VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS * Originally published at Cinética in September 2016. Bull and glow There are many ways one can enter the world of Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull, but one that I find particularly fruitful hides behind a discreet casting choice: Vinícius Oliveira as Junior, a character who appears in the second half of the […]
Brazilian Cinema
Housekeeping
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS . Writing does not always come easy during the quarantine, so I have taken the lockdown as an opportunity for some critical feng shui. I have completely reorganized the website, and the new set up makes it easier to find my writings – some of them dating back to 2007. The list is […]
Veredas Tropicais
My friends at Cinema Tropical – a non-profit organization devoted to the promotion of Latin American cinema in North America – invited me to write a weekly quarantine column for their website, recommending Brazilian films that can be streamed online. Check out the first installment of Veredas Tropicais, where I recommend Gabriel Martins’ excellent short […]
Batguano (2014), Tavinho Teixeira
Tavinho Teixeira, the director of Sol Alegria, which was screened as part of Veredas – A Generation of Brazilian Filmmakers at Lincoln Center in December, has put his previous feature, the delightful Batguano (2014), for free streaming on Vimeo, with English subtitles. I’ve come to appreciate the film even more since I first saw it, in 2014, and […]
An interview with Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles
Filmmaker Magazine invited me to do an interview with filmmakers Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles to celebrate the U.S. release of Bacurau. Here’s the interview in the original Portuguese. * * * A Filmmaker Magazine me convidou para fazer uma entrevista com os cineastas Kleber Mendonça Filho e Juliano Dornelles para comemorar o lançamento de Bacurau nos […]
An interview with André Novais Oliveira
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS A mark of the everyday In April 2019, André Novais Oliveira was in New York for the screening of his latest feature, Long Way Home (Temporada, 2018) at New Directors/New Films, after its premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. I’ve been following Novais’ work since 2010, when his astounding short film Ghosts […]
Beyond the future
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS The year starts with good news for researchers interested in contemporary Brazilian cinema: Mostra de Tiradentes, the first big event of the Brazilian festival calendar, has uploaded this year’s main roundtables as podcasts on Spotify. Of course, understanding Portuguese (and, for one of the podcasts, Spanish) is required, but I’ll take this […]
The Moving Creatures (O Que se Move, 2013), Caetano Gotardo
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS * Originally published at Cinética in May, 2013. Half-open window The Moving Creatures, Caetano Gotardo’s debut feature film, begins with Pedro (Wandré Gouveia) seated in bed, with his back turned to a half-open window – open enough to allow a poisonous breeze to come in and spread across the whole film. We’ll […]
Veredas Deluxe
The experience at Veredas – A Generation of Brazilian Filmmakers has been so rewarding that I would like to stretch it a little longer. Whether you’ve seen or not Gabriel Martins’ and Maurilio Martins’ terrific In the Heart of the World (2019), which was featured in the program at Film at Lincoln Center, Contagem (2010) […]
Veredas – A Generation of Brazilian Filmmakers at Lincoln Center
A few months ago, my friends at Cinema Tropical – a non-profit dedicated to the promotion of Latin American cinema in the U.S. – reached out to me with the idea of programming a series of Brazilian films. Carlos Gutierrez and Mary Jane Marcasiano had the same impression I had: Brazilian cinema had been generating […]