VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS Burying our living Halfway through the third story of Mariano Llinás’ wonderful composite-film La Flor (2019), Dreyfuss (Horacio Marassi), a kidnapped German scientist who finds himself tied in the backseat of a car in an unknown land, connects the dots of what he had gone through up until that point and tries […]
A post-colonial situation?
* Originally published at the catalog of Mostra CineBH in September 2019. Translation from original Portuguese by Victor Guimarães. VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS November 19, 1960: the film critic Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes publishes in his column at Suplemento Literário one of his most celebrated contributions to the thinking about Brazilian cinema. Titled “A colonial situation?” – […]
The Irishman (2019), Martin Scorsese
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS The future of a past On at least two occasions during The Irishman, the latest work by Martin Scorsese, the camera tracks forward between the exterior and the interior of a location, “crossing” a car windshield in one of them, and the glass door of a diner in the other. The movement […]
BFI London Film Festival
Two films I had the fortune of working on will be part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival. Eryk Rocha’s Burning Night (Breve Miragem de Sol) will have its world premiere at the festival. I had a terrific time working with the director on the screenplay of the film, setting up a dramatic foundation […]
Nocturama (2016), Bertrand Bonello
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS In flames On Thursday I rewatched, for the third time, one of the most striking films of the past few years: Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama, which Film at Lincoln Center included in their 50th Mixtape: Free Double Feature program, alongside Lee Chang-dong’s Burning (2018). The contrast between the two was revelatory. Lee Chang-dong’s […]
Come Drink With Me (Da zui xia, 1966), King Hu
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS Full stop Come Drink With Me is the perfect example of the modernity of King Hu’s cinema. A landmark wuxia that inaugurated a tradition of female protagonists in the genre, the film plots an intricate rhythmic pattern in which the tightly choreographed outbursts of action are interrupted by long pauses of near-stasis, […]
Carlos Adriano’s “cinepoemas”
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS Since 2014, the filmmaker Carlos Adriano has released a singular series titled Apontamentos para uma Autocinebiografia (em Regresso) – Sketch Notes for a Self Biopic (in Regress). Originally released as standalone films at both local and international film festivals, the entire series is now presented alongside Festejo Muito Pessoal (A Very Personal […]
A tribute to Luiz Rosemberg Filho
My friends at Cinema Tropical asked me to write a short tribute to the great Luiz Rosemberg Filho, who passed away 10 days ago. Here’s a Portuguese translation of the piece. Uma vida inconformada: Luiz Rosemberg Filho (1943-2019) A trajetória do cineasta Luiz Rosemberg Filho é marcada pelo ritmo de um passo que atravessa o compasso. […]
“Ava Yvy Vera” at the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities website
I’m thrilled to join Dana Khromov, Valeria Meiller, Sebastián Figueroa, and Ashley Brock in a series of articles called “Reframing Humans, Animals and Land in Contemporary Brazilian and Argentinan Cinema,” published at the website of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities. My piece explores the use of landscape in the 2017 film Ava Yvy Vera […]
An evening with André Novais Oliveira at NYU
On Friday, the cycle on Latin American cinema at NYU will wrap with a screening of three short films by André Novais Oliveira, one of the greatest Brazilian filmmakers to start working in the past decade. His first short film, Fantasmas (Ghosts, 2009) is one of my very favorite films, and I’m happy more people will get […]