanwhile, Helena senses something amiss in her grocery store; the space becomes a setting for strange occurrences, portends of the building's sinister past.
Blending neorealist class critique with elements of subdued horror, Hard Labor dissects both the material and supernatural implications of a middle-class couple slowly succumbing to precarity in a globalized world. Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra's first feature premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, SXSW, and Mar del Plata; Sitges, where it won Best Director; Paulínia, where it won Best Sound; Lima, where it won Best Actress; and Festival de Cinema Luso-Brasileiro de Santa Maria da Feir, where it won the Jury Award for Best Actor.
The Moving Creatures, Caetano Gotardo (2012)
The Moving Creatures, Caetano Gotardo / Brazil, 2012
It's the last day of Pedro's high school break. He wanders through the park with a friend, ruminating on the poetry of a lamp-post, the idle behavior of swans. After dinner with his family, he retires to the computer room, warned not to stay up too late. When a group of surprise visitors arrive the next morning, Maria Júlia's learns something about her son perhaps a moment too late. Eduardo is a sound designer suffering from nausea at work; he accidentally interrupts the recording of a woodwind orchestra before deciding he should return home and speak with his wife. João and Ana nervously drive to a restaurant in the northern periphery of São Paulo, where they meet the child they put up for adoption sixteen years earlier.
Immersed in quotidian textures of ordinary people's daily lives, and bookended by lyrical expressions of longing and loss, The Moving Creatures traces patterns of movement and absence, connection and withdrawal, that characterize the uncertain trajectory of a mother's love. Caetano Gotardo's debut feature film premiered at the São Paulo Film Festival, Miami, and Lakino Latin American Film Festival Berlin, where it won Best Film.
August Winds, Gabriel Mascaro (2014)