| September 28th |
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RioMarket Gets Down To Business… On Monday While a large part of the festival is targeted towards the resident cinema going public – 300,000 tickets are expected to be sold during the event – Festival do Rio also has a very strong industry section, RioMarket, that shifts up a gear with the start of the working week in Rio on Monday (29). To satisfy the demand of the working film and television executives the first of the Focus UK panels have been moved from Sunday (28) to Monday afternoon. Monday also sees a series of panels and seminars taking place throughout the day at the Centro Cultural da Ação da Cidadania that will discuss “What Kind of Media is This?” The first UK Focus panel at 16.00 will look at how the British and Brazilian government agencies work with filmmakers and also examine the development of possible bilateral agreements between the two countries. At 17.00 a group of leading UK producers will discuss the real possibilities of developing UK-Brazilian co-productions with their Brazilian counterparts. The “What Kind of Media is This?” seminar program will be opened at 10.00 on Monday by festival director Walkiria Barbosa and Antonio Jorge Pinheiro of Midia 1. The first panel, a heavyweight grouping of Brazilian executives, will discuss how new audiovisual consumers are behaving and what it means to the film and television industries. The behaviour of consumers will be a key aspect and topic of panels and seminars throughout Monday. Première Brasil: Cinderellas, Wolves and Prince Charming in Focus Documentaries again take centre stage at Première Brasil this Sunday (28) at Odeon Petrobras in Cinelandia. Screening in competition at 22.30 is Joel Zito Araújo’s Cinderelas, Lobos e um Príncipe Encantado (Cinderellas, Wolves and Prince Charming). The documentary takes a hard look at sex tourism, a growing problem for the Brazilian tourist industry, especially in the country’s Northeast. Araújo’s film focuses on the young Brazilian women who still hang on to the belief that they can change their lives by one day finding their Prince Charming. They do this by getting involved in the murky world of sex tourism. In truth only a very tiny minority ever manage to find a soul mate and get to marry their Prince Charming. The film travels from the Northeast of Brazil to Rome and Berlin and tries to understand the relationship between sex, race, and power is created between the young Cinderellas from the south of the equator and the circling wolves from the north. Araújo’s credits include A Negação do Brasil (Denying Brazil), winner of the “It’s All True Festival” in 2001, and Filhas do Vento (Daughters of the Wind), winner of eight Kikitos at the 2005 Gramado Film Festival. At 17.30 there is a screening of Guillermo Planel and Renato de Paula’s documentary Abaixando a máquina (Lowering the Camera; Ethics and Pain in Carioca Photojournalism). The film, part of the festival’s Scenes of Rio, deals with the issues of contemporary photojournalism through the at times painful point-of-view of confrontations registered by the Rio newspapers. One of the issues addressed is the ethics of the photographers when registering and publishing materials that touch on the existing relationships between the photographers and the poor communities of Rio. The film also looks at how the photographers cover violence and armed conflict, and produce the images of Rio’s everyday life. Abaixando a máquina is Planel and de Paula’s first feature-length documentary. Planel specialised in Image at PUC-RJ University and in Journalism of Social Public Policy at UFRJ. He has worked as a photographer since 1978. De Paula’s has made a number of films and videos, and did graduate studies in Journalism of Social Public Policy. They are both journalists and owners of Núcleo da Imagem. Odeon Petrobrás’ Sunday programme also gives guests and audiences a second chance to catch two films that have already screened in competition. Helena Solberg’s documentary, Palavra (en)cantada (The Enchanted Word) will screen at 13.00 while Marcelo Galvão’s Rinha (La Riña), to which went the honour of opening the competitive section of feature-length fiction, screens at 15.00. Première Brasil: The Dead Girl's Feast Director Matheus Nachtergaele is one of Brazil’s most active and decorated actors. He has featured in several of the most important Brazilian films of recent years including Walter Salles’ Central do Brasil (Central Station), Fernando Meirelles’ Cidade de Deus (City of God), and Claudio Assis’ Amarelo Manga. A Festa da Menina Morta (The Dead Girl's Feast) is Nachtergaele’ directing debut which had its international premiere in Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A Festa da Menina Morta (The Dead Girl's Feast) tells the story of Santinho, a young man who has been placed in the exalted position of a Saint in a remote community on the banks of the upper Amazon. His “sainthood” comes after he performs a “miracle” following the suicide of his own mother. The film takes an intimate look at the people who follow a faith and of the infinite human capacity for “fabricating” faith and seeking some reason in the horrifying experience of death. A Festa da Menina Morta (The Dead Girl's Feast) screens in competition on Sunday at Palácio 1 at 20.00.
Taviani Gala Screening Paolo Taviani will present La masseria delle allodole (The Lark Farm) at a Gala screening at the Odeon Petrobrás at 19.30 on Sunday (28). The film saw Paulo and his brother,Vittorio, return to directing for the big screen after a hiatus to the small screen for several years. La masseria delle allodole (The Lark Farm) premiered at a special screening at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival. The film is part of Festival do Rio’s Taviani retrospective that includes eleven of the brothers’ films.
Death of a Legend: Paul Newman Festival do Rio was saddened to hear of the death of actor Paul Newman. The charismatic star of over 60 films such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, Absence of Malice, The Color of Money and Road to Perdition, died of cancer on Friday at the age of 83. Newman was nominated ten times for an Academy Award, winning the best actor trophy in 1987 for his performance in The Color Of Money. He was given an honorary Oscar in 1986 "in recognition of his many and memorable compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft.” In 1994 the Academy presented him with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his charitable work. Newman worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood - including Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Tom Hanks, Joanne Woodward and, most famously, Robert Redford, his co-star in Butch Cassidy and The Sting.
Festival in Pictures Throughout Festival do Rio we will be uploading photos of festival activities, including back stage activities, to our Flickr Site (www.flickr.com/photos/riofilmfestival). The site can also be reached by clicking on Festival Photos. If you have a photo to share with the festival, please send it to us at
Festival Short Cuts…
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