cinemas of the south

Making Films with the People
By Nelson Pereira dos Santos

I started out as a film-club goer. At the time, just after World War Two, I was completing my Law course and had begun to study classical cinema. After university, I founded film clubs and took part in a series of film movements, which, at that time, was far more complicated and arduous. When I say that I started out as a film-club goer, I really mean that, as far as Brazilian culture was concerned, I first came into contact with movies - the myth of the cinema - and knew nothing about our own films.

Nelson Pereira dos Santos, today

At that time, the country was entering a phase of some improvement, the so-called 'development boom'. My generation was anything but static. Through our contact with films, we at once plunged into including our own desires, our dreams and the possibility of making our own films here in Brazil . The film clubs gave us no contact with Brazilian cinema, and film-club goers resigned themselves to watching the history of cosmopolitan cinema, by which I mean the great American films and French classics. We had no idea what was going on here. We did not even know Humberto Mauro or the pioneers from São Paulo , such as Medina and Rossi. Perhaps a few of us had read about them, but no one had actually seen them. There was, in Rio de Janeiro at least, a constant production, such as the films of Atlântida, for example. But in São Paulo, any production was still only a remote possibility. Things did begin to get moving with the arrival of Alberto Cavalcanti, a Brazilian who had played a part on the international movie scene by making two great contributions through the French avant-garde and English documentaries. He arrived in São Paulo to found a great production company, Vera Cruz. This was about 1947-1948.

But, returning to the subject, my generation was profoundly concerned about the country's problems and we all studied Brazil and read Brazilian authors and sociologists and sought to take a more active part in politics in an attempt to transform the prevalent situation. This synthesis of making films and discussing our situation found a model in Italian Neo-realism, a model which, at the time, inspired other developing countries, such as India , several African and Latin-American countries and even Canada . It all boiled down to not relying on the intermediation of capital in order to make films at home: 'the author and reality', 'the people as artists'.and all the basic principles of Neo-realism. That, in short, is the basis of my career.

My generation. It was a large group, all with university educations, in São Paulo, all engaged in making films that did not fall within the Vera Cruz model which was based on a Hollywood style of production and view of reality (the great exception to this was Lima Barreto's film The Bandit (O Cangaceiro, 1953), but that signalled the end of Vera Cruz). The major part of Vera Cruz's productions was based on the idea that films were an industrial product, which could be made in any climate, with the same formulae, whether the director was Brazilian, or Italian or whatever. We were wholly and openly opposed to this style of filmmaking.

Rio, Northern Zone (Rio Zona Norte, 1957)

In São Paulo, meanwhile, my first professional employment was as an assistant to Rodolfo Nani in a film, The Saci (O Saci), in 1951. I then proceeded to Rio de Janeiro. I had met Alex Viany in São Paulo and he invited me to be his assistant in the filming of Needle in a Haystack (Agulha no Palheiro, 1953). From that moment on, I stayed in Rio. I got to know Rio better, along with its favelas, or shanty-towns, and I eventually wrote the script for Rio, 40 Degrees (Rio 40 Graus, 1953). In 1953, a huge crisis overwhelmed Brazilian cinema. Vera Cruz had shut its doors. Atlântida's constant production faltered and fell. So we formed a group to get Rio, 40 Degrees underway, because there was no production company around to finance it. We ended up making the film as a collective. Each of us contributed with work and funds. We got the remaining money from friends and family and we made a great co-operative, with proportional shares for each contributor. Rio, 40 Degrees was at least a great hit with the police! It was censured, prohibited. It had moderate success with the critics and so-so at the box-office. But it did at least give us the means to go on, and the same group made two further films: Rio, Northern Zone (Rio Zona Norte, 1957) and The Grand Moment (O Grande Momento, 1958) which Roberto Santos made in São Paulo . But neither of them was a box-office success. Competition was hot. At the time, there was no space for domestic films and we had no coverage to guarantee a return on capital. So we had to call a halt and go back to being journalists and making company publicity films.

The intention and main aim of the film Rio, 40 Degrees was exactly to break down the barriers and prejudices that reigned in the filmmaking world. To give you an idea, there are still 'documentary filmmakers' who set out to make films to order for public works, for example, who shy away from showing black people and dress Brazilian workmen in blue or red safety helmets and specially made shirts because they are not usually as well-dressed as they would like. Or there again, as I have too often witnessed, they put the engineer in the place of the labourer because he is less than pretty, malnourished and dressed practically in rags and the engineer, of course, cuts a far more handsome figure.

When Rio, 40 Degrees came out, or even a little before, Brazilian politics was in ferment. The prohibition of the film was linked to the events that involved President Café Filho, General Lott and the election of Juscelino Kubitscheck. The film had been censured by the Chief of Police at the Café Filho Administration and so the controversy over the film became political, which was never the intention. Film, after all, was so insignificant as far as the future of the country was concerned. Juscelino's reign was relatively calm, since the country's capital moved to Brasilia . During this period, we took part in all debates, especially those concerning land reform, which led us to make Barren Lives (Vidas Secas, 1963).

Barren Lives (Vidas Secas, 1963)

There was much discussion during this period and various solutions to land reform were raised at that this time. I was making documentaries for the products of Isaac Rosemberg and I got to know the Sertão, the drought-ridden area of the north-east. I had only been to the coastal cities before. In 1958, the drought was especially severe in Bahia and Pernambuco, and Helio Silva and I went up there to make documentaries and film it all. I then wrote a story about the drought, but I couldn't really do it properly, as it all came out like newspaper reports. Then I remembered Graciliano Ramos and his book Vidas Secas, which is a statement of the greatest importance about the need for land reform and the consequent exodus of the local population which is still in force today, without blaming it all on the drought. No other novelist of ours has such a keen sense of dramatic values, nor such admirable, solid psychological insight.

The characters he invented are no mere puppets and no mere invention; nor are they simple shadows that have emerged from the imagination of a fiction writer. They are living, breathing beings of flesh and blood and nerves and that is why they fire the imagination of a filmmaker. The trouble with the north-east is not so much the climate, but the relationship between work and ownership, which lies at the heart of the need for land reform. While the exodus goes on, no real solution will be found. This coincides with the opinion of economists and sociologists who have delved into the issue.

Filming was a way of participating. My intention, when I began filming, was to participate, through culture and through politics. One always participates politically when one participates culturally. Cultural and political participation means making films alongside and with people; not to teach, but to learn with them and the practice of making films. My intention was not to abandon a political point of view. Quite the contrary. It was my intention to impregnate a cultural activity with political insight.

Nelson Pereira dos Santos

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