By Mónica Delgado

This sixth edition of Olhar de Cinema has seen a diversity of Brazilian premieres. Among them, a couple of short films we’re covering here, since they offer different constructions in cinema and help to measure the temperature of the new bets made by new and young filmmakers.

An island works as an axis of attraction for a family that travels in a yacht towards its coasts: this is how the filmmakers establish an analogy on the circuit that’s been generated from the impulse of this place as a touristic spotlight, despite being an endangered national reserve. In Jo Serfatis and Mariana Kaufman’s The Lighthouse Island, a correspondence with the reality is set, through some vignettes that explain the affluence of the place, its problems, its history, framed in a process of colonization and power, that allow us to contextualize and follow the reason for the visit of these characters to the island.

The Lighthouse Island (A Ilha do Farol , Brasil 2017) works as a family metaphor where the mother is black and the father white, showing a figure of union and social mixture, in a misé in scene free of any dialogues, where the film is constructed through shots that build a filial relationship between mother and son (mainly), while father and daughter show no similar bond. The yacht is confronted by a giant ship, while the ship travels near the island, which looks like a symbolic place where there’s no more space for shelter.

This work by the two Brazilian filmmakers is based in the allegoric, in this island that is no longer serving its function to guide the sailors, and is now a magnet for beings in search of a new place. The family, shown here as a paradigmatic nuclear entity, stays afloat, reaching a place about to furcate.

In Skake Up Brazil (Balança Brasil, Brazil, 2017) filmmaker Carlos Segundo also proposes a relationship, in this case less allegorical that the one in the short film by Serfaty y Kaufman. The film establishes a correspondence between an Axe dancer and his choreographic dances’ routines, which are based in a sense of community, with a character from Porto, less “physical” than the dancer, which becomes the reflective voice, always interested in the current and historical characteristics of black identity in Brazil.

Carlos Segundo designs and develops the dancer character in a better way: he shows him in his interaction with friends, in his rehearsals and travels. But the figure of the reflexive adolescent also contributes a less transient side than the beauty and vigor of the moving bodies. That’s how, from these two perspectives that draw a sensibility of summer and tourism in Porto, Carlos Segundo proposes a vision of a collective Brazil, celebratory of its bodies and cadences.

The Lighthouse Island
Directors: Mariana Kaufman, Jo Serfaty
Script: Jo Serfaty, Mariana Kaufman
Production: Viviane Mendonça y Joice Scavone
Cinematography: Pedro Faerstein
Art Direction: Cedric Aveline
Editing: Luisa Marques
Soundtrack: Augusto Malbouisson, Mario Maria e Marcos Tanus
Sound: João Jabace
Cast: Cristina Moura, Julio Adrião, Rafael Boschi, Lara Affonso Ferreira
Fagulha Filmes
Brazil, 2017

Skake Up Brazil
Director: Carlos Segundo
Script: Carlos Segundo, Cristiano Barbosa
Producer: Carlos Segundo
Cinematography: Roberto Chacur
Art Direction: Carlos Segundo
Editor: Carlos Segundo
Sound: Cristiano Barbosa
Cast: Gregory, Stylo
O sopro do tempo
Brazil, 2017