VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS Originally published at Cinética in December 2010. Fixating process At the time Ne Change Rien premiered at Cannes, Eduardo Valente wrote at Cinética that the film was about two essential components of cinema: light and sound. More than a disagreement, I would suggest taking a step back: Ne Change Rien is definitely […]
Republished
Horse Money (Cavalo Dinheiro, 2014), Pedro Costa
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS * Originally published at Cinética in January 2016. The inner outside Only a few minutes into Pedro Costa’s Horse Money (2014), a disembodied voice off-screen questions Ventura, who’s wearing a robe and socks. Perhaps because of the sparse furnishing, the white walls, and my own lack of imagination, I imagine it’s the voice […]
Neighboring Sounds (O Som ao Redor, 2012), Kleber Mendonça Filho
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS * Originally published at Cinética in March 2013. Political movements Neighboring Sounds is a movie of exceptional adherence. Its actions stick to the world with a grip that finds few parallels in recent cinema – and not only in Brazil – and that explains part of its public resonance (a very significant part […]
Permanent contradiction: a conversation with Adirley Queirós
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS * Originally published at Cinética on August 2015. Interview by Fábio Andrade, Filipe Furtado, Raul Arthuso, Victor Guimarães, and Juliano Gomes. In 2014, we got together with Adirley Queirós during the Olhar de Cinema festival in Curitiba for a conversation that lasted two and a half hours. From a journalistic point of […]
Fengming (He Fengming, 2007), Wang Bing
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS * Originally published at Cinética on March 2008. Three hours of life Watching Fengming is an unrepeatable experience – and this has little to do with how hard it can be to find the film. It is unrepeatable because of its monumentality. First of all, the film is monumental for a structural […]
Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2OO3), Wang Bing
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS * Originally published at Cinética in May 2008. |Time traveler| Shenyang is being dismantled. Once an industrial center which produced armaments for the Japanese army, the city was repurposed around a steel industry with the Cultural Revolution. Home to more than 2 million Chinese, Shenyang is observed by Wang Bing between […]
Last Conversations (Últimas Conversas, 2015), Eduardo Coutinho
* Originally published at Cinética in August 2015. VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS Fade out A simple yet quietly revealing statement serves as the film’s introduction: Last Conversations is the title Eduardo Coutinho could not have chosen for this film, for it only makes sense after his passing. It is also a title that’s faithful to his descriptive […]
Goodbye to Language (Adieu au Langage, 2014), Jean-Luc Godard
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS * Article originally published in Eugênio Puppo & Mateus Araújo (ed.) Godard Inteiro ou o Mundo em Pedaços (São Paulo: Heco Produções, 2015), 280. Translation from Portuguese by Fábio Andrade. One of the few artistic strategies that have survived the many distinct phases of Jean Luc-Godard’s work is the pun. Often associated with comedy, for Godard the […]
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), Chantal Akerman
* Originally published at Cinética, December 14th, 2017. VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS Everything happens The book by the Brazilian researcher and scholar Ivone Margulies on the work of Chantal Akerman holds in its title a synthesis of what’s required of the spectator by a film such as Jeanne Dielman: nothing happens. The title is a witty […]
The Process of Truth
* Originally published at Cinética in August 2011, and first translated into English in March 2013. VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS In What is the Contemporary?, Giorgio Agamben points out the discrepancy to one’s historical moment as an essential feature of the truly contemporary person. “But precisely because of this condition, precisely through this disconnection and this anachronism, they are […]