The Reel Brazil Film Festival opens in Wellington today, at the Paramount theatre. The festival runs from the 22nd – 28th September, before heading to Auckland and the Rialto Cinemas Newmarket from 27 October – 2nd November.
The festival not only showcases the best films Brazil has to offer, there’s also feista parties to enjoy and amp up the fun in true Brazilian style. I can’t say I know much about the eight films being shown, but they look fantastic – and there’s something here for everyone. So here’s our preview (courtesy of the Reel Brazil website), complete with trailers…
Check out www.reelbrazil.co.nz for all screening and fiesta times.
So which ones look good to you? And as always, if you go, let us know what you saw and what you thought.
Reel Brazil Festival Line Up:
The Story of Me (Luiz Villaça, 2009, 110min, Drama – Literature)
This story is based on the real life of the famed Brazilian writer and storyteller Roberto Carlos Ramos. At the age of six, the young Roberto is sent by his mother to an institution for poor children in the city of Belo Horizonte. His mother saw an ad on TV for the government-run institution, purporting to offer educational opportunities to boys from underprivileged backgrounds. Roberto survives by using his vivid imagination and recreating his environment, but at 13 he’s still illiterate, and after escaping more than 100 times he is diagnosed as irredeemable. An encounter with Margherit, a French researcher, will put Roberto’s disbelief in his future in check and will challenge Margherit to maintain her own beliefs.
Starring: Paulinho Mendes, Maria de Medeiros, Marco Antônio and Malu Galli
Dzi Croquettes (Tatiana Issa & Raphael Alvarez, 2009, 110min, Dance – Documentary)
Loved and admired by luminaries such as Mick Jagger, Jeanne Moreau, Omar Sharif, Maurice Béjart, Josephine Baker and Liza Minnelli, Dzi Croquettes was an infamous Brazilian dance-theatre troupe that revolutionized the nation’s gay rights movement and changed the language of theatre and dance for a generation. Led by the American dancer and ex-pat Lennie Dale, they emerged in the heart of the 1960s Tropicália cultural movement in Rio de Janeiro, and in the midst of heavy censorship due to the military dictatorship in Brazil. They creatively and daringly used their imagination, bodies and voices, to confront the violent regime of their time.
Starring: Liza Minnelli, Ron Lewis, Marília Pêra, Ney Matogrosso, Norma Bengell, Miguel Falabella, Cláudia Raia, Gilberto Gil.
Besouro (João Daniel Tikhomiroff, 2009, 95min, Action – Martial Arts)
Set in the 1920s, in the most Afro-rich region of Brazil, Bahia, Besouro is an epic martial arts film with a muscular and efficient direction by Tikhomiroff. The feaure blends Afro-Brazilian mythology and history with Capoeira fight scenes.
Despite the abolition of slavery in Brazil, wealthy white landowners continued to exploit black workers like slaves. Besouro is the story of a man turned legend – the greatest Capoeira fighter of all time – whose magical powers allow him to fly and make his body virtually impenetrable.
“Underlining the cross-over with martial arts movies is the aerial fighting choreography by Hong Kong master Huen Chiu Ku, who worked on Matrix and Kill Bill as well as a number of Jet Li films.” — Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter.
Starring: Ailton Carmo, Jéssica Barbosa, Anderson Santos de Jesus, Irandhir Santos
A Night in 67 (Renato Terra & Ricardo Calil, 2010, 85min, Music – Documentary)
Between 1965 and 1972, Brazil lived the so called “Era of Festivals”. Competitive music events were organised by the major TV studios where up and coming musicians performed to gain professional exposure and popularity in front of live audiences – who avidly cheered or booed as if at a final soccer game.
A Night in 67 is an invitation to relive one particular festival that changed Brazilian music and marked the explosion of the Tropicália music movement. That night, names like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Os Mutantes became idols.
Starring: Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Roberto Carlos, Edu Lobo and Sérgio Ricardo
VIPs (Toniko Melo, 2010, 96min, Drama – Comedy)
Marcelo shocked and baffled the Brazilian media last decade. This award-winning caper film stars Wagner Moura (Col. Nascimento, Elite Squad ). The plot has echoes of Catch Me If You Can, but with a distinctly Latin American context and Moura’s incredible performance as the charming but vulnerable Marcelo.
“As a child, Marcelo’s one ambition was to fly planes; as an adult, our anti-hero stumbles upon his dream when he becomes a pilot for a drug trafficking enterprise. Dangerous escapades, money, and high-powered friends follow… The tone is breezy and the situations funny, rendering the film as seductive as its main character.” — Premiere Brazil, MoMa, New York, 2011
Starring: Wagner Moura, Arieta Corrêa, Gisele Fróes
Smokescreen (Rodrigo Mac Niven, 2011, 88min, Political – Documentary)
Smokescreen raises the subject of drug policies in effect worldwide, focusing on their social and political implications in countries such as Brazil, England, Spain, Holland, Switzerland, Argentina and the US. Its premise is a rethink of countries’ prohibitionist drug policies. The confronting documentary discusses some of the consequences of such drug laws, such as violence and corruption, reaching unacceptable levels.
Through interviews in Brazil and abroad with physicians, researchers, leaders, policemen and representatives of civil movements, the filmmaker and journalist Rodrigo Mac Niven introduces a new vision of the early 21st century. It is a documentary that questions prohibition, and discusses the complexities of a taboo subject with honesty and transparency.
Starring: Fernando Henrique Cardoso (former Brazilian President), Fernando Gabeira, Nilo Batista, Raul Zaffaroni, Antonio Escohotado
Our Home: Astral City (Wagner de Assis, 2009, 95min, Sci-Fi – Drama)
This sci-fi drama brings to the screen the most important work by Brazilian medium Chico Xavier who, through the account of the spirit of Dr Andre Luiz, describes in great detail what life is like in the Astral City. It is the mid-1930s, and doctor André Luiz opens his eyes and realizes he is no longer alive. His spirit´s journey begins in a dimension of pain and suffering, until he’s rescued and taken to the city Our Home.
The original score is by opera and symphony composer Phillip Glass, who has collaborated with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen and David Bowie. The film has magnificent art direction, and took second place at the Brazilian box office in 2010.
Starring: Ailton Carmo, Jéssica Barbosa, Anderson Santos de Jesus, Irandhir Santos
Reflections of a Blender (André Klotzel, 2010, 80min, Black Comedy – Drama)
Lonely Elvira talks to her blender, and the blender talks back. In this black comedy, set in São Paulo, the middle-aged housewife and taxidermist Elvira reports to the police that her husband Onofre is missing. The Chief Officer decides that she is a suspect and assigns the snoopy Detective Fuinha to investigate her husband’s disappearance. Elvira turns to her old talking blender as her emotional anchor.
The philosophizing blender – who may just be a murder accomplice – is the film’s narrator and Elvira’s confider, providing a tutti-frutti tapestry of musings on humanity.
Starring: Ana Lucia Torre, Selton Mello and Germano Haiut
