*Upcoming Brazilian film screenings in the Boston area*
*Lula, the Son of Brazil*
The true story of a working class boy who moves to the nation’s financial
capital at a young age and becomes one of the most influential politicians
in Brazil’s history.
*Friday, June 1st, 7:00 p.m.*
Location: *Brazilian Women’s Group, 569 Cambridge Street, Allston*
In Portuguese with English subtitles.
Free and open to the public.
*Bay of All Saints*
A lyrical documentary about three single mothers living in a favela in
Bahia, Brazil as the government threatens to reclaim the area for
ecological restoration. The director, Annie Eastman, will be present for a
Q&A session.
*Monday, June 4th, 8:00 p.m.*
Location: *Brattle Theatre*, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
In Portuguese with English subtitles.
Tickets $10 ($8 for students and seniors)
*Fulbright Opportunities in Brazil
FREE WEBINAR on Thursday, May 17th, 2:00 p.m.
REGISTER ONLINE at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/784014257*
Up to 49 grants are available in the 2013-14 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program
competition for U.S. academics, professionals, and early and mid-career
researchers to teach and/or conduct research in Brazil.
Emerging from the "Education Partnership for the 21st Century," the
governments of the United States and Brazil, through the U.S.-Brazil
Fulbright Commission, have expanded teaching and research exchange
opportunities for mid-career researchers and senior faculty in the United
States in the areas of science, technology, and innovation through the new
Fulbright-Science Without Borders Core and Distinguished Chair awards. U.S.
scholars will be affiliated with top Brazilian universities and research
centers in their areas of specialization, fostering increased cooperation
and institutional collaboration between applied researchers in the fields
of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Proficiency in
Portuguese or Spanish is not required for Fulbright-Science Without Borders
applicants.
A new Postdoctoral Research Award designed for early career candidates from
any discipline of study will allow scholars to conduct research in support
of their professional development while advancing the scholarly mission of
the hosting institution.
Other opportunities for U.S. academics and professionals include a Social
Sciences and Humanities award, as well as four Distinguished Chair awards
in the following fields: American studies, environmental sciences and
engineering, oil and gas sciences and engineering, and visual arts.
*2nd Annual ARTS@DRCLAS / Harvard Film Archive retrospective*
*Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Cinema Novo and Beyond*
*The 2nd Annual ARTS@DRCLAS / Harvard Film Archive retrospective is
co-sponsored by the DRCLAS Brazil Studies Program, with additional support
from the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard
University.*
April 20th - May 7th
*Harvard Film Archive*, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge
*The director will be present at three of the screenings -- May 4th, 5th,
and 6th at 7:00 p.m.*
*Details:* http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2012aprjun/santos.html
*Contact:* http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/contact.html*
*
*Schedule of Remaining Events:*
*Friday, May 4 at 7pm - **Special Event Tickets $12 - Nelson Pereira dos
Santos in Person
**
*
*Rio, Northern Zone (Rio, Zona Norte)*
Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos. With Grande Otelo, Malu, Jece Valadão
Brazil 1957, 35mm, b/w, 90 min. Portuguese with English subtitles
Setting up the gracefully jarring dichotomies that disrupt dos Santos’
otherwise “traditional” film, the opening credit montage features the
discovery of a body on the train tracks while a cookie-cutter Hollywood
soundtrack idly plays. The injured man is Espírito da Luz Cardoso
(literally “Spirit of the Light”), a struggling composer whose sambas unite
and uplift the marginalized Brazilian people in his midst. Based on the
life of composer Zé Keti – who actually appears in the film as the popular
singer Alaor – Espírito’s story unfolds through flashbacks which overflow
luxuriously with song, yet also expose the manifold divisions within Rio’s
social strata. A victim of exploitive businessmen who suck the life out of
his music, Espírito witnesses each of his dreams dashed one at a time by
unrelenting tragedy. Apparently oblivious to his inherent goodness and
irrepressible joy, the plot of the film – much like capitalism’s surge
through 1950s Rio de Janiero – boldly charges forward leaving true beauty
and vitality lying upon its tracks.
________________________________
*Saturday, May 5 at 7pm - **Special Event Tickets $12 - Nelson Pereira dos
Santos in Person**
*
*How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (Como era gostoso o meu francês)*
Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos. With Ana Maria Magalhães, Arduíno
Colasanti, José Kleber
Brazil 1972, 35mm, color, 84 min. Portuguese with English subtitles
In keeping with Cinema Novo’s reappropriation of Brazilian culture from its
Western absorption, dos Santos travels to the colonial crime scene of 16th
century Brazil. A French Huguenot is captured by the Tupinambá and
participates in their culture for several months prior to his planned
execution. This insider/outsider perspective – similar to that bestowed
upon anthropologists and documentary filmmakers – is one of many methods
dos Santos uses to constantly undermine and call into question narrative
authority. No particular character, sex or culture emerges more “savage”
than the other, no single point of view directs the action, and no heroes
or other cinematic tropes lay claim to the audience’s sympathies. Using a
naturalistic verité camera and interspersing actual historical texts, dos
Santos crafts a thoroughly subversive reevaluation of “official” histories
and mythologies. In the face of subjects who utterly defy objectification
or total comprehension, the audience is forced into actively engaging with
that which they wish to consume.
________________________________
*
Sunday, May 6 at 5pm
Hunger For Love: Have You Ever Sunbathed Completely Nude? (Fome de Amor:
Você nunca tomou sol inteiramente nua?)*
Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos. With Leila Diniz, Arduíno Colasanti,
Irene Stefânia
Brazil 1968, 35mm, b/w, 76 min. Portuguese with English subtitles
An extended research tour of US university film programs introduced dos
Santos to the American avant-garde filmmakers, among them Jonas Mekas and
Stan Brakhage, who would directly inspire his formally radical adaptation
of an allegorical short story about adultery and colonialism by Guilherme
de Figueiredo. Filmed in both Manhattan and Brazil and set against the
background of the Vietnam War and its protests, Hunger for Love uses a
rigorously abstract soundtrack and narrative structure to evoke the acute
paranoia of the period building up to the December 1968 military coup that
tipped Brazil perilously close to a conservative dictatorship. With its
harsh critique of the decadent tendencies of the Sixties counterculture,
Hunger for Love offers a key expression of the self-consciously
“ideological” phase of Cinema Novo.
________________________________
*
Sunday, May 6 at 7pm - **Special Event Tickets $12 - Nelson Pereira dos
Santos in Person
**
Music According to Tom Jobim*
Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos
Brazil 2011, digital video, color & b/w, 88 min. Portuguese with English
subtitles
Santos' latest film is a celebratory documentary tribute to Antonio Carlos
“Tom” Jobim that gathers together a wonderfully wide range of the best
interpretations of Jobim’s now canonical ballads, sung by the likes of Judy
Garland, Ella Fitzgerald and Caetano Veloso.
________________________________
*
Monday, May 7 at 7pm
The Third Bank of the River (A Terceira Margem do Rio)*
Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos. With Ilya São Paulo, Sonia Saurin,
Maria Ribeiro
Brazil/France 1993, 35mm, color, 98 min. Portuguese with English subtitles
After an extended period directing original screenplays, dos Santos
returned to the creative engagement with literature that was the wellspring
of his early masterpieces, offering a combinatory adaptation of five
stories by the renowned Brazilian novelist João Guimarães Rosa. Openly
embracing a mode of magical realism, dos Santos' celebrated film tells the
story of a farming family defined by the absence of its father who abruptly
abandoned his wife and children, sailing away down the river, including his
son who continues to communicate with his father, speaking daily to him
from the river bank. While offering an evocative vision of rural Brazil as
a timeless land of mystery and solemnity, The Third Bank of the River is
also bitingly satiric in the remarkable depiction of religious belief when
the family moves to the city and its youngest member, a mesmerizing little
girl, is revealed to be a kind of saint, capable of miraculous acts. In a
gesture back to his earliest work about rural Brazil, dos Santos cast as
the lonely mother Maria Ribeiro, star of Barren Lives.
*Brazilian Literature Workshop*
*
Nas tramas das letras: uma conversa com Milton Hatoum*
*Milton Hatoum*
Brazilian author
*Wednesday, May 2nd, 2:30-4:00 p.m.*
CGIS South, *Room S-050*, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Note: this workshop will be in Portuguese.
This event is free and open to the public, and registration is not required.
*Co-sponsored by the DRCLAS Brazil Studies Program, the Portuguese section
of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard
University, and the Consulate General of Brazil in Boston.*