Published on December 2, 2008
A still from “Jogo de Cena” (Playing) 2007 by Eduardo Coutinho.
Coutinho ‘interviews’ actress Fernanda Torres in a fake ‘audition.’
Rhythms of Brasilidade
WHAT does it say when one of the filmmakers featured at a documentary film festival is 40 minutes late for his scheduled round-table event? True, it’s Friday night in New York, and it’s storming out. True, Brazilians have a more elastic sense of time, and the filmmaker had just arrived from Brazil. Maybe he had gone to some other event that had run late?
“I’d like to say I went to see a wonderful film from Estonia or Mongolia,” said a sheepish João Moreira Salles when at last he took his seat in the already-started panel. “But I did not. I went to see James Bond.”
So went the second day of Documenta Brazil, a documentary film festival hosted at the King Juan Carlos Center at New York University that featured 23 well-chosen films from 21 contemporary Brazilian filmmakers. Continue reading ‘Documenta Brazil 2008′
in Brazil, Events, Film, Janera.com and Who I Write For.
Published on March 9, 2008
The Rise of a Little Film School in Brazil
AT 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning, students wait anxiously to be buzzed in through the heavy, wrought-iron gates at 142 Rua Dr. Gabriel dos Santos. Beyond lies a large, colonial house with a broad, wrap-around veranda. As students march upstairs to the old-fashioned classrooms, the wide-plank steps creak noisily underfoot. 
By 3p.m., schooled in the basics of documentary film making, they’re back on the street—shooting their first video on a digital video camera.
While this scene might sound typical, these students are not from New York University’s illustrious film school, nor the well-funded School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. They won’t be driving off to Sundance anytime soon. (If they go, they’ll be taking a 10-hour international flight.)
Rather, these students are enrolled at Academia Internacional de Cinema (AIC), a small, independent film school that’s located in the residential Higienópolis neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil.
Continue reading ‘Celluloid Dreams: Sao Paulo’
in Brazil, Features, Film, Janera.com and Travel.
Published on March 30, 2006
published in Poets & Writers magazine, March/April 2006
MOUNTAINS thick with tropical vegetation rise behind the coastal town of Parati, Brazil; the bay spreads before it, dotted with fishing boats. Along the old wooden docks, fishermen, shirtless and shoeless, prepare their nets with quick, strong hands. In streets paved with oversized cobblestones, women serve doces, sweets like maracujá (passion fruit) tarts made with condensed milk. Parati—which, until the 1970s, was accessible only by boat—lies equidistant from Brazil’s major cities, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and is home to the last of Brazilian royalty. it is known throughout Brazil as somewhere special, a retreat and an oasis…. Continue reading about Festa Literaria Internacional de Parati (PDF format).
in Brazil, Events, Features, Poets & Writers, Travel and Who I Write For.
