The zero, the centre and the empty utopia: from Rossellini to Walter Salles

This article examines utopian gestures and inaugural desires in two films which became symbolic of the Brazilian Film Revival in the late 1990s: Central Station (1998) and Midnight (1999). Both evolve around the idea of an overcrowded or empty centre in a country trapped between past and future, in which the motif of the zero stands for both the announcement and the negation of utopia. The analysis draws parallels between them and new wave films which also elaborate on the idea of the zero, with examples picked from Italian neo-realism, the Brazilian Cinema Novo and the New German Cinema. In Central Station, the ‘point zero’, or the core of the homeland, is retrieved in the archaic backlands, where political issues are resolved in the private sphere and the social drama turns into family melodrama. Midnight, in its turn, recycles Glauber Rocha’s utopian prophecies in the new millennium’s hour zero, when the earthly paradise represented by the sea is re-encountered by the middle-class character, but not by the poor migrant. In both cases, public injustice is compensated by the heroes’ personal achievements, but those do not refer to the real nation, its history or society. Their utopian breadth, based on nostalgia, citation and genre techniques, is of a virtual kind, attune to cinema only.

A dimensão ética do cinema de Walter Salles: hospitalidade, religação e perdão

Soulignant l´importance des transformations du discours politique du cinéma brésilien actuel, cet étude entreprend une analyse de la dimension éthique du cinéma de Walter Salles. Pour cela, nous avons parti de trois films long-métrages du directeur: Terra Estrangeira, Central do Brasil et Abril Despedaçado. Les films sélectionnés constituent les trois diférents chapitres de cette mémoire de maîtrise, qui s´articulent a des diférentes dimensions de l´éthique - l´hospitalité, la réliaison, et le pardon- et se présentent em format essayistique. Au texte, ces dimensions éthiques émergent à partir des récits, surtout des expériences existencielles des protagonistes et de ses singulières rencontres avec l´altérité. Comme tel, dialoguent avec des réflétions d´auteurs comme Edgar Morin, Zigmunt Bauman, Julia Kristeva, Paul Ricoeur et Hannah Arendt. Des diférents régistres de la connaissance -artistique, scientifique, religieuse- s´articulent donc dans le travail, et dialoguent en condition d´égalité. La recherche fait usage de matériels multiples qui incluent, au-delà des films mentionnés, et de ses respectifs scripts, des références à d´autres long-métrages et documentaires du directeur, ainsi que, des makingoffs, entretiens, et interprétations de commentaristes comme Lucia Nagib, Luiz Zanin Oricchio, Ivana Bentes, Pedro Butcher e Jurandir Freire Costa

A Confluência de Gêneros em Dark Water, de Walter Salles Jr.

Dark Water is the title of the translation of a short story, ―Floating Water‖, from the book Honogurai mizu no soko kara by Koji Suzuki, originally published in Japan, that the Japanese director Hideo Nakata adapted for the cinema and that was remade by the Brazilian director Walter Salles Jr. The objective of this study is to analyse Walter Salles’ film to demonstrate how it resolved the problems of transcreation, whilst at the same time it fulfilled commercial and artistic functions and incorporated the traces of its aesthetic trajectory. In this case, attention is drawn to the types of relationship between literature and cinema, to the metalinguistic function as a generator of poetics and of an interesting dialogue between genres.

A estética realista dos filmes sobre favela no Brasil (2002-2010)

Este trabalho possui como objetivo a análise de cinco filmes do cinema brasileiro contemporâneo que tratam sobre favela: Cidade de Deus ( Fernando Meirelles, 2002), Linha de Passe ( Walter Salles e Daniela Thomas , 2008), Sonhos Roubados ( Sandra Werneck, 2009), Tropa de Elite ( José Padilha, 2007) e Tropa de Elite II (José Padilha, 2010). Tendo como eixo central a estética realista de filmes sobre favela no Brasil, a partir da metodologia de análise fílmica, foi realizada uma pequena revisão de algumas teorias de cultura, comunicação e dos antecedentes do campo do cinema brasileiro contemporâneo. Para além, foi desenvolvido uma proposta dialógica com a Psicologia Social e as possibilidades de interlocuções com o cinema brasileiro. O foco se deu em problematizar como as condições de produção, as representações e as apropriações de recepção se articulam às diversas práticas discursivas e não-discursivas e se associam à representação da noção de categorias identitárias como violência, segurança pública, família, juventude e consumo. Os resultados dessa análise qualitativa giraram em torno de questões de ordem socioeconômica, que caracterizam a favela enquanto território de (im)possibilidades e, sobretudo, tem seus moradores como personagens que possuem um estereótipo do que é viver na favela, dando visibilidade nas relações que se estabelecem nesses territórios.

Back to the margins in search of the core: "Foreign Land"'s geography of exclusion

The crisis of the national project in the early 1990s, caused by a short-lived but disastrous government, led Brazilian art cinema, for the first time, to look at itself as periphery and re-approach the old colonial center, Portugal. Terra estrangeira/Foreign Land (Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas, Brazil/Portugal, 1995), a film about Brazilian exiles in Portugal, is the best illustration of this perspective shift which provides a new sense of Brazil’s scale and position within a global context. Shot mainly on location in São Paulo, Lisbon and Cape Verde, it promotes the encounter of Lusophone peoples who find a common ground in their marginal situation. Rather than as a former empire, Portugal is defined by its situation at the edge of Europe and by beliefs such as Sebastianism, whose origins go back to the time when the country was dominated by Spain. As a result, notions of “core” or “center” are devolved to the realm of myth. The film’s carefully crafted dialogue combines Brazilian, Portuguese and Creole linguistic peculiarities into a common dialect of exclusion, while language puns trigger visual rhymes which refer back to the Cinema Novo (the Brazilian New Wave) repertoire and restage the imaginary of the discovery turned into unfulfilled utopia. The main characters also acquire historical resonances, as they are depicted as descendants of Iberian conquistadors turned into smugglers of precious stones in the present. Their activities define a circuit of international exchange which resonates with that of globalized cinema, a realm in which Foreign Land, made up of citations and homage to other cinemas, tries to retrieve a sense of belonging.

Back to the margins in search of the core: foreign land's geography of exclusion

The crisis of the national project in the early 1990s, caused by a short-lived but disastrous government, led Brazilian art cinema, for the first time, to look at itself as periphery and re-approach the old colonial centre, Portugal. Terra estrangeira/Foreign Land (Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas, Brazil/Portugal, 1995), a film about Brazilian exiles in Portugal, is the best illustration of this perspective shift aimed at providing a new sense of Brazil’s scale and position within a global context. Shot mainly on location in São Paulo, Lisbon and Cape Verde, it promotes the encounter of Lusophone peoples who find a common ground in their marginal situation. Even Portugal is defined by its location at the edge of Europe and by beliefs such as Sebastianism, whose origins go back to the time when the country was dominated by Spain. As a result, notions of ‘core’ or ‘centre’ are devolved to the realm of myth. The film’s carefully crafted dialogues combine Brazilian, Portuguese and Creole linguistic peculiarities into a common dialect of exclusion, while language puns trigger visual rhymes which refer back to the Cinema Novo (the Brazilian New Wave) repertoire and restage the imaginary of the discovery turned into unfulfilled utopia. The main characters also acquire historical resonances, as they are depicted as descendants of Iberian conquistadors turned into smugglers of precious stones in the present. Their activities define a circuit of international exchange which resonates with that of globalized cinema, a realm in which Foreign Land, made up of citations and homage to other cinemas, tries to retrieve a sense of belonging.

Tempo, magnitude e o mito do cinema moderno

Neste texto, irei abordar três filmes ambientados em Portugal, cujas locações oferecem uma visão privilegiada da função do tempo e da magnitude no cinema, os quais, por sua vez, nos permitem reavaliar as categorias de clássico, moderno e pós-moderno aplicadas a esse meio. Trata-se de O estado das coisas (Der Stand der Dinge, Wim Wenders, 1982), Terra estrangeira (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 1995) e Mistérios de Lisboa (Raúl Ruiz, 2010). Neles, a cidade se compõe de círculos viciosos, espelhos, réplicas e mise-en-abyme que interrompem o movimento vertiginoso característico da cidade modernista do cinema dos anos 20. Curiosamente, é também o lugar em que a assim chamada estética pós-moderna finalmente encontra abrigo em contos auto-irônicos que expõem as insuficiências dos mecanismos narrativos no cinema. Para compensá-las, recorre-se a procedimentos de intermídia, tais como fotografias de polaroid em O estado das coisas ou um teatro de papelão em Mistérios de Lisboa, que transformam uma realidade incomensurável em miniaturas fáceis de enquadrar e manipular. O real assim diminuído, no entanto, se revela um simulacro decepcionante, um ersatz da memória que evidencia o caráter ilusório da teleologia cosmopolita. Em minha abordagem, começarei por examinar a gênese interligada e transnacional desses filmes que resultou em três visões correlatas mas muito diversas do fim da história e da narrativa, típico da estética pós-moderna. A seguir, irei considerar o miniaturismo intermedial como uma tentativa de congelar o tempo no interior do movimento, uma equação que inevitavelmente nos remete ao binário deleuziano tempo-movimento, que também irei revisitar com o fim de distingui-lo da oposição entre cinema clássico e moderno. Por fim, irei propor a stasis reflexiva e a inversão de escala como demonominadores comuns entre todos os projetos ditos modernos, que por esta razão, segundo creio, são mais confiáveis que a modernidade enquanto indicadores de valores artísticos e políticos.

Reflexive stasis, scale reversal and the myth of modern cinema

This chapter looks at three films whose Portuguese urban settings offer a privileged ground for the re-evaluation of the classical-modern-postmodern categorisation with regard to cinema. They are The State of Things (Wim Wenders, 1982), Foreign Land (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 1995) and Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz, 2010). In them, the city is the place where characters lose their bearings, names, identities, and where vicious circles, mirrors, replicas and mise-en-abyme bring the vertiginous movement that had characterised the modernist city of 1920s cinema to a halt. Curiously, too, it is the place where so-called postmodern aesthetics finally finds an ideal home in self-ironical tales that expose the film medium’s narrative shortcomings. Intermedial devices, whether Polaroid stills or a cardboard cut-out theatre, are then resorted to in order to turn a larger-than-life reality into framed, manageable narrative miniatures. The scaled-down real, however, turns out to be a disappointing simulacrum, a memory ersatz that unveils the illusory character of cosmopolitan teleology. In my approach, I start by examining the intertwined and transnational genesis of these films that resulted in three correlated visions of the end of history and of storytelling, typical of postmodern aesthetics. I move on to consider intermedia miniaturism as an attempt to stop time within movement, an equation that inevitably brings to mind the Deleuzian movement-time binary, which I revisit in an attempt to disentangle it from the classical-modern opposition. I conclude by proposing reflexive stasis and scale reversal as the common denominator across all modern projects, hence, perhaps, a more advantageous model than modernity to signify artistic and political values.

Afetividade na infância e suas manifestações na escola

Este estudo teve por objetivo pesquisar a afetividade no universo escolar e mais especificamente na educação infantil. A proposta pretende focar nas manifestações infantis e nos modos de produção do vínculo da criança com o outro. Neste sentido é uma pesquisa de caráter bibliográfico tendo como foco estudos desenvolvidos na área. Tomo como ponto de partida desta reflexão, olhares para os filmes, “O garoto da bicicleta”, dos diretores Jean-Pierre e Luc- Dardenne, “ A central do Brasil”, do diretor Walter Salles e o filme “Ser e Ter”, de Nicolas Philbert. E como ponte de partida aborda a questão da afetividade em autores que discutem a infância no campo da psicologia do desenvolvimento como Henri Wallon

Godshaw (Gottschalk) children Hal, Elisabeth, Kurt, Walter, Ursula, and Freddy.

Front row from left to right: Walter, Ursula, Freddy; top row from left to right: Hal, Elisabeth, Kurt

Walter Godshaw (Gottschalk), Louise "Isa" Gottschalk nee Rosenthal and Peter Zander; England.

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Studio portrait of Walter Godshaw (Gottschalk) as a teenager; Hannover, Germany.

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Walter and Freddy Godshaw (Gottschalk) with their uncle Ernst Meyerhof; London, England.

From left to right: Walter Godshaw, Ernst Meyerhof, and Freddy Godshaw