My contact with the Brazilian generation who have been releasing their first feature films during the course of the twenty‐first century proved decisive for me during the Tiradentes Exhibition, which is one of Brazil's most important film...
moreMy contact with the Brazilian generation who have been releasing their first feature films during the course of the twenty‐first century proved decisive for me during the Tiradentes Exhibition, which is one of Brazil's most important film festivals, which I first attended in 2009. I chose to go along above all in order to attend the pre‐screenings of A Fuga da Mulher Gorila/The Escape of the Female Gorilla (2009), directed by Felipe Bragança and Marina Meliande, and No Meu Lugar/In my Place (2009), directed by Eduardo Valente. I'd already heard about the changes that had taken place at the Tiradentes Exhibition as a result of Cléber Eduardo's curatorship. During the week I spent at Tiradentes I was absorbed by the debates which transcended the customary rather monotonous discussions about the creative process and the bitter experience of production which in the past had driven me away from this type of event at exhibitions and festivals. More than the discussions in themselves or any film in particular, though, what aroused my curiosity was the atmosphere at the exhibition – the desire to make a new type of cinema. No, it was no longer simply the gesture of self‐affirmation to do something after the cultural dismantlement brought about by President Fernando Collor de Mello in 1990–1992 which brought the Brazilian film industry to its knees such that it hardly produced any more full‐length feature films. And it wasn't anything like the film-makers of the cinema da retomada (a new type of national cinema), such as Carla Camurati, Walter Salles, and Fernando Meirelles, who came on the scene at the end of the 1990s. No, this was a brand new Brazilian cinema – garage cinema – and it expressed a completely different space. that it hardly produced any more full‐length feature films.2 And it wasn’t anything like the film- makers of the cinema da retomada (a new type of national cinema), such as Carla Camurati, Walter Salles, and Fernando Meirelles, who came on the scene at the end of the 1990s.3 No, this was a brand new Brazilian cinema – garage cinema – and it expressed a completely different space. Indeed, garage cinema has allowed me to reconnect with Brazilian cinema in a way that had only happenedfor me once before with the postmodern or neon‐realist cinema of the 1980s.4 At that time the dictatorship was coming to an end. Indeed, when I went to university in 1984, I came across those urban films that were not intimidated by genre cinema and had come a long way since cinema novo,5 and they made me feel like I belonged existentially to the films being made in Brazil at that time. This was not because of any reverence I might have had for the films themselves or because of their historical significance – in relation to the past – but because I felt they just were the sort of films I would have made if I had been a filmmaker.
I returned to the Tiradentes Exhibition in 2010 when I was invited to take part as a jury member. The prize for Best Film was awarded to Estrada para Ythaca/Road to Ythaca (2010), directed by Luiz Pretti, Ricardo Pretti, Pedro Diógenes, and Guto Parente, and the fascination returned – but now there was a whole new set of questions. Yes, it was a lot easier now than in the past to make films with a group of friends, even without raising financing for production and post‐production. Alongside the prize for Best Film I should also mention the significance of the prize awarded to O Céu sobre os Ombros/The Sky Above (2010) directed by Sérgio Borges, at the Brasilia Festival, also in 2010, along with the national as well as international splash caused by O Som ao Redor/Neighbouring Sounds (2012), directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. But what were the aims of these films? What I saw spoke of an impasse which simply became more and more pronounced.
Fast‐forward a few years and those rookie filmmakers were no longer the newcomers. And what do you do when you are no longer a promising young filmmaker? The critic and writer Silviano Santiago once told me in a conversation that the contemporary Brazilian artist has to choose between failure, success, or the fringe.6 If I remember correctly, in Santiago’s opinion, failure meant being an independent artist, success meant working in the media, above all in TV, and the fringe meant a university job. Of course none of those choices came, or indeed come, with ready‐made values; they simply express the ethical dilemmas that each artist has to face up to even if it is a case of deciding in the darkness of his room whether he will keep plugging away at it or throw in the towel. Perhaps these dilemmas should be understood not as permanent choices or what each artist might judge as success or failure but rather as the way in which society constructs the artist and positions him within that society. That is, it is more a question of how the artist is perceived by Brazilian society nowadays. Brazilian society is, after all, distinguished by a cult of celebrity, a concentration of large entertain- ment conglomerates as well as a proliferation of alternative production and distribution outlets.
Failure as an ethical and aesthetic attitude could be seen as a key to unlock the meaning of not only Estrada para Ythaca but a number of Brazil’s first‐feature films made in the years since 2010, which have been grouped together under the rubric of garage cinema (Ikeda and Lima 2011, 2012) or post‐industrial cinema (Migliorin 2011) – to this day the secondary literature on this film movement is still sparse, consisting of a sprinkling of short newspaper reviews and a few Master’s dissertations. Radically different from the cinema da retomada of the second half of the 1990s, which sought to reach a large audience by achieving a pragmatic balance between genre‐based cinema and high‐quality production values,7 garage cinema seeks to create an alternative dramaturgy and staging based on reduced production costs by using digital supports and by relying on alternative distribution outlets – based on an increased use of festivals, exhibitions, and cineclubs – rather than the large distribution networks which have a reduced number of film releases and are dominated by North American blockbusters or Brazilian comedies. It is more than simply a change in production methods or a change in the make‐up of the teams – professionals are now chosen from various regions in Brazil. Garage cinema seeks to recuperate the collective as a way of life which needs to be better understood within the film world (Migliorin 2012). Offering a counterpoint to programmes which are focused on individual auteurs,8 the search for collective experiences on the modern stage is as old as the avant‐garde (see Bishop 2012), which itself sought to integrate participative, collaborative, and relational proposals into its art forms (Bourriaud 2002). It is a programme which is present, indeed, in Brazil’s diverse languages, and it has been explored in greater depth in the fields of the visual arts, thea- tre, and performance rather than in film. Despite the experience of many filmmakers who have collaborated on each other’s film projects – and this has been common in Brazil since at least the days of cinema novo – it is true to say that when Estrada para Ythaca was released what caught everyone’s attention was the breaking down of hierarchies and the fact that the four directors were present during the filming and making of the film, and even played their part as actors and performers in the film.
