Documentary Films in Competition 2001 / 2000 Nordestes / Brazil 2000
This documentary about the inhabitants of northern Brazil takes an essayistic, rather than a sociological, look at a poor region whose attraction lies in the combination of rich, age-old traditions and modern influences connected to ever-present globalisation. Workers, fishermen, street vendors, farmers, men, women, children – these are the protagonists of a collective portrait offering a humorous and critically distant glimpse of the everyday reality of northern Brazil. Incorporating original Afro-Brazilian dance music (maracantu) into their work allowed the filmmakers to more objectively depict the protagonists’ often economically trying daily lives. The people of Juazeiro, Bahia, Paraíba and Pernambuco are moving into the new millennium to its rhythms: full of hope, apprehensions and dreams – the latter as often moulded by TV soap operas as by reality. Like Wim Wenders’ documentary Buena Vista Social Club, Mendez and Amorim shot their film digitally and then transferred it to 35 mm.
70 min / Black & white, 35 mm
Director Vicente Amorim, David França Mendes
/ Screenplay David Franca Mendes
/ Dir. of Photography Rodrigo Monte
/ Music Leleo and David Villefort
/ Editor Pedro Amorim, Gustavo Cascon
/ Producer Lucy and Luiz Carlos Barreto
/ Production LC Barreto
David Franća Mendes has worked as a film and television director since 1990. He wrote and co-directed (with Vicente Amorim) the short film Vaidade! (1990), and shot the shorts Lona and O Curinga by himself. In 1996, he received an Honourable Mention from the Sundance Institute for the screenplay to his film A Hora Erada. Vicente Amorim, in addition to directing (e.g. TV commercials), has used his experience in the films Moon Over Parador (dir. by Paul Mazursky), Playing at the Fields of God (dir. by Hector Babenco) and Tieta do Agreste (dir. by Carlos Diegues). He co-directed Two Billion Hearts, the official film of the ’94 World Cup. The script for his first independent dramatic film, A Road in the Clouds, was co-written by David Mendes.
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