Ocupacao ROGÉRIO SGANZERLA
Ideas and images of one of Brazil’s most important filmmakers is what Itaú Cultural is staging in the Ocupação Rogério Sganzerla [Rogério Sganzerla Occupation] exhibition. Films, documents, and typed original screenplays with handwritten marks and changes make visitors dive into the creative universe of Sganzerla’s work. Notes about and references to the artists and characters that inspired Sganzerla are also found along this journey illustrated with photos and memorabilia. This magazine is another element integrating this exhibition. It brings texts recently written by those who lived and worked with Rogério Sganzerla and also shared energy, experiences, feelings, works, ideas, and films with him. By giving careful attention to sound and skillfully building images interwoven with poetry, Sganzerla made the world turn the spotlight on the history of Brazilian cinema in a different way. The story of the roads Sganzerla took and the difficulties he faced along his career is found in the articles, the interview, and photographs and drawings seen on the following pages. This is an affectionate tribute to the filmmaker who, at the age of 23, made O Bandido da Luz Vermelha, which appears in UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage list. Instituto Itaú Cultural
imagem: frame do filme O Bandido da Luz Vermelha
The Pre-Occupation of a Visionary By Joel Pizzini
Sganzerla is in the air, on the screen, and on paper. The Ocupação Sganzerla [Sganzerla Occupation] exhibition discloses the view of a corner on Avenida Paulista, evokes the signs of chaos, crosses the black danger divide of the abyss, and sheds light on the shadows of darkness through the mystery of creation. The destiny that awaited this kid was not written anywhere; a kid who did not speak until he was five, who published a book of stories at seven, and at 11 was preparing his first feature-length screenplay. His mother, Dona Zenaide, tells that back in his childhood in the state of Santa Catarina, Rogério liked to pretend he was a magician and to hypnotize his friends. However, it would have never crossed her mind that her son would make his way to the world. He would take ‘cinema out of the toy room’ and reveal, in four films, truths and lies of the Magician Welles’s stint in Brazil. Sganzerla’s high interest in films blossomed when he was 13, while going to Colégio dos Irmãos Maristas in Florianópolis, where Father Andreotti, realizing that that schoolboy had little inclination to physical activities, encouraged him to attend the film club, whose collection included works ranging from John Ford and Rene Claire to Rossellini. The talent for cinema took shape in 1961, when Sganzerla moved to São Paulo after a tragic car accident in Joaçaba. At age 15, he decided to live in a boarding house. He spent hours digging up old films in film libraries while studying law at Mackenzie University, which he eventually dropped out when Décio de Almeida invited him to write for the renowned Literary Supplement of O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper. Film reviewing merged so much with his filmmaking engagement that it came to a point where no more distinction could be drawn between ‘writing about cinema and writing cinema.’ Later, a film page by Sganzerla and Maurice Capovilla debuted in Jornal da Tarde newspaper. Sganzerla also started writing for Visão magazine and Folha da Tarde and Última Hora newspapers. At that time, he met Andrea Tonacci and made his first fiction film. It was curiously called Documentário and given the hotly contested JB-Mesbla Award, which he received from the hands of actress Helena Ignez, his future wife and partner. The award was his ticket to Cannes and he capitalized on it by covering the film festival. On the way back home, he wrote the screenplay for O Bandido da Luz Vermelha still aboard the ship. The rest of the story is no secret. Everyone knows Sganzerla’s erratic career from this point onwards: released in 1967, O Bandido had a great impact,
won various prizes at the Festival de Brasília, became an outsider classic and, as though that were not enough, became a hit with the public, hence realizing Oswald de Andrade’s utopia – making refined cookies for the delight of the masses. The film, above all, is prophetic about the dictatorship authoritative act AI-5 – (‘a state of emergency is declared in the country,’ intones the radio announcer) and innovates by incorporating pop, kitsch, clichés, sub-genres, and comic-book imagery. When everyone thought Sganzerla would be overshadowed by his own myth, in 1969 he risked all he had on the popular and sophisticated A Mulher de Todos, a daring model of Sganzerla’s industry for the Brazilian audiovisual scene – according to his partner and friend Júlio Bressane. With an excellent screenplay, A Mulher de Todos clearly demonstrates the talent of Helena Ignez, who revolutionized the art of acting pushing away the boundaries of the frame. This was followed by the radicalism of the 1970s adopted by Belair production company, which ignored the existing dryness in Brazil and produced six feature films – striking journeys completed after three months on the road. Sganzerla made three gems: Carnaval na Lama (which vanished when taken for screening at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, in 1992); Copacabana, Mon Amour; and Sem Essa, Aranha. However, while they were filming with a free perspective, breaking narrative knots, the storm clouds gathered and Rogério, Helena, and Júlio were forced into exile in the Old World, where they finished part of the films eventually shown in London. Back in the tropics, following the way paved by the counterculture movement and resorting to his unique preColombian method, Sganzerla shot Abismu, a leap in the dark that still reverberates 30 years later as a fresh work with soundtrack by Jimi Hendrix and Zé Bonitinho’s transcendental performance. Did the dream end? In the upheaval of the strange 1980s, a period of the end of dictatorship, the revival of democracy, and globalization, only one citizen could save us: Welles, certainly alongside three major icons of Sganzerla’s cinema: Hendrix (since Abismu), Oswald de Andrade (Perigo Negro), and Noel Rosa, who inspired two films: Noel por Noel (1980) and Isto É Noel (1990). In this way, Rogério Sganzerla threw himself body and soul into composing a tetralogy on the stint of American filmmaker Orson Welles in Brazil in the 1940s, when the It’s All True project was aborted for being taken as a threat to the political interests between Brazil and the US under a
questionable ‘good relationship.’ It was in the first film-editing session of Signo do Caos in São Paulo that I got closer to Rogério, whom I had met in 1980 during my university days in Curitiba. My Journalism-course classmates and I had seen the screening of Rogério’s film Brasil and a discussion with him followed. From then on, we saw each other briefly. Those, however, were occasions of intense lunatic chats for me. What mysteries surround Rogério? A naughty boy as a child, an internationalist, a versitle filmmaker who moved to a big city determined to break bureaucratized minds and change the tune of those speaking with one contented voice with a cynical and utopian approach in the contemporary audiovisual scene. For the first time in our country, a significant part of the vast intellectual and creative work of Rogério Sganzerla is gathered to be seen with free eyes and attentive sensitivity (to paraphrase Oswald de Andrade). Sganzerla’s memorabilia are on show and his life and work are revealed in the never-produced screenplays and notebooks through which one could envisage that boy growing into a film critic in his teens. Ocupação Sganzerla consists of niches and sequences that show the career of the artist, man, and thinker. Without strictly following the chronology of the events, the exhibition mirrors Sganzerla’s cinematic logic with the freely coexistence of time, ideas, forms, and sounds. As this is about a transgressive artist who permanently broke schemes, we decided to signal instead of setting boundaries. This ensures focus on the enigmatic dimension of his
writings and films. The nostalgic mood is avoided in the exhibition spaces for the great stars here are the pictorial and graphic elements in Sganzerla’s work. Four screens present films that seek connections in Sganzerla’s filmography, evidencing his style, the characteristics of the characters, and striking dialogs. The exhibition backbone offers the visitor a sensorial experience that is mainly aimed at kindling interest through a retrospective look at Sganzerla’s work. The exhibition itself extends beyond the physical space to include the virtual realm, where a network of dozens of articles posted on the website <www.itaucultural.org.br/ ocupacao> is created. This provides a better understanding of Sganzerla’s existential and inventive universe and thus expands the reach of his work. In the prospection and research phase, about 4000 images from the collection kept by the Sganzerla’s, institutions, friends, and collaborators were digitalized and selected by the curator. The Sganzerlian characters and their respective descriptions are the focus of attention in the exhibition. Amongst familiar scenes, the footage of another two works will be shown. One is from the unfinished film Fora do Baralho (1971), shot in the Sahara Desert, and Carnaval na Lama (1970), which was lost in a show to pay tribute to Helio Oiticica in Paris, in 1992. The three essential signs in Rogério’s constellation – Noel Rosa, Orson Welles, and Jimi Hendrix – have been assigned specific spaces. A highlight will be the corner dedicated to Hendrix showcasing an interactive experiment, in which visitors can
The ocean, a significant element in Rogério’s films, will flood a screen in the form of a projection, which the viewer will discover as he enters the place. Then, the viewer will find himself inside a room-screen-box, where the genius’s imagination plays the starring role, the characters wander, and the light projects signs and prophecies that reflect the new millennium. Conceived from a contemporary perspective, the Ocupação Rogério Sganzerla exibition is built over three basic themes: light, the abyss, and chaos – focal points in Sganzerla’s universe. His poetic fullness can also be appreciated in a complete retrospective of his work, debates with guest speakers who are experts in Sganzerla’s career both in Brazil and abroad, a website, books, and this magazine: echoes of the exhibition spirit. Through the mobilization of Sganzerla’s family, who generously made their memorabilia available, as well as friends, collaborators, and preservation institutions, coupled with the involvement of the Itaú Cultural team, a privileged space was occupied for the expansion of Rogério Sganzerla’s language. And this takes place exactly
in the city where Rogério had compulsively filmed with his typewriter since his adolescence and where he made masterpieces like O Bandido da Luz Vermelha and A Mulher de Todos, which, after having achieved recognition, now return to their place of origin. Ocupação Rogério Sganzerla is an unprecedented initiative about a visionary artist whose work lies on the third bank of cinema, intransigent on its ideational thrust, and which finally receives the treatment it deserves for its contribution to the Brazilian cinema. This is a momentous event that will allow the visitor to enjoy a unique and radical work, which is still relatively unavailable due to distribution difficulties. Hopefully this initiative will eventually give a solid foundation to gather and organize Rogério’s documentation. This will certainly provide the conditions for urgent and effective action towards restoration of this boundless audiovisual legacy. Married with Paloma Rocha, Rogério Sganzerla’s stepdaughter, Joel Pizzini was his friend. A filmmaker, he directed alongside Paloma the documentary Elogio da Luz (2003) about his friend’s life and work. Director of the film 500 Almas (2005), recipient of over 20 awards in national and international festivals, Joel Pizzini is the curator of Ocupação Rogério Sganzerla exhibition.
imagem: frame do filme O Bandido da Luz Vermelha
play a guitar with a MIDI device to try to stimulate the intrinsic musicality of Sganzerla’s fillmmaking. The guitar will reproduce sounds and images in unexpected combinations.
When word and image converge into the tier of meanings Roberto Moreira S. Cruz
Once again, cinema is under the spotlight – here in these premises and on the screens of this exhibition. And the theme could not have been more appropriate than around a filmmaker who, with his vertical view of Brazil’s reality, built up one of the most original and creative filmographies in the Brazilian cinema. Rogério Sganzerla belongs to a generation of artists who turned the dogmatic rules of conduct in the Brazilian culture inside out. At age 22, during the full sway of the dictatorship, he made a film that was inconceivable and revolutionary in form and content. O Bandido da Luz Vemelha is timeless. To the eyes overexposed to the culture of contemporary image, this film is still dazzlingly brilliant in originality. In 1969, he made A Mulher de Todos, a film that fitted Helena Ignez like a glove. She was his partner for 34 years and the mother of his two daughters, Sinai Sganzerla and Djin Sganzerla. Alongside Júlio Bressane and Helena Ignez in the Belair venture – an independent and anarchistic film production company that produced six films in seven months – Sganzerla made Copacabana, Mon Amour; Sem Essa Aranha; and Carnaval na Lama (a film which was lost and whose negative is partially deteriorated). This was an art form resulting from the creative strength of a generation interested, above all, in exercising the freedom to create. In exile like so many others, he traveled to Europe and Africa, where he shot with the same creative power the raw material of the Mijou Fora do Baralho unfinished project. Upon his return to Brazil, he resumed filmmaking with Abismu
(1977), which includes memorable performances of Wilson Grey, José Mojica Marins, Jorge Loredo, and Norma Bengell. It was during this one period that Sganzerla began a comprehensive research project on Orson Welles in Brazil. Some references to this are incorporated in Nem Tudo É Verdade, Linguagem de Orson Welles, Tudo É Brasil, and O Signo do Caos. With the same critical and creative eye, he told the stories of Noel Rosa and renowned Jimi Hendrix. Despite the recognition achieved, the preservation of Rogério Sganzerla’s work in Brazil has been very faulty. Recovering it for this exhibition represents updating what is known about his filmmaking with an emphasis on previously barely shown or researched material. Sganzerla was above all a man of words and ideas. He was a film critic, he contributed articles to Brazilian newspapers, he left never-produced screenplays, and reflected brilliantly on the need to conceive and make genuinely Brazilian films. When we began designing this exhibition, a treasure was immediately revealed. Rogério’s private records had remained untouched since his death in 2004. The interest in discovering what had been kept in those piles of boxes, folders, and files of a filmmaker of Sganzerla’s magnitude ended in an invitation to his family to join the efforts to put up this exhibition. With inputs from curator Joel Pizzini, Helena Ignez, Sinai Sganzerla, Djin Sganzerla, and a team of researchers, the process kicked off with the investigaton, manipulation, and collation of thousands of pages, notes, manuscripts, screenplays, With the support of Itaú Cultural, the publishing company of the Santa Catarina Federal University is preparing a special two-volume edition of critical essays and articles written by Rogério Sganzerla and published in the Folha de São Paulo and O Estado de S.Paulo newspapers.
notebooks, photographs, and footage. As the team carefully sifted through the material, a set of rough drafts and texts was digged out. Much of that was unknown even to the family and they clearly evidenced the fact that Rogério used writing as a guide for his ideas and image planning. Sganzerla himself had made statements saying that, for him, writing was the first step to form his audiovisual expression. As he stated: ‘Making films is like describing an impetuous movement on a blank sheet of paper that’s on fire.’ The characteristics of these texts, the often random and repeated way in which the ideas are written and noted lead one to assume that a more painstaking and methodical examination of these files could certainly reveal another approach to language and narrative in his films. I have no knowledge of any critical approach focusing on Sganzerla’s work based on the assumption that his writing is mirrored in his audiovisual language. Hence, Ocupação Rogério Sganzerla aims to bring to visitors this synesthetic dimension of Sganzerla’s filmmaking, where word and image converge into the tier of meanings and meet within the field of ambiguity. One can easily see that this nebulous and hardly-elucidative confluence of image and motion, language and speech lies in the narrative atonality in his films, overloaded with mannerisms, irreverence, and stylistic contrast. Seeing and reading the screenplays and notes for films such as O Bandido da Luz Vermelha, A Mulher de Todos, and Nem Tudo É Verdade is a pleasant and at the same time challenging exercise, a reading adventure that evokes the images in motion and vice versa! Likewise, recognizing in the manuscripts the signs of a sequence or the choice of a specific line by a
character stimulates perception and curiosity as to how so many ideas were converted into films! And great films! Never-produced screenplays, original manuscripts of his articles and critical reviews, fragments and raw material of unfinished films, objects and equipment used in the realization of his films: they embody the references and signs of Sganzerla’s filmography. Ocupação Rogério Sganzerla is a multisensorial experience showing the plurality of cinematic dimensions of languages and meanings. In this exhibition, images, words, and sounds permeate a sensorial and reflexive atmosphere filled with the creative and artistic strength of a brilliant filmmaker.
photo: Sganzerlaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s family archives
Uninterrupted flow of creative energy Djin Sganzerla
João Gilberto, who my father adored, had a unique way of singing the feeling of nostalgia, fond memories. This is the feeling that – mingled with great joy – is deeply embedded in my heart and that I have experienced throughout this year of 2010. A year of reunion and expansion. A year that has culminated in this exhibiton, a beautiful initiative taken by Itaú Cultural and curated by Joel Pizzini. This is where visitors will have the chance to learn more about this celebrity, this great artist, writer, unique filmmaker: Rogério Sganzerla. In April I was with Helena Ignez and Sinai Sganzerla at the 12th Bafici Film Festival, in Buenos Aires, where an important retrospective of works by Rogério was held. A thoughtprovoking, excellently-curated festival where visitors could ‘rediscover’ his work with great delight. It provided extremely interesting analyses, full screening sessions, a number of international invitations – France, Germany, Austria – and a complete retrospective at the Lincoln Center, an invitation from American curator Scott Foundas, who says that Rogério’s films were absolute genius.
I had the chance to see Nem Tudo É Verdade again – moving poetry. A masterpiece of absolute originality and freedom that traces Orson Welles’s stint in Brazil. While I was seeing the film, I felt as if I was talking to my father and seeing everything that came to his hands being transformed into cinema in an uninterrupted flow of creative energy. After the session, Mr. Quintin, a film critic and former Bafici director, came to speak with us and was visibly moved. He told us that, in 2004, Roberto Turigliatto, then director of the Torino Film Festival, had asked him if he knew the work of Sganzerla, who – in his opinion – was more important than Godard. Quintin answered that he had only seen Bandido and thought that Turigliatto had somewhat overstated. Now, though, after seeing Sganzerla retrospective, he understood that Turigliatto was right: Rogério was definitely more important than Godard. This is how Rogério’s importance has been recognized. Last year, a beautiful retrospective was organized in India following the one held in Trieste, Italy a couple of months before, and there were so many others. In June this year, Copacabana, Mon Amour is being screened in the 28th Munich Film Festival and then it will go to France and Vienna.
fotos: arquivo da famĂlia de Sganzerla
In Brazil, Itaú Cultural has organized the most comprehensive retrospective – as the name suggests – the Ocupação Rogério Sganzerla [Rogério Sganzerla Occupation]. The institute presents a thorough overview of this multitalented artist: original never-produced screenplays, personal objects, films, pictures from different periods of his life, discussion on his work etc. Additionally, the new release of a CD with the original soundtrack of Copacabana, Mon Amour and the release of two books with articles and reviews he wrote for the Literary Supplements of O Estado de S.Paulo, Folha de S. Paulo, and Jornal da Tarde newspapers. My sincere and warm thanks to Joel Pizzini, curator and artist. I recalled our last strolls around downtown São Paulo. He would speak about how he would shoot Bandido 2 (Luz nas Trevas). I could see how his inspiration came from everything around him. We saw a guy fixing the gate with a blowtorch and my father said that he would create a scene in the Bandido film where the blowtorch was going to be used to light a cigarette… Shortly thereafter, at the end of his struggle with the disease, he said that only a camera could save him.
Today, in addition to what I love doing most in life, which is acting, I manage Mercúrio Produções together with my mother and Sinai (in São Paulo). In parallel with the projects that we create, I consider our effort to disseminate, preserve, and rerelease his works as a service to the Brazilian cinema to keep alive the legacy of one of the country’s leading artists. At the same time, this is a song of love to my dearest parents, who have done so much for our culture. After having another look at the material sent to Itaú Cultural for the Ocupação Rogério Sganzerla exhibition, I found some letters I had no knowledge of, like the affectionate card he had sent to Júlio Bressane from Florence and in which he sends his love to ‘adorable Helena,’ Júlio’s girlfriend at the time; and the card he had sent to Sinai, who was 9 at the time, telling her he was in a festival and that he would meet no one less than Mister Welles… When I was asked to write something, I thought carefully. I recalled a dream that I had had some months before he passed: he was shooting and shooting with such joy, so delightfully, like a boy on a tree. The dream itself seemed to be framed by his camera. I could feel what he was doing, where he was, what he liked most. And the projections of his work we do here.
foto: Marcos
Djin Sganzerla is an actress, whose first starring role was in the feature-length film O Signo do Caos, by Rogério Sganzerla. Recipient of the São Paulo Art Critics’ Association (APCA)’s 2008 Best Movie Actress Award for her performance in the film Meu Nome é Dindi, directed by Bruno Safadi. She also received the Best Supporting Actress award in the 39o Festival de Brasília for the film A Falsa Loura, by Carlos Reichenbach, just to mention some. She works alonside her mother and sister at Mercúrio Produções, this year to release Luz nas Trevas – A Volta do Bandido da Luz Vermelha. Djin plays the female lead Jane.
Bonisson
Chronology 1946 Rogério Sganzerla is born in Joaçaba, in the interior of the state of Santa Catarina, on May 4. 1964–1965 He moves to São Paulo to study law and business administration in the university. He begins to write reviews for the Literary Supplement of O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper. 1967 He directs his short film Documentário [Documentary], which is awarded the JB-Mesbla Prize for best short film and hence gives him the right to go to Cannes Festival. On the way back to Brazil aboard a ship, Sganzerla learned about an outlaw known as Bandido da Luz Vermelha [The Red Light Bandit] from the Brazilian newspaper. He had committed a series of robberies in São Paulo at that time. As Sganzerla was writing a screenplay aboutf a criminal with similar features, he decides to adapt the story to fit the characteristics of the well-known bandit. 1968 He makes O Bandido da Luz Vermelha [The Red Light Bandit], his first feature-length film, one of the mostawarded Brazilian films of all time. Later, as a classic, this film was incorporated into UNESCO list of World Cultural and Natural Heritage. During the shooting period, he begins his relationship with Helena Ignez, the muse actress of Cinema Novo and who was to become his artistic partner for the rest of his life. 1969 He releases A Mulher de Todos [The Woman of Everyone], his second feature-length movie, with a cast that includes Helena Ignez, Paulo Villaça, and Jô Soares. The film is a box-office success. He then takes the film to the Festival de Brasília, where he strikes up a friendship with Júlio Bressane, who was presenting his O Anjo Nasceu. He realizes two films co-directed by Álvaro de Moya: the short films HQ [Comics] and Quadrinhos no Brasil [Comics in Brazil].
1970 In partnership with Júlio Bressane and Helena Ignez he founds the Belair film production company – which produces six films in three months only. Sganzerla directs three of them: Copacabana Mon Amour (with original soundtrack by Gilberto Gil), Sem Essa, Aranha [Give Me a Break, Spider], and Carnaval na Lama [Carnival in the Mud], otherwise known as Betty Bomba, a Exibicionista [Betty Bomba, the Exhibitionist], partly shot in New York. In exile, Rogério Sganzerla travels with Helena Ignez to London. Later, they proceed to Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Niger, Nigeria, Daome (currently Benin), and Senegal, where the couple settles down for a while. 1971 In the Sahara Desert, he films the unfinished documentary Fora do Baralho [Outside the Deck]. 1972 On October 25 Sinai is born, Sganzerla’s first daughter with Helena Ignez. 1976 On February 27 Djin is born, Sganzerla’s second daughter with Helena Ignez. He realizes the short documentary Viagem e Descrição do Rio Guanabara por Ocasião da França Antártica (Villegaignon) [Journey and Description of the Guanabara River on the France Antarctique Occasion (Villegaignon)], which wins an award given by the Rio de Janeiro State Department of Culture. 1977 He directs Abismu [Abyss], his first feature-length movie after an interval of considerable time. It is his only feature-length movie released between 1971 and 1985. The cast includes Zé Bonitinho, Wilson Grey, and José Mojica Marins. 1978 He realizes the short film Mudança de Hendrix [Hendrix’s Change]. He co-directs and edits Jairo Ferreira’s film Horror Palace Hotel. 1980 He realizes the short film Noel por Noel [Noel by Noel], his first film about Noel Rosa. He edits Um Sorriso por Favor [A Smile Please], a film by José Sette about Goeldi’s graphic universe.
1981 He makes the short film Brasil [Brazil] with João Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, and Gilberto Gil as guest stars. 1984 The documentary O Petróleo Nasceu na Bahia [Oil Was Born in Bahia] is released and wins awards at Caxambu and Gramado film festivals. 1986 He releases the feature-length film Nem Tudo É Verdade [It’s Not All True]. This film is the beginning of his tetralogy about Orson Welles’s filmmaking stint in Brazil (in 1942). 1990 He directs the short film Isto É Noel Rosa [This Is Noel Rosa]. He makes two videos about visual artists: A Alma do Povo Vista pelo Artista [The Soul of the People As Seen by the Artist] (about Newton Cavalcanti) and Anônimo e Incomum [Anonymous and Uncommon] (about Antonio Manuel). 1991 He realizes the short film Linguagem de Orson Welles [Orson Welles’s Language]. 1993 He directs the episode Perigo Negro [Black Danger], which is part of the feature-length film Oswaldianas, based on Oswald de Andrade. 1998 He releases the future-length documentary essay Tudo É Brasil [It’s All Brazil]. 2003 After many difficulties, he concludes O Signo do Caos [The Sign of Chaos], the last film in his tetralogy about Orson Welles’s filmmaking stint in Brazil, released and award-recipient at the Festival de Brasília. It is his last film. 2004 Rogério Sganzerla dies on January 9. He leaves an extensive collection of films and writings, including unproduced screenplays, such as the feature-length film Luz nas Trevas – Revolta de Luz Vermelha [Light in the Darkness – The Revolt of Red Light]. Five years later, the shooting of the Bandido da Luz Vermelha series continues based on that screenplay and under the direction of Helena Ignez and Ícaro Martins. The film is currently about to be completed.
Filmography Documentário [Documentary] – 1967 O Bandido da Luz Vermelha [The Red Light Bandit] – 1968 A Mulher de Todos [The Woman of Everyone]– 1969 Histórias em Quadrinhos (Comics) – 1969 Quadrinhos no Brasil [Comics in Brazil] – 1969 Copacabana, Mon Amour – 1970 Sem Essa, Aranha [Give Me a Break, Spider] – 1970 Carnaval na Lama [Carnival in the Mud] (or Betty Bomba, a Exibicionista [Betty Bomba, the Exhibitionist]) – 1970 Fora do Baralho [Outside the Deck] – 1971 Viagem e Descrição do Rio Guanabara por Ocasião da França Antártica [Journey and Description of the Guanabara River on the France Antarctique Occasion] – 1976 Ritos Populares, Umbanda no Brasil [Popular Rites, Umbanda in Brazil] – 1977 Abismu [Abyss] – 1977 Mudança de Hendrix [Hendrix’s Change] – 1977 Noel por Noel [Noel by Noel] – 1980 Brasil [Brazil] – 1981 A Cidade de Salvador (Petróleo Jorrou na Bahia) [The City of Salvador (Oil Gushed in Bahia)] – 1981 Irani – 1983 Nem Tudo é Verdade [It’s Not All True] – 1986 Isto é Noel [This Is Noel] – 1990 Newton Cavalcanti: A Alma do Povo Vista pelo Artista [Newton Cavalcanti: The Soul of the People As Seen by the Artist] – 1991 Anônimo e Incomum [Anonymous and Uncommon] – 1990 Linguagem de Orson Welles [Orson Welles’s Language] – 1990 América: O Grande Acerto de Vespúcio [America, the Big Success by Vespucci] – 1992 Perigo Negro [Black Danger] – 1992 Deuses no Juruá [Gods on the Juruá River] – 1997 Tudo é Brasil [It’s All Brazil] – 1998 B2 – 2001 Informação H.J.Koellreutter [H.J.Koellreutter Information] – 2003 O Signo do Caos [The Sign of Chaos] – 2003
Zonk! Crash! Boom! Orson, Oswald, Noel, and João in Sganzerland, or It’s Not the Size of the Ship, or A Touch of Neurosis Prevents Excessive Psychosis Steve Berg
image: frame from the film B2
images: frames from the film O Bandido da Luz Vermelha
‘A nation which neglects the perceptions of its artists declines and after a certain time ceases to exist, merely surviving.’ Ezra Pound Very rarely shown and even more rarely serving as the objects of any critical or theoretical reflection in or out of Brazil, not surprisingly 20 short and mediumlength films directed by Rogério Sganzerla over a span of 37 years (four of which are missing or have decayed) comprise the least known part of a filmography that, in and of itself and for an obscenely long time, was all but secret. From Documentário (1966) through Informação: H.J. Koellreuter (2003), what leaps to the eye when seeing these films is their profound cohesion and inte(g)ra(c) tion with the auteur’s remaining cinematic corpus [Eliot: ‘In my end is my beginning:’ two years before Bandido exploded on the scene with its Uranus-Mercury formula and 37 years before O Signo do Caos, Documentário had already incorporated references to Orson Welles – in a show bill attached to a movie theater door, as a member of the cast of The Third Man (1949), and in a portrait/homage that fills the screen for a while] – be it due to mastery with which the auteur navigates through a vast range of genres, themes, and formats (fiction, documentary, novelized biography, musical, institutional and instructional films in the standard 16 and 35 mm, and video – with particularly inspired and dynamic use of the tabletop), or be it due to his authorship of cinema that invents itself despite of and because of the scarcity of resources, the constant use of a reflexive depth, and creative verve that are rare in the history of Brazilian cinema. All the fimmaker’s obsessions – large and small – parade through these 20 short and medium-length films (in chaotic sequence: the history of Brazil, Orson Welles, Oswald de Andrade, the issue of culture, comics, Noel Rosa, João Gilberto, art as a profession, Umbanda, and cinema itself).
Poetics LOGOPOEIA (intellect’s dance among words): if it took the revolutionary Sem Essa, Aranha nearly 40 years to reach the general public with the release of a DVD, the consummately classic and dry (in terms of the vocabulary of imagery and cuts) Perigo Negro (1992), a skillfully-produced film of the only screenplay by great Oswald de Andrade – written to make up one of the three unfinished volumes of his mural novel Marco Zero (1943-1946), is a chef d’oeuvre completely unknown to nearly all the most devoted ‘Sganzerlians.’ It is a bitter, comic tragedy that only hurts when we laugh and echoes the theme of the rise and fall of a precocious genius – staged by an incredible cast of trouvée stars, including Helena Ignez, Abraão Farc, Paloma Rocha, Guará, Conceição Senna, Ruddy, Paulo Moura, Jorge Salomão, Antonio Abujamra, Sandro Solviatti, and others. MELOPOEIA (emphasis on SOUND): the two films on Noel Rosa (Noel por Noel and Isto É Noel Rosa, from 1981 and 1990 respectively). João Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Maria Bethânia in Brasil (1981). From Helena Ignez’s early days comes yet another film (the last short film) made when she was just an apprentice in the Federal University of Bahia State. Professor, composer, and aesthete Koellrueter reappears in the film. Testimonials with music. MOTZ EL SON. PHANOPOEIA (the poetry of VISUAL IMAGES), the POP side of things: a barrage of tabletop images and non-stop narration in Histórias em Quadrinhos (Comics), from 1969. The total dominion with which history and the present blend in the über ‘Sganzerlian’ strategy of image SELECTION and COMBINATION, when photography and the material from the cinematic archives TURN ON THEMSELVES, obsessively and in an infinite recurrence,
concentric circles of information and possibility originating in the stones/provocations cast in the reflecting pool that is the image of national memory. Excerpts of Umbanda no Brasil reappear in Brasil. Linguagem de Orson Welles (1990) and Isto É Noel Rosa set in motion a cosmic mirror-play; the same file images found in those films will reappear differently arranged in Tudo É Brasil (1998). The anti-institutional, post-tropicalist A Cidade do Salvador (Petróleo Jorrou na Bahia) (1981) fall in this category and so do the Nietzschean hammer and hot urns of Antonio Manuel that make up Anônimo e Incomum (1990), in which NOTHING, PIGMENTS, and PAINT join the aphoristic participation of Helena Ignez and Nonatho Freire and the photograph of CANVASES by Antonio Manuel – proof of the filmmaker’s coloristic eye, as is the case with Deuses no Juruá (1997), with its Greek masks, Indians, and saturated hues. On the other end of the image spectrum, the cartographers’ delicate colors in Viagem e Descrição do Rio Guanabara por Ocasião da França Antártica (1976) and the foci of light and smoke of América – O Grande Acerto de Vespúcio (1992), with iconic, memorable performances by brilliant fetish actors Paulo Villaça as Villegagnona and Otávio Terceiro playing Amerigo Vespucci. The FRAGMENTATION cinema of Irani (1983) places messianism and holy war en robe de parade in a nonfulfilled project about the Contestado War (how to film an armed conflict between the Caboclo (Brazilians of mixed European and indigenous ancestry) people and representatives of the Brazilian state and federal apparatus?). The mysterious and also unfinished Ritos Populares – Umbanda no Brasil (1977-
1986), where the camera follows the character of Pai de Santo (priest of Afro-Brazilian religion) Woodrow Wilson da Mata e Silva – known as Master Yapacany of esoteric Umbanda – narrating his own trajectory and the creation of esoteric Umbanda on a trip to bookstores and the city streets of downtown Rio de Janeiro while an outline of Christ’s face on an altar comes and goes and ultimately returns later on in Brasil (1981). Actions Plan of study: view the short and medium-length films of Rogério Sganzerla again pending subsidies for research on parametric narration (repetition+non-significant image+addition by subtraction). STYLE elevated to the level of SHAPING force in cinema. Base for study plan: geography and cultural memory (or lack thereof) -- São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Santa Catarina, Brasil. Urca. Emergency ‘archeology of cinema’ plan: locate and restore Quadrinhos no Brasil, Mudança de Hendrix, e Newton Cavalcanti – A Alma do Povo Vista pelo Artista. There is no other way to put it: Rogério Sganzerla’s short and medium-length films are simply masterworks, with the richest image-play, music, and meaning. Vision, sound, and sense. Get to know these films better. SEE what the artist did to move ahead and think on the vertical plane. WATCH AGAIN. MORE LIGHT.
Steve Berg Teresina, Piauí State May 2010
image: frame from the film A Mulher de Todos
What mysteries surround Helena? Paolo Gregori and Pedro Bezerra (Cabron)
Afternoon, downtown São Paulo, office of the film company Mercúrio Produções. Among film posters, red folders with the pages of screenplays, and a veranda teeming with plants, film director and actress Helena Ignez gives this interview. As Rogério Sganzerla’s creative partner and companion, she actively participated in the conception of his work. Now, as a result of their efforts (alongside their daughters Sinai and Djin), the filmmaker’s archive is becoming increasingly larger and better revealed to the world, as she tells us in this conversation – the gathering of three filmmakers, who share a passion for Rogério Sganzerla’s work and the strong desire to transform ideas into cinema.
image: frame from the film A Mulher de Todos
Before talking about the good things, I want to talk about a bad one: Brazilian cinema.
It is the trading of favors in Brazilian cinema. How was it to confront 50 years of Brazilian cinema? A kind of cinema dominated by politics and often by egocentric, intrusive, and stupid people; and, at the same time, you have managed to make films that are just the opposite of this, a revolutionary cinema.
The moment is a good one and very close to the start. It seems strange, doesn’t it? It is also a moment of pride, of gathering strength. Really, it is an extraordinary moment. On the one hand, there is the magnificent side of this history, which has to do with what is happening in relation to Rogério’s filmmaking and the world. Some years ago I was in New Zealand and had brought O Bandido da Luz Vermelha with me. At the same time, the Wellington Film Society included O Bandido da Luz Vermelha in the list of the 50 best films of the 20th century. This discovery of the world [in relation to Rogério Sganzerla’s filmmaking] was really boosted by his death. It’s as though the lid were removed from a pressure cooker, and then Rogério’s filmmaking could be distributed throughout the world. My daughter Sinai Sganzerla really got to know her father’s filmmaking in 2006, in a crowded theater in Turin where people were sitting on the floor. Before that, she had never gotten to know the
dimension of her father’s work in Brazil, and had worked together with him on the soundtrack for Signo do Caos. Therefore, it is an ecstatic and extremely important moment. At the same time, Rogério’s films have become popular among the youth. In some places, as at Bafici [Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Cinema, in April of this year] we had jam-packed theaters. Rogério is watched much more out of Brazil. Since June of last year I have made regular trips to bring his work to different places. We also have had a hard time recovering and preserving his films. However, despite everything, I consider the moment to be a very good one. Nem Tudo É Verdade was invited to a show, next year, at the Lincoln Center [in New York] and there are still two more international invitations for this year. Was it necessary for Rogério to die for all this to happen?
In a certain way he had anticipated this. Did you know that only Strindberg read Nietzsche while he was alive? This is a crazy and extremely painful thing. But does craziness have its place in the world?
It does. In terms of films critically acclaimed internationally, for example, one that I like very much is Antichrist [by Las Von Trier, 2009], and there is no sense to it all.
images: frames from the film A Mulher de Todos
A passion... But O Bandido da Luz Vermelha did not even make it to Cannes. The recognition of these creative minds that are ahead of their time sometimes takes a while. Orson Welles’s trajectory was not very different from Sganzerla’s as far as the realization of films is concerned. In terms of their careers and the number of films they made, it’s all very proportional. Is it? But look, Krzysztof Kieslowski was discovered at Cannes after practically 20 years of work making documentaries. Heneke [Michael Heneke] won the Palme d’Or [for the film Das Weisse Band] last year, and he has been making films since the 1970s. But these guys have managed to survive. Yes, they did. Godard made it. But he was an athlete, he had a physical thing going for him. And he’s Swiss, which is always better [laughter]. Maybe if Glauber and Rogério were French, they would have held out longer. Brazil treats its true artists so bad, doesn’t it? I can talk because I’m not one of those people, my qualities lie elsewhere. But I have another very interesting piece of news: the director of the Locarno Film Fest, Olivier Père, invited O Bandido da Luz Vermelha for this year’s edition of the festival, a special session. That was very good. Locarno has always liked the fringe films, hasn’t it? I think Locarno is really charming. How do you see this encounter of two remarkable people, you and Rogério, who created such a voracious work, in which you give life to the characters and he writes the characters? I don’t know how to put it, maybe say it by not saying it. But, yes, it’s about people. Myself, him and this encounter.
That’s pretty much it. That force is involved. As well as the force of an actress who had already been living this seven years before him, beginning a movement but in a very fresh way with Glauber in Bahia. In my teenage years and in my childhood I drank up the Brazilian cinema, the second-rate productions. But there was a force of creation there that began with O Pátio [Glauber Rocha’s first film, in 1959] and which later spread over other films as strong auteur cinema pieces, but which in any case was conditioned to a thought that was not always mine. After this, with Rogério I found precisely the freedom for my full self-expression as an artist. Before him there had perhaps been a big vacuum, because that adolescence with Glauber was adorably fertile and crazy and spoiled by a marriage. We were two kids, 19 years old, in Bahia. The marriage spoiled that thing and it was short. But there was a period before him during which I found all this excitement. Then, when I found Rogério, I had all of this fire, this fire of an actress and of this encounter with Glauber, a Glauberian way of being artistically, and this fit together, it became the cinema that I made as an actress with Rogério. Moreover, it was an immense passion, a great extraordinary love, and it was also what kept me away from everything I was doing, away from him, maybe my career, maybe ambitions in this sense. I wanted to be there, to participate in that moment of magnificent creation, which was our presence with our children, isolated. And then the time of dictatorship came and cast us out, and after that Embrafilme left us outside the production. All the while, Rogério was writing. He has an extraordinary literary production, which is also going to begin to appear soon along with his screenplays. And now a book will be published with the articles he wrote [as a film critic] for O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper. We kept aloof from cinema, thank God. This perhaps allowed me to have this freshness again and to resume [his work] after his death as intensely as always. To resume this urge to make films. This urge had already come before, I made a short film, A Reinvenção da Rua, driven by an indignation at the situation of the most disadvantaged part of society formed by the street people. So I did the first thing as a director, a director in the sense of having an idea and surrounding myself with people to do the thing. I’m not exactly someone with a thoroughgoing knowledge about films. There are some writers I adore even though I know just one of their films, yet they have an entire collection of works. I get interested in small works and become fixated on them.
Rogério had more of that, didn’t he, a thoroughgoing knowledge of films? He was a total film expert. At 17, he already knew all the credits of the classic films, all of filmmaking. That’s how Rogério, Glauber, and Júlio Bressane are. These are the three I know who are both filmmakers and film experts. And there is Carlão [Reichembach] as well. How was it, in reality, for you to see Rogério obsessively living the work of Orson Welles? What did you feel about this great passion of his for Welles and for films, did you plunge headlong into this story? It was an enigma. This life with Rogério was a great journey across stormy sea. When I first saw a frame from Signo do Caos and It’s All True there in the luggage, I thought ‘Oh geez, here he goes again.’ It was no longer a trilogy. It was the fourth film. In Locarno, at a show about Welles, I heard a curator say that without Rogério’s films Welles’s work would not be complete. This work [by Rogério Sganzerla] is an enigma, it is an explosive work by someone with an extremely Christian spirit, a tragic Christian with this conception of knowing that his whole work would only be discovered after his final work, closing the cycle with Signo do Caos, with the cremation fire. A totally tragic filmmaker. Since A Mulher de Todos, he had been working with tragedy. At the end of O Signo do Caos there is a repetition of the phrase ‘acabou, acabou, acabou’ [it’s over, over, over]. And it seems like the closing for Rogério’s work itself. This was very startling for me. Yes, a Dionysian ending, with fire, happiness, excitement, ‘amen, amen.’ When O Signo do Caos won him Best Director and Best Editing awards [at the Festival de Brasília, in 2003], he had first heard of it from his daughter [Djin].
You know what I think is somewhat crazy, Helena, is that in the international shows the curators are seeing Rogério’s films as though they were being released today. They see them as something new. That’s incredible, and it shows that they are, above all, modern films. And concerning Belair, Helena, was this encounter between you, Bressane and Sganzerla, the Belair trio, inevitable? I believe so. I remember that when I saw Copacabana Mon Amour, at the Festival de Cinema Latino-Americano [2008, in São Paulo], with a restored copy, Djin presented the film saying ‘Ah, the lens they used was once Fellini’s.’ You had this magic that conveys something I don’t see anymore, something of the idol, something jovial. It was a heavy lens, it looked like the bottom of a bottle. But today it is difficult to maintain this joviality, isn’t it? But they managed to make their films like that. Actually it was a constructive cinema that got right into the head of its idols. (Pause for a conversation between the interviewers and Helena Ignez to talk a lot about the new generation of Brazilian filmmakers, for example Tião, from the state of Pernambuco, and his film O Muro.) But let’s return to the subject of this interview, that is, talking about Sganzerla. It’s just that talking about life is very interesting, and I think that this is what has spared me, a strong multiple interest that I have.
Do you think that what happened inside Rogério was a little of this obsessive thing for filmmaking? Yes, this Nietzschean artistic obsession of the abnormal people. Clearly because I think that a genius is not normal. All his work, even the tiniest one, bears the same quality. And what spared me was the fact that I managed to get some air, to get out of that. And maybe, I don’t know, but in some way with this I might even have spared Rogério’s life. Because he could rest when he was with our family and perhaps otherwise it would not have been like that; it might have been even more difficult, as it could have been for Glauber. But the moment is this one, of recognition of Rogério’s work. And in this way Luz nas Trevas [screenplay by Rogério Sganzerla, recently directed by Helena Ignez] is a film that embraces all of Rogério’s work, a film that devours Rogério’s work and takes possession of it anthropophagically – as it is part of our spiritual family – and returns another film to it. It is an interesting, rich, and contradictory film because it is about justice, a criminal comedy about justice, and it’s a gay, immensely gay film. How was it to organize this screenplay? It was crazy. I am at a very strong moment as well, because various decisions surround this film and the screenplay. Luz nas Trevas was also invited to the official competition of the Locarno Festival. And it is a film that was born in 2003, when I discovered that I had this work that’s over there in those red folders. And Rogério, who throughout his life never lost his caustic humor, said to me one day, ‘You’ve opened this storage chest too much.’ Because exactly when he was going to resume this work, he got the news – despite being in good, normal health – of the cancer in his brain. Then the doctor said, ‘I don’t even know how you are here and walking normally.’ And he asked, ‘How much more time do I have to live?’ And the doctor said, ‘15 days.’ He lived eight months instead and it was exactly in those eight months that I gathered all the strength I could. And it was from within that awful moment that happiness came; it came from this screenplay, from life, from his words, in a very funny screenplay, with very interesting humor, with amazing Shakespearean
lines, all of this very much interwoven in more than 700 pages. And at the end he turned and said, ‘Now it’s Helena who’s going to do it.’ And I saw myself with this ahead of me to organize and create, and all of this within the Brazilian film scene, knowing all the difficulties we face to make a movie. And finally the film is ready. And what’s more, it’s a family production: the executive producer is Sinai Sganzerla; Djin is the lead actress in a marvelous cast with great actresses and actors, such as André Guerreiro Lopes, who is also my sonin-law, and Ney Matogrosso, a member of my generation, an icon. So there is this family structure with elements that are not familial, such as the person I invited to co-direct the film with me [Ícaro Martins]. He comes from a more bureaucratic conception of cinema. And the great victory is that the film in no way suffers from this bureaucratic influence normally involved in making a film in Brazil. It is a radical film, with radical poetry. Pedro Jorge (Cabron) has directed three short films, the most recent being the documentary A Vermelha Luz do Bandido [The Red Light of the Bandit], about Sganzerla’s work. With his sister, director Mariana Jorge, he co-directed the documentary América Brasil, which accompanies the national concert tour of singer Seu Jorge. He is currently one of the editors of the television series HiperReal (SescTV, directed by Kiko Goifman). He thinks it is absurd that Dunga did not take Neymar and Ganso to compete in the World Cup in South Africa. Paolo Gregori has directed short films such as Atrás das Grades (1993) and Mariga (1995). He won the Glauber Rocha prize at the 25o Festival Internacional de Cinema de Figueira da Foz, in Portugal (for the short film O Feijão e o Sonho, 1996). His short film Tropiabbas premiered in Valencia in 2005, and has been shown in more than 20 countries, while O Bebê de Eisenstein has been shown in Shanghai, Hamburg, and Montevideo. He is currently completing his feature-length film Corpo Presente, co-written by Marcelo Toledo and Daniel Chaia. He is a professor at Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (Faap) and Anhembi Morumbi University.
Editing | Mariana Lacerda
photos: Sganzerla’s family archives
photo: Sganzerlaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s family archives
Investigations on modern cinema (that is, man): critical Sganzerla Ruy Gardnier
Looking at the 20th Century, it is difficult to assert that the critic is a frustrated artist. There are many instances prior to the last century: Stendhal, Diderot, Baudelaire, and Machado de Assis to name just four. This century, however, saw an impressive proliferation of artists who worked as critics, including Georges Bataille, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, brothers Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, the entire French nouvelle vague core group (Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol, Rivette), Glauber Rocha, Jonas Mekas, in addition to countless theoretical books and manifestos involving critical thought (Schoenberg, Messiaen, Klee, Kandinski). When a great artist engages in criticism, such activity inevitably becomes an extension of their personality and creative force – selecting elective affinities and honing the thought process to refine the base of their art. Since criticism frequently swells in filmmakers’ formative years – generally preceding and/or coinciding with their first scripts, and debut short and feature films – observing the work of a critic-cum-future filmmaker ends up being the same thing as looking at a portrait of the artist when young. This is precisely the case with the first scripts of Rogério Sganzerla. In his most brilliant period as a critic – 19641967 – Sganzerla appears as a young intellectual seeking to understand the modifications that cinema underwent during the 1950s. Certainly manifesting a series of changes around the world, cinema went from the certain to the uncertain, from the well-prepared to the obscure, from the simple to the complex. And the young Sganzerla tasked himself with mapping the characteristics of those films that brought a breath of renewal to cinema at that time. Where many saw stylistic gratuitousness, narrative inconsistency, and snobbish hermetics, Sganzerla saw a new cinema which delineated a new relationship with the image (and with the characters, plots, shot length etc.) and expressed a new relationship with the world. In sum, the young Sganzerla’s hunger was to explain modern cinema.
‘Modern’ to him was not a matter of affectation or fashion. It is cinema that manifests the anxieties of its time in content and form. Several concepts came up in articles in the O Estado de S. Paulo Literary Supplement: ‘closed hero,’ ‘cynical camera,’ ‘cinema of the body,’ ‘loose time,’ with recurrent references to the cinema of Fuller, Godard, Resnais, Losey, Antonioni, with Welles and Hawks as predecessors. Behind the terms ‘closed hero’ and ‘cynical camera’ lies the idea that film no longer has the function of explaining the world and its characters, but rather of making evident the characteristic incomprehension of things – where all the viewer can do is look on. That clearly already anticipates all the fascination with Sganzerla’s iconic characters; intentionally nebulous figures who serve as vaudeville characters on a floating stage: in this vacuum of entertainment, the picturesque presents itself with its violent furor (and there is a strong signifier violence linked to actors’ characterization/ caricaturing in Sganzerla’s entire cinematic corpus). In the 1980s, another especially prolific period for his activities as critic, he revisits certain challenges to modern cinema. The overall tone, however, revolves around the melancholy that stems from the rupture of Brazilian cinema with its more experimental arm. The complaints that Brazilian cinema had surrendered to the soap opera and forgotten the genius of its experimental tradition, hence favoring ‘soft-core porn’ and flaccid naturalism instead, are recurrent and quite justified. In the absence of what he views as a vigorous present, Sganzerla transforms himself into a memoir writer by evoking past periods when Brazil had its groove. Like Ulysses singing the praises of his faraway Ithaca, Sganzerla in the 1980s is a filmmaker who looks toward Brazil and sees his beloved modern cinema far off, buried by television. The antidote? Give ‘em Orson Welles, give ‘em João Giblerto, give ‘em Noel Rosa in the hope that modernity and intelligence would return to cinema created in Brazil.
On
the T r ail of sganzerla
AN ANTIPHOTONOVELLA By Pedro Jorge and Alice Dalgalarrondo
a). I didn’t speak until I I was born in Joaçaba (state of Santa Catarina book of children’s stories... wrote I old years seven age at and five, was I was a very noisy child, different from the norm there in Santa Catarina.
On this page: pictures from the Sganzerla family archives; from the film Documentário; frames from the film O Bandido da Luz Vermelha
e film screenplays. I At 10 I began to writ... wrote one after another There was no film club, there wasn’t anything. I had no way of going further.
That’s when I was first introduced to cinema. I studied at Mackenzie University and right away I started falling behind with my classes.I was interested in getting involved with culture.
I decided to lea ve. I went to live in São Paulo ...
At 17, I began to work as a film critic for the Literary Supplement of O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper... I had never thought about being a critic. I always wanted to be a director. But I like what I do because, while I could, I was involved with cinema through a typewriter. I don’t make distinctions between writing about cinema and writing cinema. When I got into filmmaking, despite a great deal of naiveness, my sarcasm was one that the other guys lacked. I made a short film and traveled to Europe...
The wave of violence was escalating in São Paulo. I began the plot of the film about how a boy grew up in the world of
During my trip back to Brazil, I read about a masked bandit in the newspapers.
The wave of violence was growing in São Paulo.
And I named it after the paper headline: O Bandido da Luz Vermelha [The Red Light Bandit].
My film is a western movie about the Third World. That is, it is a meld and mix of various genres. I made a film-blend.
A state of emergency is declared in the nation today. The police force strengthens all its security agencies... No one knows how many robberies, thefts, fires, and sex crimes he has carried out. I am talking with the target shooting champion from Cuiabá.
Janete Jane, the flamboyant woman!
The other day I had to watch my sister-in-law give birth.
The newspapers say that I’m a genius, a poet endowed with Divine Providence, a saint... A heralding angel... Whatever... I am a NATIONAL BANDIT... THE RED LIGHT BANDIT.
The Third World is going to explode and anyone wearing shoes is done for!
The masked bandit does not respect women or private property.
I earn my living from petty thefts, loans from friends... I can say snottily: I’m a dork!
On this page: all pictures are frames from the film O Bandido da Luz Vermelha, except for the one in which Sganzerla is holding a camera (the Sganzerla family archives)
I got to thinking...
Janete Jane, the Red Light Banditâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s girlfriend, discovers the true identity of the masked gunman.
JB da Silva, the great. Candidate for the presidency of Boca do Lixo.
What abject poverty, my son? A country without abject poverty is a country without folklore. What are we going to show the tourists? Ha ha ha!!
On this page: all pictures are frames from the film O Bandido da Luz Vermelha, except for the one in which Sganzerla is leaning against the wall (photo: Marcos Bonisson)
What does the secretary think about abject poverty?
Arrest this dorky dwarf.
Close in on him and shoot that fucker.
Who threw the kitten from up there?
Definitely, I wanted to forget once and for all, for O Bandido da Luz Vermelha was made to be seen in a dust cloud... In SĂŁo Paulo I had to stage a demonstration because they ran it down and praised it without understanding it.
So far so good on the police sketch.
I am waiting for an inventive criticism at the level of the probable and not of idealist certainty, sentimental speculations, and perspectives of the past and the provincial, mainly...
I switched the wide-angle for a telephoto lens. My new film is a comedy inspired in slapstick, where Helena Ignez is the enemy number one of men. ela In The e Osso [Ang gela Carne iacs. An of es ur an alom advent The sexual of the ten biggest meg Flesh], one That deprivation again? Anthropophagites invade Guanabara!
Vampire, you’re so cool!
What do you want, Flávio Asteca? Do you want Angela Carne e Osso just for yourself? Are we going to spend the weekend on Pleasure?
I’m Brazil’s only black millionaire!
Is this the national husband of the 21st century? Of the 16th or the 21st?
Dr. Plirtz, the owner of a trust of comic books, silver mines in Guarujá, and the El Dólar radio broadcaster. Angela, my love, my passion for you grows every 15 minutes. Yes, it’s me, Dr. Plirtz, the great geek!
This weekend I’m going to dedicate myself to dorks.
Angela, my love, it is a pity that you cannot give me nothing because I have everything!
I don’t want a cool man anymore. That only takes a lot of doing. It’s over my head!
Women, good evening. Men, goodbye. Hello, girls, I am Zé Bonitinho, the great stud, and I only come onstage to the sound of drum rolls!!!
I am not lipstick, but I am on every mouth. Girls, I’m going to give you a little kiss! That’s not funny – funny is a bull with dentures whistling cat calls to a cow in the swamp! The train that the world is waiting for is blowing its whistle. I’m only interested in prophecy. Everything is just one thing and that is all! Above all from just one thing a little of everything comes. We are, we were and we create, which of everything is a single universal mind. To achieve a free mind I went all through a strange cinema.
On this page: pictures of Sganzerla (Marcos Bonisson); other pictures are frames from the films A Mulher de Todos and Abismu
Just call me a geek. Do it, say I’m a Geek-hahaha!
Sincerely, the most fitting solution for you is suicide... Kill yourself, my son!
If the truth were at the bottom of the well or an abyss, it is necessary to seek it, The world is yours, you because without a kick there dork! Your repression can is no goal! only result in the greatest possible dorkiness... In the abyss one sinks or rises... I rise!
In Joaçaba I learned two things in the Tupi language, firmness and respect is the same thing!
First kill your ego, then come with me!
I think that Jimi Hendriz was a thinker, the man who put down in words, concretely, the phrase “I can change your mind.” That’s a revolution.
Here in Brazil, you don’t need to sleep to dream!
On this page: frames from the film Abismu; Creative Commons (Hendrix and Welles picture); Sganzerla picture (Marcos Bonisson)
Orson Welles taught me not to separate politics from crime.
To avoid stupid questions, I should say to everyone that I will continue to with my fundamental directives, which are, nothing more nothing less, to give to cinema the notion of time, space and depth. I’m not a genius... not everything is true!
All the bad films have already been made. The bureaucrats are liquidating the cinema. My films are an advertisement of the Brazilian body and soul.
The motion-picture camera is the most deceptive instrument ever invented by man, someone said that and he was right!
They didn’t give one cent to Noel Rosa.
The first book my mother gave me was “A Midsummer’s Night Dream,” by Shakespeare. I was 6 years old.
Mr. Welles, what do you think of the critics? I will always consider myself a mountebank, an outsider anywhere in the world.
Ha ha ha ha! I detest every sort of parasite!!! As pessoas são incríveis, me aplaudem até quando estou sóbrio!!!
The stars are my only allies. Brazil is a country that produces the best counterfeit whiskey in the world!
The guy comes to film a splendid cradle, the mulatto women... Respect is the sleeve of a vest.
To see or not to see, that’s the question!
On this page: frames from the films Nem Tudo É Verdade, O Signo do Caos, Abismu, and O Bandido da Luz Vermelha; Sganzerla picture (Marcos Bonisson)
The image of chaos is chaos itself.
They can take away all the material.
For the closing, an anti-film.
I’m not interested in cinema, but rather prophecy.
The five senses are as foolish as a child, they don’t know how to distinguish illusion from reality, truth from falsity.
It’s over, it’s over. They can throw everything away.
Cinema would have to be written on a blank sheet of paper that’s on fire in order to record this movement of the capture of thought of a film during its realization. For a limitless cinema... The end.
from a frame of the film Hist贸rias em Quadrinhos
The eighth global art or I can smell the aroma of curry By Ă lvaro de Moya
I met Rogério Sganzerla when he was a critic for Jornal da Tarde newspaper, for which I was a contributor back at its old headquarters, where there was a news ticker that he would later include in his masterpiece O Bandido da Luz Vermelha [The Red Light Bandit] as a tribute to the announcement of Charles Foster Kane’s death. His writings were excellent and gave us a preview of his favorite directors, such as Samuel Fuller. Walter George Durst had made a show on Silki at the Tupi TV station. He was impressed with someone who would go hungry in order to eat. The fakir would lie and remain in a glass casket at Sé Square without eating or drinking for days and this attracted crowds day after day. Durst wanted to put that story on movie screens, but someone else responded faster and shot it first to Durst’s disappointment. He did not like the film. He had also interviewed the Red Light Bandit in jail and became upset when he heard about the film version. However, when he watched Sganzerla’s Red Light Bandit, he swallowed his pride and admitted that it was a great film. He believed it was one of the best Brazilian films ever, just like A Margem, by Ozualdo Candeias.
images: frames from the film Histórias em Quadrinhos
Sganzerla was remarkably creative and his film represented a rupture in Brazilian film language – comparable to what Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless did with French cinema. During the film editing, he found a 35-millimeter roll that was a projection test with sound and image effects. He thought it was cool and inserted it into his film. He told me that one day, when he was sound editing the film at a studio in the Sumaré neighborhood, near Hebe Camargo’s home, he was surprised
to hear shots. Both he and the editor realized that the shots came from outside. They rushed out into the street and saw a man lying dead on the sidewalk with two children next to him, and people running all over the place. The dead man was an American who had just been executed – after having been tried by terrorists, according to the press – in front of his children, who were on their way to school. Later on, Time magazine published that he was an American government agent and his wife was not really his wife, but another agent, and the kids were not their children. A Hollywood-style family sham groomed to spy on the armed insurgency against the Brazilian military dictatorship. We remained friends and kept in touch even after he was no longer a film critic. Sometime later, he came to me and said that he had the right to use the Oxberry equipment at Jota Filmes, on Avenida General Olimpio da Silveira, to make a short film about comic strips. He invited me to be the codirector and writer and to edit the film with him. We didn’t have any experience at all. I dragged with me a lot of books and magazines from my private collection and we filmed O Fantasma. He asked me how many frames and I guessed any old number. When we went to see the first dailies at Rex Filmes, everything was over in a matter of seconds. Just like a piece of
subliminal advertisement. We were puzzled. And eventually learned… I would write at home what we had filmed the day before, step by step. He would read it and find it great, and ask me who had written it. ‘I did,’ I would honestly answer. We held the same conversation the following day, until he finally believed that I could write without quoting others. When we filmed a vamp out of Flash Gordon from the back wearing a long black dress, he was impressed with her resemblance to an older woman with whom he had once been involved with. It was that same Alex Raymond drawing that Hector Babenco showed Sonia Braga for her to compose her character in The Kiss of the Spider Woman. When we filmed some Brazilian comic strips, he said that it was like filming a Rolls Royce and mixing it with a Brazilian Aero Willys. We had planned to make two short films, one called História em Quadrinhos [Comics] and the other Quadrinhos no Brasil [Comics in Brazil]. I invited Orpheu Paraventi Gregori for
We always talked about Orson Welles, about Citizen Kane. Those were times of crisis. We would go grab something to eat in the town of São Bernardo. I would go inside a furniture store devoid of customers and fake an interest in a Louis XV table, asking if it was possible to add those crooked table legs to another completely incompatible piece of furniture. The store owner would accept any absurd deal as long as it led to a sale. Rogério would struggle to hold back his laughter and mock me as we stepped out of the store after I had promised the owner I would return later with my wife. Luckily, our short film História em Quadrinhos was
shown in theaters together with Pasolini’s Teorema. So, it was seen by a large audience. I took a copy to the Lucca Comics Fair, where it was well received. The director of the San Sebastian Film Festival, Luis Gasca, suggested I send a copy to Spain. I gave it to the Brazilian consulate in Italy to send and it only arrived in Spain after the festival was over. Gasca was disappointed for it surely would have scored an international award. In addition to that, the Brazilian diplomatic service lost the copy. We did win a prize in Manaus. Rogério, who was then living in Rio, used to call me and promise a 16-millimeter copy, but would then forget to send it. It came out in video and then, nothing. I still don’t have a copy of História em Quadrinhos. But the memory of those happy times together and the aroma of curry linger with me.
images: frames from the film Histórias em Quadrinhos
the narration. We went to Vera Cruz Studios, or whatever had been left of it, to splice everything together. When we entered the place, the smell of curry coming from a plant stuck to my memory.
imagem: frame do filme O Bandido da Luz Vermelha
Outlaw Cinema
Manifesto by RogĂŠrio Sganzerla (written in 1968, during shooting of The Red Light Bandit)
imagens: frames do filme O Bandido da Luz Vermelha
1 – My film is a western about the Third World. That is to say, a fusion and blending of various genres. I made a somatic film; a western, but also a musical, a documentary, a cop film, a comedy (or is that slapstick?), and science fiction. It has documentary honesty (Rossellini), the violence of a cop film (Fuller), the anarchic pace of a western (Sennett, Keaton), and the brutal simplification of conflict (Mann). 2 – The Red Light Bandit chases the Police, while the cops engage in metaphysical reflections, like meditating on solitude and incommunicability. When a character can’t do anything, he gets demoralized. 3 – Orson Welles taught me not to separate politics from crime.
4 – Jean-Luc Godard taught me to film everything for half the price. 5 – Glauber Rocha introduced me to guerrilla filmmaking based on wide-angle shots. 6 – Fuller showed me how to dismantle traditional cinema through montage. 7 – José Mojica Marins, an overthe-top crime filmmaker, pointed me towards the furious poetry of actors from Brás, of the dropscenes and churlish ruins, and of his seemingly banal dialog. Mojica and Japanese cinema taught me to know how to be free and academic at the same time. 8 – The loner Murnau taught me to love the still shot above all.
9 – One must discover the cinematic secret of poet Luis and provocateur Buñuel, Exterminating Angel. 10 – Can’t forget Hitchcock, Eisenstein, and Nicholas Ray. 11 – Because what I really wanted to make was a magical, seedy film with sublime, abrasive characters; a film in which stupidity, more than anything else, exposes the secret laws of the underdeveloped body and soul. I wanted to stage a spectacle about a delirious society threatened by a lone criminal. I wanted to take that leap because I understood that, in an underdeveloped country, I had to film the possible and the impossible. Each and every one of my characters is hopelessly surly; like 80% of Brazilian cinema, by the way – from the tragic idiocy of Corisco to the nonsense of Boca de Ouro, also including Coffin Joe and the dregs of Barravento.
12 – I am filming the life of The Red Light Bandit the same way that I would recount the miracles of John the Baptist, the youth of Marx, or the adventures of Chateaubriand. It is a good excuse for reflection on Brazil in the 1960s. In this piece, police and crime call for characters from the upper and lower worlds. 13 – I had to film outlaw cinema here in São Paulo because I wanted to concentrate all efforts on a liberating Brazilian cinema that would also be revolutionary in terms of panning shots, static shots, and dry cuts. The starting point for our films must be the instability of cinema – like the instability of our society, our aesthetic, our loves, and our sleep. For that reason, the camera is indecisive; the sound is slippery, and the characters are scared. Anything can happen. Legenda da foto da p. 29 images: frames from the film O Bandido da Luz Vermelha
image: frame from the film Carnaval na Lama
Fragments of RogĂŠrio By Hernani Heffner
Films. Films. Films. Rogério always talked about everything— cinema, the people in cinema, the dirty side of cinema, but nothing was more important to him than film. He spoke passionately, obsessively of his own films and all the other ones he considered thought-provoking, whether they be Luís de Barros or Samuel Fuller. Almost everything was important in some way. You just had to begin to talk about one of the most insignificant films, one of its most trivial scenes, the most trifling of backgrounds, that the speech would emerge in a crescendo of quick, unfinished, intermittent phrases, with verbs in the subjunctive or past imperfect. The idea had to flow, come to life, and present itself as a suggestion rather than an explanation or an aesthetic, historical or moral lesson. The raised voice, the gesticulating arms, the frail silhouette increasing in girth that appeared to fill the place. He wanted to master the transformation of the inert, monotonous into something stimulating. A tribute to the audacious and incisive film director they say he was.
We had not met before because of the films. That is to say, it was because of film, though not his films, which in general led (few, in the beginning) admirers impacted to warm to him. In a sense, Rogério became more familiar to me because of what other people said. One of them, José Marinho, one of the first Sganzerla actors, was my teacher in cinema at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) in the early 1980s. ‘Tarzan’ showed off the mastery of the director of O Bandido da Luz Vermelha. Another person was Remier Lion, the first enthusiast, extoller and deep admirer that I met of the work and the artist behind the work that emerged after the success of that first film. He was a boy when he fell in love with the film and set off in search of the creator of what he considered more than just a lesson in filmmaking but rather a lesson in art and life. They became friends and I learned a little about this relationship after becoming closer to the future programmer, researcher, creator, and globetrotter of cinema.
I already had an idea of who Rogério was. I knew about him before he knew about me. I had seen him on the Cinemateca show, broadcast by the old TVE of Rio de Janeiro at the close of the 1970s. He and José Carlos Monteiro were debaters on the release of A Marca da Maldade. I don’t remember what he said, but the image of this show in particular remained in my memory. I can’t say why. I saw one of his films some time later, again on television, before meeting him in person in the 1990s. It was a broadcast of Bandido lost in some late night slot on TV Globo and didn’t leave any lasting impression. I watched it because it was very uncommon to see Brazilian films on television. Dialog The moment was assuming importance—he did not like the terms ‘underground,’ ‘fringe’ etc, which he considered ideologically perverse and excluded himself and others with whom he shared interests of recognition of an obvious artistic hegemony—and it only became clear to someone uninitiated and belonging to an earlier generation like me during the 1980s. A set of texts, courses, and sessions was paving the way to a somewhat belletristic acceptance of that radical experience. At the time I did understand that the most important thing was the
dialog with certain cinematic traditions in Brazil formed by this recognized, recovered and incorporated group. That tradition meant a dialog with certain popular forms of communication, artistic endeavors and, more importantly, with certain aesthetics that emphasize the spontaneous, the basic, the immediate features. The pantagruelian precariousness was not a condition (underdevelopment etc.), but rather an open means of expression ready to be developed by cinematic constituents. At that time, inside the profession, the squabble over Cinema Novo continued, transformed into a type of executioner versus victims, artists versus merchants, with and without access to Embrafilme etc. I ended up being more enchanted with the (late) discovery of the honesty and plasticity of a masterpiece like Porto das Caixas than with what appeared to be the formal strategy of Terra em Transe repeated in Sem Essa, Aranha (the camera in hand and actor blocking). When I spoke with Rogério about the Glauber-style film, he did not overpraise it. He simply classified it as a film belonging to a prime club of decisive and artistically mature works. My strictly formal perception at that time in the past did not allow me to reconsider old popular Brazilian cinema that his generation had created and the ‘content’ dimension that had already made all the difference and that also had a (new) conceptual presence.
images: frames from the films Copacabana, Mon Amour; Carnaval na Lama; and Sem Essa, Aranha
We met in person when Lécio Augusto Ramos and I, as researchers associated with Cinédia, accepted Rogério’s invitation to come over to his house to talk to a couple of American students. This was back in 1994 or 1995. The visitors wanted to see whether there was a copy of Soberba, with a director’s cut – not the studio’s – one that was sent to Welles in care of Adhemar Gonzaga. After being informed that apparently it had never reached here, we started to talk about Wellesian cinema and Welles’s aborted Brazilian project, the Nem Tudo É Verdade issue (the very first time I was going into the world of Sganzerla cinema), and about a film that was being prepared, the future Tudo É Brasil, my favorite of all. We never became friends in the broad sense of the word. I wasn’t privy to intimate details except when Sinai, Djin, and Helena asked me to go to his apartment in Urca to organize rolls of film that he had left and the documentation that he had patiently stored for his entire life. It was touching to discover the affection
he lavished upon his three daughters—the third is Paloma— by preserving schoolwork and childhood drawings. But I didn’t feel at ease when I began to read the painful letters that he had sent to his parents in Joaçaba. I hadn’t spent enough time with him to claim friendship and peer into his private life. I gave up and recognized that I had lost my soul as a researcher. My memories, therefore, did not go through that typical abuse of the art world, where everyone is everyone’s friend. After that first meeting I started to see him more often, especially at the cinematheque at the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art (MAM/RJ), to which I was admitted in 1996, and the surrounding area, like the Beco da Fome in Cinelândia (I met him a few times at the restaurant Spaghettilândia, which he frequently visited as I learned later). I discovered the existence of a strong link between him and the institution, which had supported the first public screening of Belair’s films. It was the same place where he could delight himself with the chance to revisit
the cinema classics or, more viscerally, his own films and where he could also regularly find archive materials for his montage rehearsals. The most significant photograph that I know of Rogério shows the future film storehouse of the cinematheque in 1979 filled with film cans and he is seated, à la Kane, on top of them, presenting himself in his own special Xanadu. His contacts inside the archive began with Cosme Alves Netto in the 1970s and, in the following decade, they were switched over to Francisco Sérgio Moreira. I can say that I am only the ‘heir’ of this interlocutor position, which I would discover at the end of the last century and it involved contact with this world: access to archive and materials to preserve film negatives, copies, and out-takes from most of his films. Rogério would appear every once in a while for the regular sessions at the cinematheque, but hardly ever attended the so-called Ceia dos Veteranos—private matinee screenings of classics that Cosme promoted for a select group. He also came over to talk in the halls and rooms of the place,
like someone who had nothing else to do. Only now, looking back on it, have I been able to understand how good the cinema environment was for him. Rogério was considered a difficult director/ depositor because he was very temperamental and had a short fuse. On one occasion, I witnessed a momentary fury of his. He called and accused me of having sold his films to French producers. It was so startling, nonsensical, that I didn’t even took that seriously. Even so, my attitude hardened at the time and I said that I would stop by the following morning because I had to send his films off... Two weeks later we met and talked as if nothing had happened. All that was brought about by the sending of the only copy of Carnaval na Lama to France to be shown at Musée Jeu de Pomme. That film is the one that never returned to Brazil. When I took on the responsibility of looking after the film archive, he started to talk to me about subjects that involved his future creations and his collection. And he came to me to find out about the out-
takes from Bandido, as he had plans to go back to the subject and make a sequel. He reviewed all the material in the moviola at the cinematheque, together with Remier. The two also worked on a copy of Copacabana, Mon Amour, which had arrived from the old Líder, where it had been kept since 1980. Endeavors like these resulted in new versions or even new productions, as is the case of Bandido 2, for which I had to find an image of a real criminal being arrested in 1966. At that time I discovered that Rogério had little in the way of financial resources for this type of work. So I began to seek receptivity to his art that would allow him to move forward. By and large, he used his own films as the basis for new ones, cannibalizing out-takes and occasionally the negatives from previous films, as is the case of Fora do Baralho, which has not existed as a complete work since the early 1990s. Despite the desperate attitude, everything was submitted to a certain logic and rigor reminiscent of the original Bandido, in which clips of old Italian, Japanese and American B films were creatively used as were films like Mudança de Hendrix to achieve paroxysm in Tudo É Brasil. The manipulation
of the archive material is above all a sophisticated exercise in conveying new meaning through montage. Sensitivity to rhythmic and visual associations, the uncommon raccords, and the shots reworked in a short space of time demonstrate Rogério’s enormous ability to create new syntaxes for a set of images whose nature was not so much changed by the rigor over the years. The most visible example of this is the Wellesian labyrinth. Today it is very common to hear of films created from archive material, but this was his main perspective throughout almost his entire career. For me this has always been Rogério’s utmost art. One last aspect linked us more directly. It had to do with the preservation of his films. His concern about this started when he gained access to the negatives of Carnaval na Lama and brought them to Rio. He asked me to examine them and the outcome was tragic. It was too late to do anything. We looked at the other films and many were already ruined to a certain extent, but they could be (and can be) saved without any further damage. His body of work paid the price for being small in scale with few
negatives and copies, sometimes just one or two, created from various brand new film rolls, at times expired or poorly developed or washed. In addition to that, they were submitted to a process of cannibalization which implies the nonexistence of master copies, as is the case of Mudança de Hendrix, or the partial or total disappearance of earlier works. An artistic reconsideration of his body of work in recent years ultimately deemed him an important name in Brazilian cinema along with the new generations. He is an unquestionable reference and idol. The recognition that Rogério’s talent has achieved is an asset to be ensured over the coming decades. This can only materialize with the thorough preservation of his complete filmography with the appropriate quality. This is our challenge and the challenge of our future.
Hernani Heffner is a conservator at the cinematheque of the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art (MAM/RJ) and a professor of cinema at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC Rio), the Getulio Vargas Foundation of Rio de Janeiro (FGV/RJ), and CineTVPR, of the Paraná School of Art (FAP). He is charged with coordinating and planning the restoration of the Cinédia collection and wrote this text together with Carmen Miranda, Cat Power, and Eliete Negreiros.
In my films the actors contribute with a new style of interpretation, of disincorporation, a new technique of reinvention. Rogério Sganzerla
Helena Ignez Cast in O Bandido Da Luz Vermelha (1968), when she began a historic duet with Rogério Sganzerla, inaugurating an auteur-style, anti-naturalist way of playing a role by beginning with A Mulher de Todos (1969), in which she starred as Angela Carne e Osso, men’s enemy #1. In 1970, together with Sganzerla and Júlio Bressane, she co-founded Belair, an independent film company that made six feature-length films in a couple of months, including Sem Essa, Aranha; Copacabana, Mon Amour; (she played Sonia Silk, aka The Peroxide Beast); and Carnaval na Lama (appearing as Betty Bomba, the exhibitionist). She also performed in other films directed by Rogério, such as Nem Tudo É Verdade (1986), Perigo Negro (1993), and Signo do Caos (2003). She debuted as a director that same year with Reivenção da Rua (edited by Sganzerla), A Miss e o Dinossauro (2005), Canção de Baal (2008), and Luz nas Trevas (2010), with a never-before-produced screenplay by Sganzerla. Married with him for 34 years, with whom she had her daughters Sinai Sganzerla and Djin Sganzerla, Helena is also the mother of Paloma Rocha, who was cast opposite her in Perigo Negro (1992).
Paulo Villaça Rogério Sganzerla found in Paulo Villaça the ideal type to play the Bandido da Luz Vermelha on the screen: he had a low voice, resembled a Brazilianized Humphrey Bogart, and looked a lot like a bandit himself. Soon thereafter, he was cast in A Mulher de Todos (1969), in which he played the part of a priceless gay bullfighter, and in Copacabana, Mon Amour (1970) as Dr. Grillo.
Pagano Sobrinho In O Bandido da Luz Vermelha, he interpreted JB da Silva, a corrupt politician, gangster, and populist who proposes cynical solutions for the people’s problems. JB da Silva is then transformed into Rei da Boca, the defender of misery as a way to safeguard folklore. Jô Soares Jô Soares plays the part of the hilarious owner of an industrial trust, which encompasses a comic-book publishing company in Brazil, and is married with the greedy Angela Carne e Osso (Helena Ignez) in A Mulher de Todos (1969). The characters of the film seem to be taken from the imaginary world of comic books made by Doktor Plirtz himself, who shows a Nazi symbol in his dress and posture, closely observing and entangling his wife in extravagant erotic games.
Otávio Terceiro One of the actors most identified with Rogério Sganzerla’s universe, Otávio Terceiro is the protagonist in Sganzerla’s last film, Signo do Caos (2003), which closes the tetralogy on Orson Welles’s filmmaking stint in Brazil. The character is defined by the author as a kind of agent of chaos, whose modus operandi is the spirit of transaction.
Antonio Pitanga Rogério Sganzerla suggested that Antonio Pitanga play the role of a black millionaire who is seduced by Angela Carne e Osso in A Mulher De Todos (1969). Pitanga appears again in Nem Tudo É Verdade, playing the part of Justino, the character in Sganzerla’s last screenplay, Luz nas Trevas (2010), directed by Helena Ignez and Ícaro Martins and currently being finalized for release.
Guará Working as an actor in Copacabana, Mon Amour (1970) and a sound technician in Sem Essa, Aranha (1970), he came into his own in Perigo Negro (1993) and legitimized the anti-film O Signo do Caos. In Copacabana, Mon Amour, Guará is a shrewd opportunistic trickster who tries at all costs to become Sonia Silk’s pimp and hustles tourists and gringos on Avenida Atlântica. Jumping in front of two sailors near Copacabana Beach, Guará yells: [in English] money Please, money please... American friends... [then, in Portuguese] What are we doing here on earth? What is man’s destiny?
Maria Gladys In a striking appearance in Sem Essa, Aranha (1970), Maria Gladys plays a hysterical character who comes down the slope of the Vidigal favela wearing green and yellow and yelling: I’m hungry, I’m hungry! In the same film, in a memorable long take, she crazily sings a theme made up based on a provocation by Rogério Sganzerla, with whom she also worked in Carnaval na Lama (1970).
Norma Bengell In Abismu (1977), Norma Bengell stars as one of Rogério Sganzerla’s most interesting characters: Madame Zero. Her image as a fantastical diva smoking a huge cigar became an icon of 1970s Brazilian cinema.
Othoniel Serra In these conditions, paralyzed by the national misery, the sucker can only go on doped by the sun, rum, and magic. In Copacabana, Mon Amour (1970), Othoniel Serra plays the role of Vidimar, Sonia Silk’s (Helena Ignez) gay brother and halfbaked practitioner of Macumba black magic. According to the film plot, he is a stupid guy with a crush on his boss, Doctor Grillo (Paulo Villaça), whom he eventually kills driven by his lucid despair of having destroyed his own Ego.
illustration: João Pinheiro
Wilson Grey Having been cast in more than 150 films, mostly in supporting roles, in Abismu (1977) Wilson Grey interprets Madame Zero’s (Norma Bengell) secretary in an expressionist style. Alongside José Mojica Marins as Dr. Pierson, he pursues an Egyptologist, who has a manuscript with clues leading to an ancient treasure.
Moreira da Silva In Sem Essa, Aranha (1970), Moreira da Silva, an ultra-shrewd opportunistic trickster, appears in a single sequence singing and dancing the samba. His presence fits incredibly well within the film delirious mise-en-scène, where Zé Bonitinho deals the cards saying: ‘This is the worst of times!’ An allusion to the ghost of dictatorship, which some months later would send Rogério Sganzerla and Helena Ignez into exile.
Luiz Gonzaga In a circular and dizzying traveling shot, the camera accompanies Luiz Gonzaga and his saxophone in Sem Essa, Aranha. The setting is the beaten-earth-ground backyard of a house in the city outskirts. To the sound of the baião-style music, Helena Ignez, in a long take, spews out one of Sganzerla’s most incisive monologs: ‘This earth is so chintzy! The solar system is trash! A subplanet! A shrimpy planet that thinks it’s hot stuff!’
José Mojica Marins In Abismu (1977), José Mojica Marins makes the ‘elegy to uncouthness’ when playing the character of Dr. Pierson. By interpreting this character resembling Zé do Caixão, he gets involved in an archaeological plot, chasing an Egyptologist with a supertelescope and hunting treasures and lost links with ancient civilizations. Having made over 40 films and played a role in about 20, José Mojica Marins, maintained a creative dialog with Sganzerla, Júlio Bressane, Ivan Cardoso, Eliseu Visconti, and Neville de Almeida.
Grande Otelo After a bright appearance in Nem Tudo É Verdade (1995), actor Grande Otelo was chosen by Rogério to take part in Tudo É Brasil, the third film in the tetralogy about Orson Welles’s filmmaking stint in Brazil. By interpreting himself under his actual name Sebastião Prata, Grand Otelo can be seen beyond the slapstick as a juxtaposition of three characters: the slapstick comedian, the samba composer in Rio Zona Norte (1957) by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, and the representation of Othello, Shakespeare’s only black protagonist after whom Grande Otelo [Great Othello] was named.
Zé Bonitinho Jorge Loredo interpreted Aranha, a striking character in Sem Essa, Aranha (1970) representing the last capitalist in the country, and Medium Mu in the film Abismu (1977). After Zé Bonitinho character had became his signature style on Brazilian television, Loredo was invited by Rogério to play in his films, in which Zé Bonitinho is in the center of attention with nearly metaphysical monologs that add comfort to his figure and sometimes turn him into Rogério Sganzerla’s alter ego.
Program Ocupação Rogério Sganzerla [Rogério Sganzerla Occupation] open wednesday 9 june to sunday 18 july 2010 tuesday to friday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. saturday sunday holiday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Itaú Cultural presents Rogério Sganzerla’s filmography. The films made by this director from 1968 to 2003 will be screened together with other works which he took part in and reflect his creative universe. Wednesday 9 6 p.m. session 1 Documentário [Documentary] Rogério Sganzerla, 11 min, 1966, b&w, 16 mm One afternoon, with free time on their hands and wandering on the streets of São Paulo, two young men with little money talk about what to do. They always thought about cinema. The film received the JB Mesbla – Viagem a Cannes [JB Mesbla Prize – Trip to Cannes] in 1967, was shown at the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005, and was officially invited to the 22nd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2004. A Mulher de Todos [The Woman of Everyone] Rogério Sganzerla, 92 min, 1969, color/b&w, 35 mm Screenplay: Rogério Sganzerla; cinematography: Peter Overbeck; set design: Rogério Sganzerla and Andrea Tonacci; editing: Rogério Sganzerla and Franklin Pereira; soundtrack: Ana Carolina Soares; production: Alfredo Palácios and Rogério Sganzerla; produced by: Servicine and Rogério Sganzerla Produções Cinematográficas; sound: Julio Perez Caballar; cast: Helena Ignez, Jô Soares, Stênio Garcia, Paulo Villaça, Antonio Pitanga, Abrahão Farc, Renato Corrêa e Castro, Thelma Reston, Silvio de Campos Filho, José Carlos Cardoso, Antonio Moreira, and José Agrippino de Paula. Ângela Carne e Osso is a nymphomaniac married with Dr. Plirtz, an ex-Nazi and owner of an industrial trust that includes a comic-book publishing company in Brazil. Bored with her life, she spends her time collecting men on the idyllic Island of Pleasures. This film won the awards for Best Editing and Best Actress (Helena Ignez) at the 4o Festival de Brasília; Best Film at the 1o Festival do Norte do Cinema Brasileiro; and Best Film at the Festival de São Carlos. It was screened at the 20th Fribourg International
Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2006; the Tekfestival – A Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Rome, in 2005; and the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005; and was officially invited to the 22nd Torino Film Festival, in 2004. 8 p.m. debate 1 with Helena Ignez, Joel Pizzini, Júlio Bressane and Roberto Turigliatto Thursday10 5:30 p.m. session 1 B2 Rogério Sganzerla and Sylvio Renoldi, 11 min, 2001, b&w, 35 mm Editing: Rogério Sganzerla and Sylvio Renoldi; cast: Paulo Villaça, Helena Ignez, Lanny Gordin, Gal Costa and Jards Macalé A short film made of out-takes from O Bandido da Luz Vermelha and Carnaval na Lama. It presents evidences of Sganzerla’s work method based on unique editing techniques. Shown at the 23rd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2005; and the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005. Invited to the 20th Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2006. Sem Essa, Aranha [Give Me a Break, Spider] Rogério Sganzerla, 96 min, 1970, color, 16 mm Screenplay: Rogério Sganzerla; direction assistants: Kleber Santos and Ivan Cardoso; production: Júlio Bressane and Rogério Sganzerla; produced by: Belair; cinematography and camera: Edson Santos and José Antonio Ventura; editing: Rogério Sganzerla and Júlio Bressane; sound: Guará Rodrigues; cast: Jorge Loredo, Helena Ignez, Maria Gladys, Luiz Gonzaga, Moreira da Silva, and Aparecida. Considered a radical work, Sem Essa, Aranha introduced technical innovations to acting and direction based above all - on improvisation. By using long takes, the film mirrors the Brazilian reality in 1970. It was shown at the 20th Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2006; the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005; and the 23rd Torino international Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2005. Invited to the Taormina Film Fest, Italy, in 1998.
8 p.m. debate 1 with Antonio Urano, Helena Ignez, Hernani Heffner and
Maria Gladys
Friday 11
5 p.m. session 1 Elogio da Luz [Compliment from the Light] Joel Pizzini and Paloma Rocha, 54 min, 2003, b&w/color, video Production: Canal Brasil A film essay about Rogério Sganzerla, whose narrative turns the chronology of his works inside out, hence revealing the relationships between his creative process and his career as a thinker focused on cinema. It features statements from personalities who knew the
filmmaker both on and off the film production sets. Um Sorriso, Por Favor – O Mundo Gráfico de Goeldi [A Smile, Please – The Graphic World of Goeldi] José Sette, 23 min, 1981, color, 16 mm Editing: Rogério Sganzerla; art direction: Fernando Tavares; production: Mário Drumond; sound: João Vargas; sound editing: Eliseu Visconti; set design: Osvaldo Medeiros The spirit and the graphic universe of Brazilian drawer and printmaker Oswaldo Goeldi. Without attachment to any concern of being biographical or didactic, the film discusses the artistic and cinematic content in relation to the expressionist movement. Recipient of the Best Editing and Best Film awards at the Festival de Brasília in 1981. Viagem e Descrição do Rio Guanabara por Ocasião da França Antártica [Journey and Description of the Guanabara River on the France Antarctique Occasion] Rogério Sganzerla, 17 min, 1976, b&w/color, 16 mm Screenplay and production: Rogério Sganzerla; cinematography: Paulo Sérgio; editing: Ramon Alvarado; production director: Wilson Monteiro Filho; cast: Paulo Villaça Inspired in History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, by Jean de Léry, this short film follows the trail of adventurer Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon and the formation of the French colony in Rio de Janeiro in the 16th century. Shot in the sites of those historical events, such as Fort Coligny, in Ilha das Cabras, the film received the prize from the Department of Culture of Rio de Janeiro in the competition Uma Data para Lembrar [A Day to Be Remembered] and was screened at the 23rd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2005; and the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005. 8 p.m. session 2 Histórias em Quadrinhos [Comics] Rogério Sganzerla and Álvaro de Moya, 7 min, 1969, b&w/color, 35 mm Production: Elyseu Visconti; soundtrack: Rogério Sganzerla; editing: Milton da Silva; narration: Orfeu P. Gregori; table top: Paulo Pichi; image: Rex; sound: Vera Cruz Sganzerla’s first short documentary. The theme is the universe of comic strips and comic books. Guided by a text about the history of comics written by expert Álvaro de Moya, the camera shows examples of comics by all-time greats, including Will Eisner, Milton Cannif, Alex Raymond, and Al Capp. Screened at the 23rd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2005; and the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005. A Mulher de Todos [The Woman of Everyone] Rogério Sganzerla, 92 min, 1969, color/b&w, 35 mm Saturday 12 3 p.m. session 1 Ritos Populares – Umbanda no Brasil [Popular Rites – Umbanda in Brazil] Rogério Sganzerla, 18 min, 1977, color, 16 mm. Unfinished documentary.
Screenplay and production: Rogério Sganzerla; cinematography: Tony Ferreira; sound technician: José Sette; editing: Denise Fontoura; narrator: W. W. da Matta e Silva; produced by: Tupan The recording of a statement by Woodrow Wilson da Matta e Silva (founder of Umbanda Esotérica, in 1940) alternates with scenes of trances and rituals shot at the Tenda Umbandista Oriental, in Itacuruçá. The film was shown at the 23rd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2005; and the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, 2005. Copacabana, Mon Amour Rogério Sganzerla, 85 min, 1970, color, 35 mm Screenplay: Rogério Sganzerla; direction assistant: Guará Rodrigues; production: Rogério Sganzerla and Júlio Bressane; cinematography and camera: Renato Laclete; editing: Mair Tavares and Gilberto Santeiro; original soundtrack: Gilberto Gil; cast: Helena Ignez, Paulo Villaça, Otoniel Serra, Lilian Lemmertz, Joãozinho da Goméia, Laura Gallano, and Guará Rodrigues; produced by: Belair Sônia Silk, a woman troubled by visions of spirits, walks around Copacabana dreaming of being a big-time radio singer. This was the first Brazilian film in Cinemascope, mostly shot in the Rio de Janeiro favelas. It was screened at the 20th Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2006; the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005; the 22nd and 23rd editions of the Torino Film Festival, Italy, in 2004 and 2005 – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla; and the Tekfestival – A Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Rome, in 2005. 5 p.m. session 2 Informação H. J. Koellreutter [H. J. Koellreutter Information] Rogério Sganzerla, 18 min, 2003, color, video Cinematography: Marcos Bonisson; editing: Marina Weis; mixing: Ricardo Reis; with footage from the composition Tanka II, by H. J. Koellreutter A portrait of Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, a student of Paul Hindemith and teacher of a number of musicians, including Cláudio Santoro, Guerra Peixe, and Edino Krieger. The film was shown at the 20th Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2006; the 23rd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2005; and the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005. América, o Grande Acerto de Vespúcio [America, the Big Success by Vespucci] Rogério Sganzerla, 27 min, 1992, color, beta and video Camera: Carlos Otávio Jubé; cast: Otávio Terceiro and crew of Teatro Carlos Gomes In this experimental work combining cinema and theater, Sganzerla uses minimal technical resources to allow actor Otávio Terceiro to play the role of Amerigo Vespucci. Based on a letter written by the navigator entitled ‘Novus Mundus,’ an account of the discovery of America, the video features a singular monolog. Recipient of the Best Actor (Carlos Otávio Jubé) award at CineEsquemanovo, Porto Alegre, in 2007. It was screened at the 23rd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2005; and the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005.
Anônimo e Incomum [Anonymous and Uncommon] Rogério Sganzerla, 13 min, 1990, color, video Screenplay: Rogério Sganzerla; cinematography: Marcos Bonisson; original soundtrack: Fernando Moura; cast: Helena Ignez and Nonatho Freire; produced by: Tupan Filmes Visual artist Antonio Manuel presents his work in settings that include his studio on Rua Alice and at Praia Vermelha, in Rio de Janeiro. The artist’s artworks alternate with shots of colored canvases, painted at the time of the shooting, and with dramatic scenes starring Helena Ignez and Nonatho Freire. This film was screened at the 23rd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2005; and the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005. Isto É Noel Rosa [This Is Noel Rosa] Rogério Sganzerla, 43 min, 1990, color, 35 mm Editing: Sylvio Renoldi; cinematography: Dib Lufti; executive production: Diana Eichbauer; archive: Jorge Pereira Vaz; images: Marcelo Marsilac, Sergio Arena, Newton Gomes and José Sette; design: Edmundo Souto; final artwork: Ana Rita; costume design: Diana Eichbauer; direct sound: Joaquim Santana; voice: João Gilberto and Gal Costa; cast: João Braga After Noel por Noel (1981), this samba musician, singer and composer from Rio de Janeiro is once again portrayed through documental pictures. Part of them shows the musician in a staggering walk, at this point strongly affected by tuberculosis, through the streets of Rio de Janeiro during Carnival. The film was presented at the 80th anniversary of Noel, the composer from Vila Isabel District, and at Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, in 1993. Also shown at the 20th Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2006; the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005; and the 22nd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2004. 8 p.m. session 3 Documentário [Documentary] Rogério Sganzerla, 11 min, 1966, b&w, 16 mm O Bandido da Luz Vermelha [The Red Light Bandit] Rogério Sganzerla, 92 min, 1968, b&w, 35 mm Screenplay and soundtrack: Rogério Sganzerla; cinematography: Peter Overbeck and Carlos Ebert; set design: Andrea Tonacci; editing: Sylvio Renoldi; sound: Júlio Perez Caballar, Mara Duvall; cast: Paulo Villaça, Helena Ignez, Sérgio Hingst, Pagano Sobrinho, Sergio Mamberti, Luiz Linhares, Sonia Braga, Ítala Nandi, Renato Consorte, Antonio Lima, Maurice Copovilla, Ozualdo Candeias, Roberto Luna, José Marinho, Carlos Reichenbach, Marie Caroline Whitaker, Renata Souza Dantas, Ezequiel Neves, and Lola Brah; produced by: Rogério Sganzerla Produções Cinematográficas According to Sganzerla, O Bandido da Luz Vermelha is ‘a western movie about the Third World. That is to say, a fusion and blending of various genres [...] a somatic film; a western, but also a musical, a documentary, a cop film, a comedy (or is that slapstick? [...] and science fiction.’ This featurelength movie offers a panorama of Brazil by following a fugitive from the police going through an identity crisis, thus composing an apocalyptic scenario for the country.
Recipient of the awards for Best Film, Direction, Editing, Dialog and Costume Design at the 3o Festival de Brasília, in 1968; the Special-category prize of the São Paulo State Governor; the INC - Instituto Nacional do Cinema [National Cinema Institute] award; and the Roquette Pinto award. It was officially invited to the Torino Film Festival in 2004 and the 3rd Discovering Latin America Film Festival, London, in 2004, and shown at the Wellington Film Society, New Zealand, in 2007; the Auckland Film Society, New Zealand, in 2007; the 9o Festival Internacional de Curtas de Belo Horizonte, in 2007; the 20th Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2006; the Barbican Center, London, in 2006; the 16th Bobigny Film Festival, Paris, in 2005; the Tekfestival – A Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Rome, in 2005; the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005; the International Film Museum Festival, Austria, in 2005; the 22nd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2004; the 3rd Discovering Latin America Film Festival, London, in 2004; MoMa, New York, in 1999; and the Taormina Film Fest, Italy, in 1998. Sunday 13 3 p.m. session 1 Noel por Noel [Noel by Noel] Rogério Sganzerla, 10 min, 1981, color, 35 mm Screenplay and production: Rogério Sganzerla; cinematography: Renato Laclete; table top: Edson Lobato; sound: Nel-Som; produced by: Rogério Sganzerla Produções Cinematográficas A visual essay about the Rio de Janeiro samba musician and composer with archival images of the musical and historical setting of that time, including picturesque aspects of the district of Vila Isabel. Recipient of the Audience Award and the Best Editing award at the Festival de Brasília in 1981. It was screened at the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005. Tudo É Brasil [It’s All Brazil] Rogério Sganzerla, 82 min, 1998, b&w/color, 35 mm Screenplay: Rogério Sganzerla; editing: Hugo Mader, Mair Tavares, Sylvio Renoldi; executive production: Rojer Garrido de Madrugo; sound: Sylvio Renoldi This film represents further research Sganzerla made into Orson Welles’s stay in Brazil, in 1942, for the realization of the movie It’s All True, a project boycotted by the Hollywood studios. Sganzerla’s movie shows fragments of images of Welles in Rio, Salvador and Fortaleza that are superimposed with audio recordings of some radiophonic statements and songs performed by artists such as Carmen Miranda and Herivelto Martins. Winner of the Editing, Historical Research and Criticism prizes at the Festival de Brasília in 1998; the Editing prize of the Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte – APCA [São Paulo Association of Art Critics]; and the Marché du Film prize, at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1998. It was screened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1999; the 22nd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2004; and the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005. It was invited by the Munich Cinematheque, Germany, for the Welles Conference addressing the career of Orson Welles.
5 p.m. session 2
Wednesday 16
Olho por Olho [An Eye for an Eye] Andrea Tonacci, 13 min, 1966, b&w, 16 mm Screenplay and cinematography: Andrea Tonacci; editing: Rogério Sganzerla; cast: Francisco Arruda, Ronaldo Ferraz, Sérgio Frederico, Daniele Gaudin, Franco Ogassawara, and Fábio Sigolo. A group of middle-class friends drive around São Paulo in a car, reacting to the feeling of powerlessness and frustration that besets them.
5 p.m. session 1
Belair Bruno Safadi and Noa Bressane, 80 min, 2009 This documentary restores the history of the film company of Júlio Bressane and Rogério Sganzerla – which produced six films in five months in 1970. The filmmakers, censured by the military dictatorship, left the country; the films are little known until today. 8 p.m. session 3 Irani Rogério Sganzerla, 8 min, 1983, color, 16 mm Screenplay: Rogério Sganzerla Segments of footage showig a popular festival related to a battle that took place in the town of Irani, the site of the Contestado War outbreak in Santa Catarina state, in 1912. This film was screened at the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005. O Signo do Caos [The Sign of Chaos] Rogério Sganzerla, 80 min, 2003, b&w/color, 35 mm Screenplay and production: Rogério Sganzerla; cinematography: Marcos Bonisson and Nélio Ferreira; editing: Rogério Sganzerla and Sylvio Renoldi; soundtrack: Sinai Sganzerla; art direction: Sérgio Reis; cast: Otávio Terceiro, Sálvio do Prado, Helena Ignez, Guará Rodrigues, Freddy Ribeiro, Djin Sganzerla, Camila Pitanga, Giovana Gold, Eduardo Cabus, Gilson Moura, Felipe Murray, Vera Magalhães, Anita Terrana, and Ruth Mezek. Sganzerla’s last film, O Signo do Caos indirectly refers back to Orson Welles’s stint in Brazil to shoot It’s All True. This is another film in which Sganzerla’s innovative cinematic language can be seen with inputs on the difficulties faced by the filmmaking industry in Brazil. The film won the prizes for Best Direction and Best Editing at the Festival de Brasília in 2003; Best Editing from the Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte (APCA) in 2006; and the Special prize at the Festival do Rio, in 2003. It was officially invited to the 20th Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2006, and was shown at the 9th Film Fest of Mar del Plata, in 2006; the Tekfestival – A Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Rome, in 2005; the Procida Film Festival, Italy, in 2005; the 58th Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2005; the Presénce et Passé du Cinéma Brésilien, Paris, in 2005; the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005; the 22nd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2004; the Trieste Film Festival, Italy; and the Rome international Film Festival, in 2004.
Helena Zero Joel Pizzini, 34 min, 2006, b&w/color, video Screenplay: Joel Pizzini; direction assistant: Sinai Sganzerla; camera and cinematography: Eryk Rocha; sound: Bruno Espírito Santo; sound editing: Alexandre Gwaz and Robson Rumin; editing: Joel Pizzini and Robson Rumin; executive production: Paloma Rocha; produced by: Canal Brasil; soundtrack: Jorge Mautner and Nelson Jacobina; cast: Helena Ignez, Gal Costa, Jorge Mautner, Jards Macalé, and Lanny Gordin. A documental essay on the creative universe of actress and filmmaker Helena Ignez, who, by way of a tai chi chuan ritual, evokes and reinvents her memory. A Reinvenção da Rua [The Reinvention of the Street] Helena Ignez, 27 min, 2003, color, video Screenplay, production and executive production: Helena Ignez; cinematography: Marcos Bonisson; camera: Rogério Sganzerla, Marcos Bonisson, and Eduardo Barioni; editing: Rogério Sganzerla; sound editing: Rogério Sganzerla; soundtrack: Walter Smetack; cast: Vito Acconci; produced by: Mercúrio Produções Helena Ignez’s first film as a director paying homage to the North American architect and contemporary artist Vito Acconci. Perigo Negro [Black Danger] Rogério Sganzerla, 27 min, 1992, color, 35 mm Adaptation, production and additional dialogs: Rogério Sganzerla; original story: Oswald de Andrade; cinematography and camera: Nélio Ferreira Lima; editing: Sylvio Renoldi; soundtrack: Paulo Moura; instrumentation: Edson Maciel; musical consultant: Otávio Terceiro; cast: Abrahão Farc, Helena Ignez, Antonio Abujamra, Tita, Paloma Rocha, Betina Viany, Conceição Senna, Guará Rodrigues, Bayard Tonelli, Sandro Solviat Ninho de Morais, and Paulo Moura; produced by: Tupan, for the Department of Culture of the Government of São Paulo The career of soccer player Perigo Negro, who was a rising star when his career is sabotaged by an unscrupulous team director, is the theme of the film. A free adaptation of a screenplay written by Oswald de Andrade, Perigo Negro is part of the Oswaldianas project, which also includes episodes filmed by other directors (including Júlio Bressane). This film was screened at the 20th Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2006; the 23rd Los Angeles Film Festival, in 2005; the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005; and the Taormina Film Fest, Italy, in 1998. It represented Brazil at the 19th edition of the Latin American Film Festival, in 2005. 8 p.m. session 2 A Miss e o Dinossauro 2005 – Bastidores da Belair [The Beauty Queen and the Dinosaur 2005 – Behind the Scenes of Belair] Helena Ignez, 17 min, 2005, color, Super-8 Screenplay: Helena Ignez; camera: Rogério Sganzerla, Júlio Bressane, Ivan Cardoso, and Helena Ignez; editing: André Guerreiro Lopes; executive production: Ester Fér; sound editing: Pedro Noizyman; voice-over: Rogério Sganzerla and Helena
Ignez; research: Helena Ignez and Ester Fér; musical selection: Helena Ignez; cast: Helena Ignez, Maria Gladys, Guará Rodrigues, Jorge Loredo, Aparecida, Kleber Santos, Betty Faria, Rogério Sganzerla, Júlio Bressane, Ivan Cardoso, and Neville d’Almeida; produced by: Mercúrio Produções By producing the making of Cuidado, Madame and Sem Essa, Aranha, two simultaneous Belair productions, Helena aimed to make a documentary about the era of film releases, which was not possible. Finalized in 2005, the actress/director herself narrates the shooting process in first person. Canção de Baal [Baal’s Song] Helena Ignez, 77 min, 2008, color, digital Screenplay: Helena Ignez (inspired in Baal, by Bertolt Brecht); production: Sinai Sganzerla, Patrícia Godoy and Ana Oliveira; soundtrack: Roberto Riberti and Carlos Carega; cinematography: André Guerreiro Lopes and Aloysio Raolino; editing: Ricardo Miranda, Júlia Martins and Guta Pacheco; cast: Felipe Kannenberg, Djin Sganzerla, Beth Goulart, Michele Matalon, and Marcelo Lazzaratto; produced by: Mercúrio Produções Baal is a poet and singer who is invited to dinner held by Meck. There, Baal becomes sarcastic with the other guests and scandalizes them by flirting with the host’s wife.
This futuristic fiction film freely adapted from the homonymous story by writer Ray Bradbury serves as a metaphor for the political situation of Brazil, which was under the military dictatorship at that time. 8 p.m. session 2 Brasil [Brazil] Rogério Sganzerla, 12 min, 1981, color, 35 mm Screenplay and production: Rogério Sganzerla; cast: João Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Maria Bethânia. This film shows the making of the record album Brasil, by João Gilberto, released in 1981, with Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Maria Bethânia in the studio. Dorival Caymmi, Ary Barroso, Grande Otelo, and Eros Volúsia, in rare performances, and Orson Welles, at the Carnival in Rio, complete the short film, which depicts the country with unique shots. The film was shown at the International Film Museum Festival, Austria, in 2005; the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005; the 22nd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2004; and the 3rd Discovering Latin America Film Festival, London, in 2004.
Thursday 17
Copacabana, Mon Amour Rogério Sganzerla, 85 min, 1970, color, 35 mm
5 p.m. session 1
Friday 18
Um Sorriso, Por Favor – O Mundo Gráfico de Goeldi [A Smile, Please – The Graphic World of Goeldi] José Sette, 23 min, 1981, color, 16 mm
4 p.m. session 1
Horror Palace Hotel Jairo Ferreira, 41 min, 1978, color, Super-8 Shooting: Jairo Ferreira and Rogério Sganzerla; narration, editing and finishing: Jairo Ferreira; comments: José Mojica Marins, Francisco Luis de Almeida Salles, Rogério Sganzerla, Júlio Bressane, Ivan Cardoso, Neville D’Almeida, Rudá de Andrade, Elyseu Visconti, Bernardo Vorobov, Dilma Loes, Renato Consorte, and Satã. Offstage at the Festival de Brasília in 1978, filmmakers such as Rogério Sganzerla, Júlio Bressane, Elyseu Visconti and José Mojica Marins analyze filmmaking in Brazil. The climax is reached with the comments by critic Luis de Almeida Salles, interviewed by Sganzerla. Bom Jesus da Lapa – O Salvador dos Humildes [Bom Jesus da Lapa – The Savior of the Humble] Elyseu Visconti, 14 min, 1970, color, 35 mm Cinematography and production: Elyseu Visconti; editing: Rogério Sganzerla; research: Ana Tereza Ramos; text: Ipojuca Pontes This documentary shows the pilgrimage held annually along the banks of the São Francisco River, in the state of Bahia, where the people prove their devotion to Bom Jesus da Lapa. O Pedestre [The Pedestrian] Otoniel Santos Pereira, 25 min, 1966, b&w, 16 mm Cinematography and camera: Andrea Tonacci; editing: Rogério Sganzerla
Linguagem de Orson Welles [Orson Welles’s Language] Rogério Sganzerla, 15min, 1990, b&w/color, 35 mm Editing: Severino Dadá; original soundtrack: João Gilberto; sound: Roberto Leite; cast: John Huston, Edmar Morel, Grande Otelo. The only short film in the ‘Sganzerlian’ tetralogy about the coming of the Hollywoodian enfant terrible to Brazil to film It’s All True. It features documental materials (newspaper clippings, photos etc.) similar to those that would be used in Tudo É Brasil eight years later. This film was selected for and presented in the Special category at the 46th (1993) and 58th (2005) editions of the Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland, on invitation of the Munich Cinematheque for the Welles Conference – organized by Filmmuseum im Münchner Stadtmuseum. It was screened at the 23rd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2005; and the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005. Nem Tudo É Verdade [It’s Not All True] Rogério Sganzerla, 95 min, 1985, b&w/color, 35 mm Screenplay: Rogério Sganzerla; cinematography: Edson Batista, Victor Diniz, Carlos Ebert, José Medeiros, Edson Santos, and Afonso Viana; editing: Severino Dadá and Denise Fontoura; art direction and costume design: Raul Williams; original soundtrack: João Gilberto; sound: Roberto de Carvalho; cast: Arrigo Barnabé, Grande Otelo, Helena Ignez, Nina de Pádua, Mariana de Moraes, Vânia Magalhães, Abrahão Farc, Otávio Terceiro, José Marinho, Geraldo Francisco, Mário Cravo, and Nonatho Freire.
This is the first approach Sganzerla made to Orson Welles’s stint in Brazil back in 1942 to film It’s All True, a project boycotted by Hollywood. Arrigo Barnabé plays the director of Citizen Kane, who was then at the peak of his status as the greatest precocious genius of filmmaking. The film won the Best Editing and Best Soundtrack awards at the 14o Festival de Gramado, in 1987; the Best Film award at the Festival de Caxambu, in 1986; the prize of the Associação Brasileira de Cineastas [Brazilian Filmmakers’ Association]; and the Abraci prize at Fest-Rio, in 1985. The film was invited by the Munich Cinematheque, Germany, for the Welles Conference about the filmmaking career of Orson Welles, and was shown at the 20th Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2006; the 22nd and the 23rd Torino Film Festival, Italy, in 2004 and 2005 – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla; the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005; the Seattle International Film Festival, in 1987; the Melbourne Film Festival, in 1987; the Chicago International Film Festival, in 1986; the Berlin International Film Festival; and on the BBC (London) and TF-1 (Paris) TV networks, in 1986 and 1985, respectively. 6 p.m. debate with Bill Krohn, Catherine Benamou, Ismail Xavier and Samuel Paiva session 2 It’s All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles Bill Krohn, Myron Meisel, Norman Foster, Orson Welles, and Richard Wilson, 89 min, 1993 production: Régine Konckier, Richard Wilson, Bill Krohn, Myron Meisel, Jean-Luc Ormieres; associate producer: Catherine Benamou; cinematography: Gary Graver; editing: Ed Marx; soundtrack: Jorge Arriagada; narration: Miguel Ferre; cast: Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, and Carmen Miranda. A documentary based on scenes recovered and reconstituted from It’s All True, by Orson Welles, who was shooting it in Brazil back in 1942 and had to stop. Originally consisting of three stories about the sociopolitical order of Latin America (My Friend Bonito, The Story of Samba and Four Men on a Raft), Welles’s film approach was against the interests of the Brazilian and North American governments and was then boycotted.
Saturday 19 3 p.m. session 1 A Vermelha Luz do Bandido [The Red Light of the Bandit] Pedro Jorge, 16 min, 2009 This documentary/television-reporting/scientific/experimental work analyzes the film O Bandido da Luz Vermelha, by Rogério Sganzerla, made in 1968, and also discusses the current status of the Brazilian filmmaking industry. O Bandido da Luz Vermelha [The Red Light Bandit] Rogério Sganzerla, 92 min, 1968, b&w, 35 mm
5 p.m. session 2 A Cidade do Salvador (Petróleo Jorrou na Bahia) [The City of Salvador (Oil Gushed in Bahia)] Rogério Sganzerla, 9 min, 1981, b&w, 16 mm Editing: Rogério Sganzerla; co-production: Fundação Cultural do Estado da Bahia, Cepoc A film-document about the relations of power between social classes in the sociocultural context of Bahia based on the history of oil exploitation in the state. Recipient of the Best Film award at the Festival de Caxambu in 1985; the prize in the Incidental category and Best Editing award at the Festival de Gramado in 1987; and the Abraci prize at Fest- Rio, in 1985. It was screened at the Seattle International Film Festival; the Melbourne Film Festival, in 1987; the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005; and on the BBC (London), in 1986, and TF-I (Paris), in 1985. Sem Essa, Aranha [Give Me a Break, Spider] Rogério Sganzerla, 96 min, 1970, color, 16 mm 8 p.m. session 3 Deuses no Juruá [Gods on the Juruá River] Rogério Sganzerla, 15 min, 1997, color, digital Screenplay, images and editing: Maria Maia; soundtrack: Villa-Lobos Excerpts from ‘Floresta do Amazonas’ by composer Heitor Villa-Lobos punctuate a soundtrack featuring the Greek language as well as the indigenous languages of Pano and Aruaque. The Indians along the Juruá River and the Greek gods are blended and flow together in this work. Abismu Rogério Sganzerla, 80 min, 1977, color, 35 mm Screenplay, production and editing: Rogério Sganzerla; production director: Ivan Cardoso; non-original soundtrack: Jimi Hendrix; cinematography: Renato Laclete; sound: Dudi Gupper; cast: Norma Bengell, José Mojica Marins, Wilson Grey, Jorge Loredo, Edson Machado, Mário Thomar, Mariozinho de Oliveira, and Satã. Inscriptions in some of the caverns of the Pedra da Gávea [Gávea Outcropping], which date back to the precolonial period, are the starting point for this tribute to Jimi Hendrix and the power of Mu, a Phoenician divinity celebrated by the character Zé Bonitinho. This film marks Sganzerla’s return to the feature-length film after a long period of absence. It was screened at the 20th Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, in 2006; the Mostra Cinema do Caos CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, in 2005; the 22nd Torino Film Festival – Tribute to Rogério Sganzerla, Italy, in 2004; the Rome Film Festival, in 2004; and the Trieste Film Festival, Italy, in 2004.
Biography of the debaters Antonio Urano Holder of a Bachelor’s degree in economics and a Master’s in administration from Getúlio Vargas Foundation(FGV), he is specialized in commercial promotion and has worked in Latin America for a number of years. He held several positions at Embrafilme, including superintendent of foreign marketing. He has produced dozens of national shows in Latin America and organized the participation of Brazilian cinema in events such as the film market at Cannes, Berlin, and Milan. He took part in the pioneering effort for the marketing of copyrights of Brazilian films to Eastern European and Asian countries and has designed projects for the international promotion and distribution of Brazilian films. He has served as a consultant for various film festivals and for three years he was commercial director for Riofilme. Bill Krohn A North American critic and essayist. His books include Hitchcock at Work and Luis Buñuel – Chimera. He was co-director of It’s All True (1993) and has contributed articles to Cahiers du Cinéma and The Economist. He maintained a creative interlocution with Sganzerla, whom he defines as ‘a filmmaker for the new millennium.’ Catherine Benamou A graduate of the University of New York, she is a professor with the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Michigan. A specialist in the work of Orson Welles and in the theory of documentary, she authored Rediscovering Orson Welles and It’s All True, Orson Welles’s Pan-Americana Odyssey. An admirer of Rogério Sganzerla, she cultivated an ongoing discussion with him, stimulated by their mutual interest in Welles’s stint in Brazil. She took part in the project for the restoration of images produced by Sganzerla. Helena Ignez A graduate of the Bahia Theatre School, she participated in stagings of plays by Bertolt Brecht and August Strindberg. Her filmmaking career began with O Pátio (Glauber Rocha, 1959); she was cast in A Grande Feira (Roberto Pires, 1961), O Grito da Terra (Olney São Paulo, 1964), Assalto ao Trem Pagador (Roberto Farias, 1962), and O Padre e a Moça (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, 1965).
She married Rogério Sganzerla, with whom she inaugurated an inventive partnership in O Bandido da Luz Vermelha (1968). She co-founded Belair in the 1970s together with Júlio Bressane and Rogério Sganzerla; in 2005 she began her directing career with Reinvenção da Rua, edited by Sganzerla; she celebrated the director’s filmmaking in A Miss e o Dinossauro (2008), her second film. That same year, the feature-length film Canção de Baal (freely adapted from Brecht) was her first fictional work and won her the critics’ prize at the Festival de Gramado. In 2009, she filmed her second feature-length film, Luz nas Trevas not yet released – with a never-produced screenplay by Sganzerla and co-directed by Ícaro Martins. Hernani Heffner Chief conservator at the cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (MAM/RJ) since 1996, he is a professor of cinema at the Pontifical Catholic University Rio de Janeiro (PUC/RJ), at Getúlio Vargas Foundation - Rio de Janeiro (FGV/ RJ), and CineTV-PR, which belongs to Paraná School of Arts (FAP). He is also the coordinator of the project for the restoration of the Cinédia collection. A graduate of Fluminense Federal University (UFF), since 1986 he has worked with historical research with a focus on Brazilian cinema. He has published a number of texts, including more than 40 entries in the Enciclopédia do Cinema Brasileiro [Brazilian Cinema Encyclopedia]; worked as an interviewer at the Museum of Image and Sound - Rio de Janeiro (MIS/RJ); has taught courses in the preservation and restoration of films at UFF; has curated various exhibitions, and participated in shows presented by Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB) in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Brasília as well as Caixa Cultural and Serviço Social do Comércio de São Paulo (Sesc/SP). He also contributed to the researches that Rogério Sganzerla conducted at the MAM/RJ cinematheque about Orson Welles. Ismail Xavier Critic, holder of a Master’s degree in literary theory, professor of cinema at the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo (ECA/USP) since 1971, and visiting professor at the University of New York (1995), the University of Ottawa (1998) and the University of Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle (1999). He has authored key reference works including O Discurso Cinematográfico: a Opacidade e a Transparência; Sétima Arte: um Culto Moderno; Sertão Mar: Glauber Rocha e a Estética da Fome; and Cinema Brasileiro Moderno. He has served on the board of the Cinemateca Brasileira since 1977 and as a member of the editorial board of the Novos Estudos Cebrap and Literatura e Sociedade magazines. As coordinator of the Coleção Cinema [Cinema Collection], he published Teatro e Modernidade (Cosac Naify), O Olhar e a Cena – Melodrama, Hollywood, Cinema Novo e Nelson Rodrigues and Alegorias do Subdesenvolvimento: Cinema Novo, Tropicalismo, Cinema Marginal, in which he analyzes Rogério Sganzerla’s work.
Joel Pizzini He is the author of international award-winning documental essays. The feature-length films 500 Almas (2004) and Anabazys (unreleased) won him the Best Film, Sound and Cinematography awards, the Special Jury award, and the Best Editing award at the film festivals of Rio, Mar del Plata, Brasília, and others. He serves on the board of the Fortaleza Audiovisual School; lectures at the Paraná School of Arts; has curated the restoration of the work of Glauber Rocha; has co-directed extra documentaries on Sganzerla’s DVDs alongside Paloma Rocha; and directed the new film Olho Nu (Ney Matogrosso), co-produced by Canal Brasil, for which he produced Elogio da Luz. He curated the retrospective exhibitions Faces de Casavetes, Festival Jodorowsky, and Estratégia do Sonho, o Primeiro Bertolucci. He took part in the Artecidade project, the São Paulo Biennial, and the Mercosur Biennial with videoinstallations and as a performance-art director. He also contributed to editing of Luz nas Trevas, by Helena Ignez (unreleased), based on a screenplay by Rogério Sganzerla. Júlio Bressane He began his career as a director’s assistant for Walter Lima, Jr. in Menino de Engenho (1965). One year later he became a director himself by making the short film Bethânia Bem de Perto alongside Eduardo Escorel. In 1967 he presented his first feature-length film, Cara a Cara, at the Festival de Brasília. In other editions of the festival, he won awards for Tabu (1982), Filme de Amor (2003), and Cleópatra (2007). With Matou a Família e Foi ao Cinema and O Anjo Nasceu, both produced in 1969, he inaugurated the Brazilian filmmaking genre called Cinema Marginal [Fringe Cinema]. In 1970, together with Rogério Sganzerla and Helena Ignez, he co-founded Belair. During the dictatorship he went into exile in Europe, where he filmed Memórias de um Estrangulador de Loiras (London, 1971); and later on, in Morocco, he made Fada do Oriente (1972). As an essayist, he has contributed to magazines in Brazil and abroad and published the books Alguns (1996), Cinemancia (2000) and Fotodrama (2005). As an author of dense and interdisciplinary approach, he earned a retrospective of his work at the Torino Film Festival in 2002, which awakened the interest of new generations, the specialized critics, and the international media. His Cleópatra won the Best Film Award in Brasília in 2006; this was followed by his most recent work, A Erva do Rato (2008), which was included in the Horizon Section at the Venice Film Festival. Maria Gladys She began her career in theater with Gianni Ratto and performed in theaters Jovem, Mesbla, and Dulcina. In the 1960s, she appeared in Os Fuzis (Ruy Guerra, 1964) and Todas as Mulheres do Mundo (Domingos de Oliveira, 1967). Her language became more radical in the 1970s with Sem Essa, Aranha, by Rogério Sganzerla, Cuidado, Madame and Família do Barulho, by Júlio Bressane. From the 1970s to the 1990s, she continued her partnership with Bressane (Gigante da América and Brás Cubas) and performed opposite Paulo Cezar Saraceni (Anchieta and Natal da Portela) and Walter Lima, Jr. She played roles in soap operas and filmed with young filmmakers, such as Bruno Safadi, in Meu Nome É Dindi (2008).
Roberto Turigliatto As an Italian film critic with a Bachelor’s degree in languages from Turin University, he is one of the founders of Movie Club. From 1989 to 1991, he was responsible for the programming of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema room in Turin. He has had an outstanding track record as one of the promoters and programmers of the Torino Film Festival since its creation back in 1982 and also as co-director of the festival from 2003 to 2006. In this period, he organized retrospectives of Rogério Sganzerla and Júlio Bressane, which had an enormous impact in Europe. From the 1990s onwards, he has contributed as a curator to the Pesaro International Exhibition of New Cinema, the Taormina Film Festival, and several editions of the Venice Film Festival, including the Oficina Veneziana, Corto-Cortíssio, and Novos Territórios, at which he organized a large show dedicated to Guy Debord. Since 1991, he has written for the daily program Fuori Orario shown on Italian television channel RAI3, for which he has conceived hundreds of cinema-themed nights. He is a member of the selection committee for the Locarno International Film Festival. Samuel Paiva He is a professor with the Department of Arts and Communications at the São Carlos Federal University (DAC/ UFSCar), where he is the coordinator of undergraduate and graduate courses of study on image and sound. He earned his Doctor’s degree in communication sciences from the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo (ECA/ USP). He wrote the thesis ‘A Figura de Orson Welles no Cinema de Rogério Sganzerla,’ and contributes articles to magazines and publications geared to cinema and history. Unfinished films by Rogério Sganzerla that were not included in the show: Carnaval da Lama [Carnival of Mud] Fora do Baralho [Outside the Deck] Mudança de Hendrix [Hendrix’s Change] Newton Cavalcanti: a Alma do Povo Vista pelo Artista [Newton Cavalcanti: The Soul of the People As Seen by the Artist]
Credits for the magazine Ocupação Rogério Sganzerla [Rogério Sganzerla Occupation] This magazine is the result of a collective effort of the crew members: Aninha de Fátima (coordination and conception), Kety Fernandes Nassar (organization and conception), Yoshiharu Arakaki (art direction), Mariana Lacerda (editing), Jahitza Balaniuk (editorial production and conception), André Seiti (editing and programming), Jader Rosa (inputs). Contributors include: Joel Pizzini, Roberto Cruz, Ruy Gardnier, Hernani Heffner, Djin Sganzerla, Álvaro de Moya, and Steve Berg (with texts), as well as Paolo Gregori, Pedro Jorge (interview with Helena Ignez), and Lucio Branco (researcher of the film chronology and synopses together with Steve Berg). João Pinheiro drew the characters, while Pedro Jorge and Alice Dalgalarrondo created the antifumetti. Revision by Rachel Reis. Acknowledgments: Kety Fernandes Nassar, Joel Pizzini, Maria Flor Brazil, Sinai Sganzerla, Djin Sganzerla, Helena Ignez, Polyana Lima, and Mercúrio Produções.
Credits for Ocupação Rogério Sganzerla Conception and organization Audiovisual Center of Itaú Cultural
Visual communication and graphic design Communication Center of Itaú Cultural
Museography Valdy Lopes Jn
Production and setup of exhibition space Production Center of Itaú Cultural
Curator Joel Pizzini
Production of site Communication Center of Itaú Cultural
Assistance to curatorship Djin Sganzerla Sinai Sganzerla
Compilation of statements for the website Fernanda Miranda
Support to curatorship Maria Flor Brazil
Partnerships
Collection Sganzerla family Audio design Edson Secco Research Lucio Branco (RJ) Anna Jarinne Ballalai (RJ) Sérgio Silva (SP) Production (Rio de Janeiro) Sara Rocha Assistance (São Paulo) Vani Fatima Natalia Meira Image Editing Claudio Tammela Assistance in Image Editing Renata Catharino Leonel Barcelos
Special acknowledgments Helena Ignez, Sinai Sganzerla, Djin Sganzerla, Zenaide Sganzerla, Albino Sganzerla, Paloma Rocha, and Associação Amigos do Tempo Glauber Acknowledgments Mercurio Produções, Polofilme, Carlos Magalhães, Bernardo Oliveira, Bruno Safadi, Camila Val (CCBB/SP), Carlos Ebert, Cristiane Rezende (CCBB/RJ), Débora Butruce (CTAV), Dib Lufti, Hernani Heffner (Cinemateca MAM), José Marinho, José Quental (Cinemateca MAM), Lécio Augusto Ramos, Marcos Bonisson, Maria Maia, Mislene Martins (CCBB/SP), Noa Bressane, Remier Lion, Rosa Dias, Ruy Gardnier, Rodrigo Lima, Rosângela Sodré (CTAV), Sérgio Pedrosa (CTAV), Sidnei Pereira (CCBB/RJ), Vani Silva, Acervo/Museu da Imagem e do Som (MIS/SP), and João Marcos de Almeida. Itaú Cultural is grateful to Helena Ignez, Sinai Sganzerla, and Djin Sganzerla for their attention and active participation in materializing this project. Credits for film screenings in the debates
Photography and images of the ocean Kim Castro
Production Maria Flor Brazil Audiovisual Center of Itaú Cultural
Guitar technique programming Tommy Terahata
Production assistant Halina Agapejev
MIDI programming and editing for guitar Gianni Toyota
images: frames from the films O Bandido da Luz Vermelha and A Mulher de Todos; drawing by RogĂŠrio Sganzerla
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