DocBrazil Film Festival 2013: “Faces of Brazil”

Posted: August 17th, 2012 | | Film & Movie Reviews | Tags: 2 Kolegas, Brazil, Brazil on Wheels, Capoeira Beijing, DocBrazil Film Festival, Faces of Brazil, G-Dot Art Space Beijing, Homesick, Letters to Angola, Mandiga in Manhattan, Marighella, Paralaxis, Raffles-BIFT, The City of Women, Utopia and Barbarian, We Are Zumbi | No Comments »

With the London 2012 Olympics out of the way, the world's attention will now shift over to Brazil as we approach the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

A great way to get familiar with a culture is through its creative platforms and the 2012 DocBrazil Festival, a Brazilian Documentary Film Festival in China, is a perfect opportunity to become better acquainted with Brazilian cultural heritage.

"DocBrazil is a creative platform that surpasses a film experience, developed its partnerships and program of paralel activities in order to attract a wider audience to participate in the celebration of the image of Brazil around the world. Created to promote and disseminate the image of Brazil and its elegance, the festival is aiming to fill gaps, attract new audiences, overcome stereotypes and promote closer cultural exchanges."

Since the first DocBrazil edition was held in December 2010, they have since held two editions, fifteen documentaries and Brazilian multiculturalism have been taken to six Chinese cities: Beijing, Tianjing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Macao.

In this third edition of DocBrazil Festival, the theme "Faces of Brazil" encompasses an inclusive, comprehensive and multi-cultural way, an environment for exchanges, dialogues and reflections generated from the topics presented in the documentaries, activities and workshops, offering a chance to work and to reflect on Brazilian culture in a greater detail.

"Apart from the movie experience, DocBrazil Festival and Raffles International College-BIFT has cooperated in these two previous editions to offer an exclusive collection of posters created by a team of Chinese and foreign designers established in Beijing. The purpose is to discover, through the perception of the group, the image that contemporary Brazil conveys."

In addition to this partnership with Raffles International College-BIFT with its collection of posters, "Faces of Brazil" has also partnered up with Paralaxis for video art, G-Dot Art Space Beijing for graffiti art, Capoeira workshops and scheduled performances with local musicians and DJs, who will present their own interpretation of Brazilian music with some Chinese influence.

Selected Film Synopses:

The City of Women

Directed by Lázaro Faria

The film is a response to Ruth Landes, an anthropologist from North America. In 1939, she went to Bahia to make a research on the black race and was surprised by the strength and sovereignty that Candomblé women had in a matriarchal organization. Her thoughts are the cradle of this documentary, illustrated by pictures of African religions and festivals, the famous priestesses ("mães de santo") and the lush beauty of the city of Salvador.

Letters to Angola

Directed by Coraci Ruiz and Julio Matos

Located at the opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, Brazil and Angola have many things in common -the same language, a colonial history and many shared stories. In this film, the people who are separated by the Ocean exchange letters – some are longtime friends, others have never met each other. Their stories are intertwined and are based on migration, longing, belonging, war, prejudice, exile,and distance. The search for identity and the tread of memory are conducted by the affection's line, uniting the seven pairs of interlocutors presented in the documentary: people who traced their life stories between Brazil, Angola and Portugal.

Mandiga in Manhattan

Directed by Lázaro Faria

Mandinga in Manhattan reflects the expansion of Brazilian martial art – Capoeira – throughout the world and its reflux to Bahia, having as main characters the greatest masters still active. The film is divided into three parts, telling the story of Capoeira with reports of the masters João Grande and João Pequeno. It also shows the Brazilian Capoeira's movement to oversea areas in the 1980s, a time that Capoeira spreaded worldwide, being present in about 150 countries. Finally, the film presents the results of this expansion in terms of positive image for Brazil, which made Salvador, the capital of Bahia, a center of Capoeira in the world.

Marighella

Directed by Isa Grinspum Ferraz

Carlos Marighella was a Communist leader, suffered from imprisonment and torture, was a Parliamentary member and the author of the worldwide translated "Manual do Guerrilheiro Urbano". He was involved in the main political events in Brazil between 1930 and 1969, and was considered the number one public enemy of the military dictatorship. But who was this man, mulatto from Bahia, also a poet, a seducer and a lover of Samba, football and beach, whose name was unpublishable for decades?  This film, directed by his niece, is a historical and affectionate work on a man who dedicated his life to thinking about Brazil and transforming it through his own action.

Homesick

Directed by Marco Antonio Ribeira Alves, Caetana Britto, Fernando Uehara

Poetic relationships between sound and image from landscapes of memory – traces of significant places and times – from different people.

Brazil on Wheels

Directed by Sérgio Bloch

Many people from different Brazilian cities make a living by doing professional activities independently, without employment or social security. It creates an economy that today represents forty percent of national income. Among those people, approximately fifteen percent use the street as a workspace. Brazil on Wheels reflects the daily life of those characters who pull, push or ride a vehicle and make a living in the streets of several cities. The film seeks to establish a relationship between the wheel movement and the inconstancy of life itself, particularly for those who do not have a job and use creativity and ability to survive.

Utopia and Barbarian

Directed by Silvio Tendler

The film portrays and interprets the world after World War II and its transformations, examining the utopias that were brought to life and the barbarism that marked it. It describes the utopias dismantling of the dreamy generation of 1968 and analyzes the creation of new utopias in this globalized world.

We Are Zumbi

Directed by Coletivo 3 de Fevereiro

We Are Zumbi proposes a reflection on racial issues in contemporary Brazilian society and the creation of artistic strategies to address these issues by putting in daily life the new ways of looking, thinking and acting.

"Faces of Brazil" – 2012 Theme of the DocBrazil Festival

All of the selected documentaries have subtitles in Mandarin and in English and the Festival will be held in September across varies cities throughout the month.

In Beijing, the DocBrazil festival will be held at 2Kolegas on September 1st and 2nd.

To watch an introductory video about DocBrazil, click vimeo link here.  Official DocBrazil Festival Website here.

Read More @ Source