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Brazil Competitive Exhibition - Presentation |
A competitive showing should not been seen as an Olympic dispute among the films shown. It must be an opportunity to show a view over current cinema, and at the same time, to put it up for debate. Its relevance will get bigger in proportion to the distance between the view, which guides is composition, and the abstract ideal of the choice of the best films; and also to the challenge of showing the viewers a meaningful sample of current cinema. The role of the committee is to conjugate the general (the current state of cinema) with the particular, the films themselves. It is also to establish a critical reflection about the present time of movie art from the films presented for selection. And to make questions rise from the movies: that they impose themselves to the selection rather than to be subjected to it; but instead, with current problems and questions. It is necessary to notice which work says more about the current state of cinema and the world; and to reveal to the viewers eyes, subject and agent of the present. This is the biggest characteristic (and most difficult) of the composition of a competitive show: to traverse between present and future. Choosing among the movies from nowadays (with the criteria of the present) films which demonstrates the strength to resist time and to achieve the future as indelible characteristics of the short film of 2011. The strength that makes these works resist the passage of time is the ability they have to tell us about the present time, the movie and the world from now. Short films are like the words of a short letter that we, from the present, send to the future, containing our way of seeing and making movies. Brazilian cinema, due to the diffusion of digital technologies, started to produce exponentially a greater number of feature films in the last decade. However, the short film continues to be privileged territory to detect desires and research of Brazilian filmmakers. In this competitive showing at the International Short Film Festival of Belo Horizonte we can have a significant sample of national cinema and the current Brazilian reality. In this context, diversity imposes itself. Diversity of cinema strategies, with films explicitly narrative, as well as experimental, based on plastic expression of the image; furthermore, there are also documentaries, and even false documentaries. To get an idea of the range of possibilities of Brazilian cinema in 2011, we have in the competitive showing a film made with images of video games and another one composed of montages of VHS tapes from anonymous home moments. We could point out, briefly, three aspects of recent production that will be present in this selection for the competitive showing: the work with figures and conventions of film genres such as horror, fantasy and suspense (for example present in films such as “Para eu dormir tranquilo”, “Náufragos” and “O hóspede”, as well as the performance from the collection of the world pre-existing images “Roberto cabeção” and "Film Pornografizme". Finally, we find ways of questioning the documentary and the presence of the real and spontaneous. There are fictions marked by improvising “O último dia” and documentaries marked by the staging “Ovos de dinossauro na sala de estar” and “Canoa quebrada”. It is significant that the film more accustomed to the traditional form of the documentary is done with images of the virtual game Second Life “As aventuras de Paulo Bruscky”. And there is, above all, the own brightness of the works, that private world that each one introduces. Each movie is a country of its own and our immersion in it only grows the more it invites us and takes us out of our own world. No doubt in this selection we have films that deal with aspects of current Brazilian reality and cinema. Above all, we have, in this selection, movies that present a reality and an absolutely special and unique cinema. The purpose most of all is the spectator. Between the past of the selection and the future of interpretations, the only time it matters is the present time of the projection, the instant in which issues and images are carried out, and that remains within each one as an eternal dream. This is the maximum power of cinema. And nothing more can be expected while displaying and making movies.
Affonso Uchoa, Bruno Vasconcelos, Gracie Santos e Ricardo Alves Jr.
Selection Committee – Brazilian Short Films
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