Black Brazilian Cinema

Directors: Grace Passô, André Novais OliveiraInterview: Adriana Johnson, Keiji KunigamiTranslation: Raquel de SouzaTranscription: Thainã de MedeirosRepublica (Republic, 2020) is an experimental short film written, directed, and performed by Grace Passô during the COVID-19 lockdown in São Paulo. In the film, Passô picks up the phone and hears that a shaman has discovered Brazil is only a dream—a dream someone dreamed that will end as soon as that person wakes up.André Novais Oliveira’s Temporada (Long Way Home, 2018) follows what might be a temporary new season and place in the life of Juliana (played by Passô) as she moves to the city of Contagem for a job working in dengue prevention and waits for her husband to join her. While the film bears the mark of the invisible pull of the off-screen husband, Juliana’s job—a government directed form of care work—pushes her into a variety of encounters with the new people and spaces surrounding her.Directors: Yuri Costa, Diego Paulino, Naira Évine SoaresInterview: Natalia Affonso, Keiji Kunigami, Adriana JohnsonTranslation: Raquel de SouzaTranscription: Thainã de MedeirosNegrum3 (Blackn3Ss, 2018) is a short experimental Afrofuturist film-essay manifesto, directed by Diego Paulino, on Blackness, queerness, and the spatial aspirations of Black youth in downtown São Paulo.The short film O Dia Que Resolvi Voar (The Day I Decided to Fly, 2019) by Naira Évine Soares follows a woman who, upon losing her job, abandons her efforts to whiten herself and conceal her queerness.Yuri Costa’s short film Egum (2020) weaves together the horror genre with Afro-Brazilian religious beliefs in a story about a renowned journalist who has spent years abroad following his brother’s murder but who returns to his family’s home to take care of his mother who is suffering from an unknown illness.Director: Glenda NicácioInterview: Adriana Johnson, Keiji Kunigami, Natalia AffonsoTranslation: Natalia AffonsoTranscription: Thainã de MedeirosCafé com Canela (Coffee with Cinnamon, 2017), directed by Ary Rosa and Glenda Nicácio, is set in Bahia (where Rosza Filmes is based). The film revolves around the process by which a woman named Margarida is pulled out of years of depression following the death of her five-year-old son Paulinho by her encounter with Violeta, a young woman who used to be her student. While the film is traversed by death (there are three significant deaths in the film and the film itself is dedicated to all mothers who have lost children), it is explicitly about living beyond such deaths, about mourning as letting go.We, Ary and I, always have a thought of: “We don’t make the image; it’s a search. The image is a place to be accessed, to be discovered.” I don’t think our cinema is experimental although many people say it is—it’s not, because it is completely popular. It is a kind of language that the lower classes in Brazil can access, one that has nothing to do with an exclusive niche particular to filmmakers or artists or to a cinephile audience.At film festivals we always get the question: “What are your references for this film?” And we never answer, not because we don’t have references, but, first, because there are two of us, so there are differences between us, different references. But also because the question seems tied to a drive to constrict thought. Our creation is so much more driven by everyday life. I think the pulse of our language is in life itself. It is in life that language happens. It is in life that we identify the movements of the camera. It’s not in the [Pedro] Almodóvar films I watched. I like Almodóvar, but it’s not as if I watch his films and say “oh, I want to do that,” because if, in fact, it already exists then I think it doesn’t need to be done again. This shot, this movement, already exists so why am I going to do it again? Instead, we have a place of discovery and invention that is set in motion by life itself.And Ary and I, well, in addition to being directors, as I said, we are producers. Sometimes we say that we’re better directors because we are excellent producers. Where do I want to go with this? I want to say that language is also for us an exercise in looking at our fragility, in looking at a place where I ask, “OK, I don’t access that, I don’t access that resource, but how do I create a language to find a way around it?” Because it can never seem like a lack. It’s never going to be a lack. So I have to make an extra effort because I don’t have access to such a resource. We also need to create layers for reception, and find a way around the difficulties as in a great soccer pass, where you dribble your own mistake because the vulnerabilities of low-budget cinema are always being thrown in our faces.When we study the history of Brazilian cinema, it is filled by a desire to be another, right? The other European, the other American. It’s always an external will, isn’t it? To reproduce a type of image that is external to us. And that generates vulnerability because you’re always trying to reproduce an image you’ll never be able to reach. And I say this on a national level, but if you think about the territorial scope of Brazil itself and the conditions we’re in, reaching that image always seems impossible. How can we, with few resources, make films in places that aren’t the best places. I don’t even know if I’ve ever been able to afford to be able to speak. The last movie we made was a $3 million movie and for us, that’s a good budget. But you learn that there is a creation of signs that is not reproduction, but an intrinsic, particular, and internal creation. And that pleases me very much. Then, thinking about language within this place of production in the face of the fragilities you already know you have, it can never be transmitted to the public as a lack. It is not a lack; it is something else. It is creativity, identity, experimentation. But it is about bringing these other perspectives into this construction. Of being able to create languages that aren’t universal. No, language isn’t universal, not everyone can access it.