| October 5th |
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If you are trying to catch up on what has been happening during Festival do Rio you can find the daily news archived in the Festival Diary to the left. There is also a good selection of photos at Festival Photos as a reminder and “lembrança” of the festival and its activities.
Decision Time: Municipal Elections Municipal elections will take place in Brazil on Sunday – which explains the number of people who have been hanging around on street corners with pictures of people with numbers on them. In Rio the residents will be electing the city’s Mayor as well as a number of other municipal positions. Because of the election you may see lines of people who for once aren’t lining up for one of the films screening in Festival do Rio, but to vote. To become Mayor a candidate needs at least 50% of the votes, if no candidate gets 50% there will be a run off between the two candidates getting the most votes, which will almost certainly be the case in Rio. Normally the day on election, or at least when the polls are open, is a “dry” day, but festival guests will be pleased to know that for these elections it will be business as usual in terms of the sale of alcohol in the bars and restaurants of Rio.
Rio Market: You Pitch, You Win New for Rio Market for 2008, the First Annual Latin American Feature Film Project took place on Thursday (2 October) and is considered to have been a resounding success with eleven Latin American projects being pitched by their filmmakers and producers to a group of senior international film executives. A partnership between Festival do Rio and Steve Solot’s Latin American Training Center, the winning project was Susana’s Campos S.A.A.R.A – São Jorge e o Passaro Celestial from Brazil’s Pindorama Filmes. The winning project wins a trip to Spain for business discussions with potential European investors and partners that is offered by the Fundación de Investigación Audiovisual (FIA) and Red Idea of Spain. In second place was another Brazilian projects, Cecília Amado’s Capitães de Areia from Ondamax Film. This project wins US$8,000 from the University of Miami. The aim of the Latin American Feature Film Project is to discover new talent while at the same time creating business opportunities that contribute to the growth of the Latin American film industry.
Première Brasil: Taking The Royal Route from Minas to Rio Pedro Urano’s documentary, Estrada Real da Cachaça (Royal Road of Cachaça), screens in competition Sunday at the Odeon Petrobras at 18.00. The Estrada Real, or Royal Road, linked the ports of Rio and Paraty to the historic towns of Minas Gerais and was used to move the gold, diamonds and other precious stones from the mines in Minas to the ports to be shipped on to Europe. Urano explains that Estrada Real da Cachaça (Royal Road of Cachaça) is a path, a journey, with the film being somewhat of a space-time road movie. The film re-encounters the country’s reality and history through the most “Brazilian” of drinks, cachaça. Urano’s film is a poetic, socio-economic, anthropologic and historical investigation that articulates significant fragments of the nation’s trajectory along the Estrada Real (Royal Road). The film suggests the need for the renovation of the historic route with the objective of mapping the presence of cachaça as part of Brazilian culture.
Focus UK: This is England For Shane Meadows When the Focus UK was being put together one of the first films on the list was Shane Meadows’ This Is England that has helped cement its director as a major filmmaking talent, a fact that has been further strengthened by his latest film, Sommers Town. This Is England gets its only festival screenings Sunday at Estação Botafogo 1 at 14.00 and 20.00 Released in the UK in 2006, This Is England won the BAFTA for Best British Film of the Year and the Jury Prize at the Rome International Film Festival. Meadows was born in England in 1972. He dropped out of school while still a teen, and in 1994 began directing amateur shorts starring his own friends. After making a few low budget independent films, he directed his first feature, TwentyFourSeven, which was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize at 1998 Venice Film Festival. Among his other films is Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, which premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. In certain ways This Is England is Britain’s Cidade de Deus (City of God). Shaun is a 12 year-old who lives with his mother in a small coastal town in England. The year is 1983. Lonely, he desperately misses his father who has been killed in the Falklands War. When his school vacation begins, he meets a gang of skinheads. They offer the friendship and the role models he was looking for. At a party he meets Combo, an older skinhead who has just been released from prison and who takes the boy under his wing. The man’s racist attitude overwhelms Shaun and the other boys, but they look up to him. Soon the gang begins to terrorise minorities in the neighbourhood, especially the ethnic ones.
Restored Glory: Mummy’s Secret Obsession Audiences get the opportunity Sunday to see a screening of a totally restored print of Ivan Cardoso’s horror classic Segredo da Mumia (The Secret of the Mummy). The screening takes places at Palacio 1 at 18.00. A major box office hit at the time of its release in 1982, the film won the Best Director, Best Actor (for Wilson Grey), Best Editing and Best Art Direction prizes at 1982 Brasília Film Festival. Ivan Cardoso was born in Rio in 1952. A photographer and visual artist, he made numerous films in Super 8 during the 1970s. He worked as assistant to filmmakers such as Rogério Sganzerla and Julio Bressane before making his feature-directing debut with Segredo da Mumia (The Secret of the Mummy). Characterised by a combination of horror and comedy, Cardoso also made the box office hits As Sete Vampiras (1986) and O Escorpião Escarlate (1990). After a break from filmmaking in the 1990s, Cardoso returned in 2005 with yet another hit Um Lobisomem na Amazônia. In Segredo da Mumia (The Secret of the Mummy) the mad scientist Dr. Vitus has created what he believes is an Elixir of Life, but the scientific community will not take him seriously. When he discovers the tomb of the mummy Runamb, in Egypt, he decides this is his chance to try out his elixir. But what Dr. Vitus revives in Runamb is his obsession with women. The mummy begins capturing young women for the scientist’s experiments, until he runs into radio announcer Miriam, the reincarnation of Nadja, his lover from three thousand years earlier.
Première Brasil: Is That It or Is There more? Matheus Souza will unveil his first feature Sunday with the competition screening of Apenas O Fim (That’s It) at the Odeon Petrobras at 20.15. Born in Brasília, Souza moved to Rio de Janeiro at the age of 7. It was in weekend movie marathons with his father that he discovered his passion for cinema. At the age of 19, he joined friends from the PUC-Rio Film Course and the theatre group O Tablado, to form the cast and crew of the university’s - and his - first film, Apenas O Fim (That’s It) In Apenas O Fim (That’s It) a girl decides that the time has come to leave her boyfriend and run off to an unknown destination. Before leaving, however, she decides to meet him one last time, but they have only an hour to take a fun overview of their lives to date.
Première Brasil / Scenes of Rio: Life in a Square Paulo works as a high school teacher of literature, his wife Teresa is a local shopkeeper, and their daughter Bel is still at school. They live in a rented flat in Saens Peña Square, in the heart of Tijuca, a neighborhood in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro. An unexpected and alluring job offer for Paolo may have a profound effect on the routine of this family and even jeopardize a 20-year marriage. The story is set in early 2003 and plays out against two historical events of the time, President Lula’s first mandate as President of Brazil, and the US invasion of Iraq. Vinícius Reis’ Saens Peña (Saens Peña Square) screens Sunday at Odeon Petrobras at 22.30, Reis was born in São Paulo in 1970. He moved to Rio in the early 1980s, where he studied theatre with the theatre group O Tablado and began working in the film and TV industries. He wrote and directed the films Gentileza (co-director); Nós do Morro; O Vício da Liberdade (co-director), and the feature film A Cobra Fumou. In addition to his work as a director and scriptwriter, Vinícius also teaches film in Vidigal.
Masahiro Kobayashi’s Bootleg Film Director Masahiro Kobayashi is responsible for five films in the festival retrospective that is celebrating the centenary of Japanese immigration to Brazil. On Sunday (5) he will present Kaizokuban (Bootleg Film) at Estação Botafogo 1 at 18.00. Kaizokuban (Bootleg Film) screened in Un Certain Regard at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. Kobayashi was born in Japan in 1954 and is considered as the “most French of Japanese directors,” his films reflecting the influence of a number of filmmakers, primarily his main idol François Truffaut. Kobayashi started out as a folk singer before migrating to film in the early 1980s. He started out by writing screenplays, especially television dramas. In 1996 he directed his first film, Closing Time which won the Grand Prize at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival. The same year he founded Monkey Town Productions. His three subsequent films all premiered in Cannes: Kaizokuban (Bootleg Film) in 1999 and Aruku-hito (Man Walking on Snow) in 2001, in Un Certain Regard, and Film Noir in the 2000 Directors’ Fortnight. In 2003 his film Amazing Story earned a Special Mention at the Locarno Film Festival. Bashing, his seventh feature premiered in Competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prize at the 2006 Tokyo Filmex. In 2007 Kobayashi won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival for Ai No Yokan (The Rebirth). As well as Sunday’s screening of Kaizokuban (Bootleg Film) Festival do Rio is also screening Aruku-hito (Man Walking on Snow), Closing Time, Bashing, and Ai No Yokan (The Rebirth).
Gay World: The Search for Brazil Prettiest “Girl” Fernanda Tornaghia and Ricardo Bruno’s Rainhas (Queen of Brazil) will screen again Sunday at midnight at Estação Botafogo 1 as part of Gay World. The directors will introduce the evening screening. Rainhas (Queen of Brazil) is the story of Fábio, a young man from the state of Rondônia, in the Brazilian Amazon, who travels to Rio de Janeiro driven by his dream to become the next Miss Brazil Gay. The documentary tells the story of a little-known beauty pageant that inspires young Brazilian men who long to be crowned as the prettiest “girl” in Brazil.
Festival Short Cuts…
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