Freedom in the screen:
Contemporary Brazilian Cinema
and the Issue of Liberation

DESCRIPTION:

Over the past few years several Brazilian films have dealt with the theme of freedom. Some of them view fight for freedom as a collective endeavor –a good example would be Uma onda no ar (Something in the Air), a Belo Horizonte movie about a slum resident that challenges poverty and violence creating an illegal, popular radio station in a local slum. But most consider fight for freedom as being also a personal endeavor to fight illegitimate powers. This can be seen in a recent movie as O bicho tem sete cabeças (Brainstorm), the real story of a Curitiba youngster who had been jailed in a cruel psychiatric hospital. Seven different Brazilian films, as well as two from Argentina and an American one (Minority Report,) will be seen and discussed in order to answer the question: how can one (or a group) face extremely difficult circumstances and free himself (or themselves) from the bonds that kept him or them from something like happiness?

How can we understand an action that can bring freedom, that can empower – and that can do so only insofar as it is concise, elegant, and economical? Each film will resolve differently in order to get rid of power and prepotency. There will be poetical, political, oneiric, romantic solutions. Our aim is to discuss liberty in the context of a world where there are no more prêt-à-porter answers for either personal or collective crises, but they must be created by each one – which does not, however, keep us from benefiting of the experiences other have had beforehand in fighting suffering and pain.

We have decided not to oppose personal and collective freedom. Some films will stress the liberty of an individual to choose his or her own path against external difficulties; others will emphasize the social construction of a common way to fight misery. But all of them depart from a very hard, indeed unbearable context, and show how people fight and eventually triumph making their choices and creating some sort of social bond, even if it is a micro-social, and no a macro-social, bond.

These movies are very diverse – and the Brazilian ones have been shot in very different parts of Brazil – but they all deal with the liberty of people to fight hard circumstances. They can help us to discuss the meaning and the dimensions of an action that can eventually bring liberty to people, either as individuals or as a collective.

NB – If any of the films in this syllabus is not available with English sub-titles, it will be replaced by another one.

REQUIREMENTS:

This class will be conducted in English, but students are required to be able to read and understand Portuguese.

A final research paper of 15 pages is required.

READINGS:

Readings are available at the Center for Brazilian Studies.

Session 1 – Wednesday, January 21

Abril despedacado (Behind the Sun), a film by Walter Salles, 2001. It is an adaptation, set in Brazilian Northeast, of a novel by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. A young man must follow the vendetta rules even if he does not believe in them. The movie ends in a way that contrasts with the ending of the book.   Readings: Ismail Kadare, Broken April (you could also read File on H, H meaning the Greek poet Homer); Pedro Butcher, Ana L Muller and Walter Sales, Abril despedaçado – historia de um filme. Roteiro, Sao Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001; Peristiany (ed.), Honour and shame – the values of Mediterranean society¸1966; Renato Janine Ribeiro, A etiqueta no Antigo Regime, 1999; Mônica Carvalho, inedit paper available to the students.

Session 2 – Wednesday, January 28

O bicho de sete cabecas (Brainstorm), a film by Lais Bodanzky, 2000. It is the true story of a teen-ager that was jailed in a clinical hospital in Paraná State but was able to free himself. Readings: Thomas Szasz, The myth of mental illness.

Session 3 – Wednesday, February 4

El Hijo de la Novia (Son of the Bride). An Argentinian film by Juan José Campanella, 2001. A man facing several problems in his family, love and business lives does his best to face them. Love is an important question in this film. Readings: TBA

Session 4 - Wednesday, February 11 or 18

Carandiru, Based on a book by medical doctor Drauzio Varella, who worked for several years in this enormous prison in the city of Sao Paulo (recently imploded). Several stories intertwine themselves, ending in the rebellion of the prisoners in the end of September, 1992. Police intervened and killed 111 inmates. Readings: Drauzio Varella, Estacao Carandiru.

Session 5 - Wednesday, February 25

Terra Estrangeira (Foreign Land) Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas. Maybe the saddest film of the course, and incidentally the only one in B&W, it was one of the very few to be shot under Fernando Collor’s presidency, which almost put an end to Brazilian film-making. Brazil appears as a country to run away from.  Readings: TBA

Session 6 - Wednesday, March 3

Minority Report. This well known American film interests us insofar as the main male character is a man destroyed by the awful memories of his kidnapped – and maybe murdered – son: it is only when he learns to cope with his personal tragedy that he ceases to be manipulated by his boss.  Sorrow means bondage. Readings: TBA; Spinoza, Ethics.

Session 7 - Wednesday, March 10

Desmundo, a film by Alain Fresnot, 2002. Around 1560 some Portuguese orphans are sent to the newly-founded city of Sao Paulo in order to marry the settlers. Gender oppression, enslavement of Indians, unhappiness of men and repression towards Jewish religion are among the themes of this recent movie, based on a novel by Brazilian writer Ana Miranda. Readings: Ana Miranda, Desmundo, 1996; Sergio Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil.

Note: if this film is not available with English sub-titles, we might replace it by Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens). An Argentinian comedy about small crimes and treacheries employed to face a huge national crisis. Readings: TBA

Session 8 - Wednesday, March 17

Eu tu eles (Me You Them) Andrucha Waddington 2000. Based on the true story of a woman who lives simultaneously with her three husbands, in rural Brazilian Northeast. Readings: TBA

Session 9 - Wednesday, March 24

Kamchatka (Kamchatka) Marcelo Pyñeiro. An Argentinian movie. The story of a boy that learns to cope with the absence of his father, persecuted by the military who imposed their inhuman rule on Argentina in the 1970s. Readings: TBA

Session 10 - Wednesday, March 31

Uma Onda no Ar (Something in the Air), a film by Helvecio Ratton. We can close the course with a film which is probably the most optimistic of all that have been chosen for this course: in the capital city of Minas Gerais, a young man creates a pirate radio that is instrumental in giving the residents of a local slum a sense of their own dignity. Readings:  TBA