Mapping Brazil - Cinema: Artistic Diversity Behind the Figures II

South and Southeast
The South
In the South, the city of Porto Alegre and the production company Casa de Cinema de Porto Alegre, a group of directors, producers and technicians that has succeeded in creating a different scene for Brazilian cinema, are particularly noteworthy. The group was founded in December 1987 by 'gaucho' filmmakers who had been working together since the early 1980s, whose iconic film was Jorge Furtado's Ilha das flores (Island of Flowers) (1989). Made when Brazilian cinema was at its lowest ebb, the film has entered history for being the most awarded short in Brazil and the one that earned Berlin Festival's highest accolade. To date, the film is still being featured around the world. The production company collaborates and produces projects in partnership with several Brazilian television networks such as TV Globo, as well as Channel 4, ZDF, HBO Latin America, the Rockefeller and MacArthur foundations, and Columbia and Fox distributors. Its films have earned more than 250 awards at local and international festivals, making it an important reference for audiovisual production in Brazil.

The South is also home to one of Brazil's longest running film events, the Gramado Festival, which was first held in 1973. Although its main focus is Brazilian cinema, the festival has also reflected its proximity to several Latin American countries and over the years has developed a distinguished international competition showing films from many Latin countries.

Two other events are also worth mentioning, given the local arrangements they have sustained and their attraction for professionals from other states and countries. The Florianópolis Children's Film Show was one of the first in Brazil to focus on programs exclusively for children. It holds debates and meetings on public policies for film companies producing children's content and various activities such as workshops, concerts, special screenings etc. The project also developed a children's film circuit taking content from the festival to other towns in the state of Santa Catarina. Curitiba's film highlight in recent years has been Olhar de Cinema (Cinema's Gaze). The event has become an important showcase for new talents and local and international auteur films. One of its market-oriented strategies permeates the production chain to exchange ideas while encouraging co-production and distribution partnerships and holding training or refresher courses for professionals during the event itself.

The Southeast
For historical and economic reasons, the Southeast is home to the Brazilian film industry's leading institutions and agents. Although Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo predominate, the state of Minas Gerais has also achieved special status on the strength of certain of its events. In the historic city of Ouro Preto, the annual festival CineOP focuses on heritage, preservation, film history and education. In addition to screening feature-length, mid-length and short films, the event hosts the Encontro Nacional de Arquivos e Acervos Audiovisuais Brasileiros (National Conference of Brazilian Audiovisual Collections and Archives), which is attended by professionals, academics and specialists for discussions and reflections on audiovisual conservation. Another important historical city has hosted the Tiradentes film festival for 18 years and has established it role as a top showcase for independent Brazilian cinema and new talents. The festival opens Brazil’s audiovisual year in January with more than 100 Brazilian films for world and nationwide previews. The festival changes the bucolic landscape typically of small towns in Minas Gerais to offer viewers important premieres of Brazilian films as well as debates, book releases, seminars and other activities that enliven and add relevance to the event. In Belo Horizonte, the state capital, CineBH is an important business platform for Brazilian cinema to promote international exchanges through the annual Brasil CineMundi – International Coproduction Meeting attended by audiovisual industry representatives from many countries. The event's seminars, workshops, business meetings and other activities are important sources of training and educational opportunities for industry professionals.

Rio de Janeiro's cinema complex
Rio de Janeiro has played a leading role in the history of Brazilian cinema, as mentioned above. Due to its political prominence, especially after the Portuguese royal family’s exile in the city in the 19^th century, Rio has been the seat of Brazil's leading cultural and academic institutions, thus creating a favourable environment for artistic production. Since the early days of cinema, through the golden age of radio to TV Globo's consolidation as South America's main production centre, talents and technicians have migrated to the city and are still drawn here today. From the chanchadas, through Cinema Novo, to the 1990s ‘resurgence’ period, Rio has always been the main stage for film-industry events and, in recent years, has been home to the biggest box-office hits too. It also hosts leading film industry companies and major public agents for cinema such as ANCINE, Petrobrás and the Economic Development Bank (BNDES), all of them prominent sponsors of culture and cinema.

On the city level, Rio de Janeiro has been active in film distribution since the 90s through Riofilme – Empresa Distribuidora de Filmes S.A., which played a key role in Brazilian cinema's resurgence. For over 20 years, it has distributed top Brazilian motion pictures, including many from other states. At state level, Rio de Janeiro's Culture Incentive Law is a crucial funding enabler. As of 2009, the state and city governments resumed investments in the industry and both have undertaken various development initiatives, some of them jointly. Thus, they have covered all segments of cinema's supply chain so local production continued its cinematic tradition in terms of both, box-office success and artistic achievement, which has been strengthened and renewed.

Rio de Janeiro now hosts a huge number of film-industry companies. Leading Cinema Novo directors are still active, in particular Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Cacá Diegues, Luiz Carlos Barreto and his family, and Ruy Guerra, whose films continue to show at Brazilian theatres and major international festivals. In 2012, the Cannes Festival honoured Brazilian cinema by screening its classics alongside new films from these directors, such as Nelson Pereira's A música segundo Tom Jobim (Music According to Antonio Carlos Jobim). In addition to these prestigious names, the above tables show that Rio de Janeiro production companies made the highest box-office earners of all Brazilian films. There is a very long list of Rio audiovisual production companies, but some have earned special mention. Conspiração Filmes, which was behind one of the biggest box-office hits of the 2000s with Os dois filhos de Francisco (Two Sons of Francisco) (Breno Silveira, 2005), continuously produces films for the advertising industry, television, and institutional films. Furthermore, it has released significant pictures in recent years, as for example Rio, eu te amo (Rio, I love you) for the international "Cities of Love" franchise, which has also featured Paris and New York. A major international production casting actors such as Harvey Keitel, the film also led to Rio de Janeiro hosting directors such as the Italian Paolo Sorrentino, Nadine Labaki, Guillermo Arriaga and local talents such as Fernando Meirelles, Andrucha Waddington, and José Padilha. Another highlight in the production sector is Bananeira Filmes, founded by producer Vania Catani in 2001. The company consolidated its position on the Brazilian and international film scene due to recognition of the artistic quality of its projects, all of them recipients of praised reviews and leading national and international awards. Bananeira Filmes is one of the few Brazilian production companies working exclusively in cinema and its résumé includes documentaries, shorts and feature films. Its latest highlight is O Palhaço (The Clown) by director and actor Selton Mello, which has drawn over a million viewers; its success led to a Brazilian film nomination for the 2012 Oscar Awards. The company also invests in new directors and runs various projects with international partners such as Pablo Fendrik's El Ardor (El Ardor), an Argentinean, French and Mexican co-production. The independent production company Tambellini Filmes has been active in the Brazilian audiovisual industry since 1984, and has a long history of projects recognized by the press, critics and audiences. Headed by Flavio Tambellini, it has a considerable tradition in executive production for its own and others' projects, locally and internationally, and it focuses on differentials in terms of quality and finishing of its projects. Its highlights include Mutum (Mutum), directed by Sandra Kogut, an award winning feature first screened for the Directors' Fortnight section at Cannes; the comedy As aventuras de Agamenon, o repórter (The Adventures of Agamenon, the Reporter) directed by Victor Lopes, which took substantial box office revenues at Brazilian theatres, and Walter Lima Jr.'s Os Desafinados (Slightly Out of Tune). Again, on the production side, a new creative collective named Bubbles Project has brought together production companies and new Brazilian directors for special ventures. Headed by producer Tatiana Leite, the group is developing projects that have excelled at festivals and international laboratories at such festivals as Cannes and Locarno. They have earned accolades, as for the new film Pendular (Pendular) by the award-winning director Julia Murat and the feature-length Aspirantes (Hopefuls) by director Ives Rosenfeld, due to premiere at the Karlov Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic. The collective is co-producing a new film from director Gustavo Pizzi, whose first full-length film Riscado (Craft) has earned him several awards.

One of Brazil's leading film production companies, VideoFilmes, is run by brothers Walter and João Salles, whose films have been leaving their mark on Brazilian cinema since the late 1980s. They have worked with first-time directors but also important directors such as Nelson Pereira dos Santos and have made many of Eduardo Coutinho's documentaries. Standouts from their 100+ national and international awards include the Berlin Golden Bear for Central do Brasil (Central Station), Oscar nominations for Cidade de Deus (City of God) and Golden Palm Best Actress for Linha de Passe (Life is What you Make It).

Another interesting scene to be observed in Rio de Janeiro comes from the directors of Cinco vezes favela, agora por nós mesmos (Five Times Favela, Now by Ourselves) (Manaíra Carneiro, Wagner Novais, Rodrigo Felha, Cacau Amaral, Luciano Vidigal and Cadu Barcellos, 2010), with director Carlos Diegues as producer. The film was a joint venture for several production companies and cinema movements from the low-income outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, on the same lines as City of God (2002). This cooperative model recalls several film-educational experiments that have been made in Rio de Janeiro such as the Cinema Nosso project, which arose from casting for City of God. This arrangement involves Escola Audiovisual, Jabuti Filmes and Sala de Cinema located in the historic neighbourhood of Lapa. More than 3,500 young people have attended its courses and produced dozens of audiovisual works, some of which have been sponsored. Its methodology earned an award for Entrepreneurial and Innovative Initiatives in Creative Economy from Brazil's Ministry of Culture, in 2012.

As well as the film production industry, festivals and events comprise another prominent segment in Rio de Janeiro. Chief among them is Festival do Rio (Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival), first held in 1999 by combining the Banco Nacional and Rio Cine festivals that had been on the city's cultural calendar since the 1980s. From then on, it has established its role as one of the world's most important festivals and must destination for the year's cinema highlights. Directors including Roman Polanski, Costa-Gavras, Tom Tykwer, Dario Argento, and Leos Carax have attended the festival to introduce their films to Brazilian audiences. In addition to its international program, Première Brasil is one of the event's highlights since it screens Brazilian cinema's main titles. The festival also organizes RioMarket, which is Latin America's largest audiovisual marketplace, along with seminars, lectures, film industry IPOs and other events. A highlight on the shorts scene is Rio de Janeiro International Short Film Festival – Curta Cinema, which is celebrating its 25^th anniversary in 2015. Producer Ailton Franco screens some 300 films from a wide range of genres and national origins every year, with local and international competitions, regional panoramas, thematic and gender, and special categories for films from certain countries. A series of informative and educational parallel activities include workshops, talks, and debates. Another cinema event that has won a place on the Rio calendar over the last few years is Semana dos Realizadores [Filmmakers Week], which selects and screen films made by the leading talents that have emerged in Brazilian cinema. In addition to films followed by debates, the week has also become an important meeting point for local filmmakers and industry professionals in an environment that favours reflection around current production.

In animation, Festival Anima Mundi (International Animation Festival of Brazil) has been held for over 20 years and is the biggest of its kind in the Americas. Worldwide, it is second only to its partnered Annecy Festival. The festival tours to cover three Brazilian regions and five state capitals: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Brasília. Maurício de Souza, Carlos Saldanha, Bill Plymptom, Alexander Petrov, Ray Harryhausen have visited the festival to introduce their work and dialogue with Brazilian audiences. The festival also holds its Anima Forum to discuss issues related to production, training, animation markets and policies for Brazilian animation. The festival also enjoys prestige internationally by entering Best Animated Short Film nominations for the Oscars. Turning to children's films, there is the International Children's Film Festival (FICI), held by production company Copacabana Filmes, which has become Brazils leading platform for the genre, showing over 700 films for over a million viewers. FICI earned its leading position in this genre thanks to its promotional and outreach role for children and teen films, involving various activities for schools and social projects, as well as debates on related subjects. Likewise, its Think Childhood Forum (Forum Pensar a Infância) has successfully instigated governments and institutions to formulate public policies for this age group.

Coordinated by Brazil's Centro de Cultura, Informação e Meio Ambiente (Culture, Information and Environment Centre) – CIMA, the festival Green Nation features several languages and platforms including film and audiovisual content. It stands out among Rio's events both for its focus on environmental preservation, since the project's committee members include leading ecologists, and its appeal to varied audiences from all age groups, as well as exceptional children and adults. The annual event is staged in partnership with Rio's leading cultural centres and its 2015 iteration will be at Museu da República.

Rio de Janeiro is also home to institutions representing audiovisual producers in both film and television. One such organization for local production companies has been active for over fifty years: Sindicato das Empresas Cinematográficas do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro Film Company Union) – SICAV, which got together with Federação das Indústrias do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Federation of Industries of the State of Rio de Janeiro) – FIRJAN and the public sector to jointly develop projects such as Rio Market for Rio Festival; a training program for producers called Films From Rio in partnership with Marchè du Film at Cannes, and Rio Content Market, which was developed by the Associação Brasileira de Produtoras Independentes de Televisão (Brazilian Association of Independent Television Producers) – ABPI-TV. Reflecting changing regulatory frameworks and markets, the five annual Rio Content Market iterations have earned its position as South America's leading audiovisual industry event. Though initially focusing on television, it is now a reference for all kinds of content. Attendees have included talents from Brazilian TV and top international film and TV series such as Game of Thrones, True Detective, and Lost. Its status reflects a business context driven by discussions and presentations of the entertainment world's top case studies.

Rio de Janeiro's many educational and training facilities point to another supplementary aspect of the city's cinema-hub role that is worth noting, in particular a film course founded in the 1960s by leading Cinema Novo directors, including Nelson Pereira and Ruy Guerra, taught at Universidade Federal Fluminense. Yet, there are also high-quality courses at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio  and Escola de Cinema Darcy Ribeiro, including several non-degree courses organized in partnership with international institutions. As the market has diversified and more companies have been set up to feed the state of Rio de Janeiro's fast-growing demand for audiovisual output, new institutions have invested to provide educational and training facilities and there is growing demand for qualified staff in many segments.

More evidence of the diversity and sustainability of Rio's cinema hub may be seen in the large number of arthouse films produced there. Since its founding in 1985, Grupo Estação de Cinema has became a model for the art-film circuit by offering differentiated programs featuring top Brazilian and international filmmakers. As a reference in its niche, this collective organized Festival do Rio and holds several events to promote classics and arthouse films. Cinema Odeon, yet another of Rio de Janeiro's references for film-lovers, is similar to other old "movie palace" buildings that are still found in Brazil, such as the São Luiz theatres in Fortaleza and Recife. This cinema has recently become a cultural centre named for Luiz Severiano Ribeiro. Built in 1926, it is the last of the great theatres in operation in Cinelandia district. Once it has been reformulated as a cultural centre, the former Cine Odeon will diversify to host sports, opera and lectures, as well as the city's leading film festivals and events.

Finally, Rio de Janeiro is also home to Filme B, a company that has been collecting and analysing accurate and updated data for the film industry. Since 1987, the company resorts to two tools for reviewing theatrical market data: its website and the Box Office Brasil database. Filme B also organizes two major film-industry events. Each November for the last 12 years, Show Búzios (in Búzios, Rio de Janeiro) has drawn leading professionals from Brazil's screening and distribution sectors, who also show their HY2 film portfolios at the winter-season event Show de Inverno (in Campos do Jordão, São Paulo).

São Paulo S.A.
The heading alludes to a Luis Sérgio Person film named São Paulo Sociedade Anônima, where “sociedade anônima” designates a business corporation. As Brazil's chief economic hub, the state of São Paulo's highly concentrated industrial complex has had favourable ongoing effects in the form of state investments in culture and cinema. Although not on the same scale as Rio de Janeiro for historical reasons, São Paulo is also outstanding for its constellation of talents and industry players.

São Paulo's role in building Brazil's film industry was on the production side but also involved intellectual studies and critiques that have even challenged the very meaning of the term 'Brazilian cinema' as a concept. Key figures here include Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes, founder of Cinemateca Brasileira and the course offered at Universidade de São Paulo (USP), which is one of Brazil's top programs in this field. As a film historian and critic, Sales Gomes formulated theoretical constructs for a history of Brazilian cinema. Jean Claude Bernardet and Ismail Xavier are in the same field, both being professors at the same university (USP) and doing theoretical work that has partly revised the ideas of Sales Gomes. Every film student in Brazil will invariably be exposed to their thinking.

Another program of instruction, Laboratório Novas Histórias (New Stories Laboratory), is practical rather than academic and has built a position as Brazil's top screenplay 'lab'. Initially conceived and organized by Carla Esmeralda as the fruit of a Sundance Institute partnership, the project is currently a joint venture run by SESC SP and SENAC SP. Over its more than ten years of history, it has been involved with over 100 feature-length screenplays such as Cinema, aspirinas e urubus (Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures), by Marcelo Gomes; City of God, by Bráulio Mantovani; Mutum, by Sandra Kogut and Ana Luiza Martins Costa; O ano em que meus pais saíram de férias (The Year My Parents Went on Vacation), by Cao Hamburguer and Claudio Galperin; Histórias que só existem quando lembradas (Found memories), by Julia Murat, Maria Clara Escobar and Felipe Sholl; Que horas ela volta? (The Second Mother), by Anna Muylaert, all of which earned good reviews in Brazil and internationally, many of them also box-office hits in Brazil.

On the production side, São Paulo has also produced leading Cinema Novo filmmakers such as Arnaldo Jabor, Walter Hugo Khouri, Hector Babenco (an Argentinean who chose to work in São Paulo), and Nelson Pereira dos Santos, (who started his career in São Paulo but moved to Rio de Janeiro). Fernando Meirelles is from São Paulo, although he made his most successful film in Rio. Several of today's production companies have operated continuously in the film industry and played key roles. There is Gullane Filmes, run by the brothers Caio and Fabiano Gullane, which partners several directors, and Fernando Meirelles' own company, O2 Filmes. Producer Sara Silveira has a more artistic focus and works with first-time filmmakers. She has done valuable work for Brazilian art films through production company Dezenove Som e Imagem, originally as partner to director Carlos Reichenbach. She produced Cinema, aspirinas e urubus (Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures) (2005) by the Recife-born director Marcelo Gomes, as well as Trabalhar cansa (Hard Labor) (2011) by Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas, which premiered at the Cannes Festival's Un Certain Regard selection. In 2014, another film made in São Paulo was very successful domestically and internationally: Hoje eu quero voltar sozinho (The Way He Looks) by Daniel Queiroz and producer Diana Almeida through Lacuna Filmes, which was sold to several European, Asian and North American countries and selected as Brazil's nomination for the Oscar Award. Based on another model, RT Features is working with cultural content and entertainment for both film and TV, having co-produced international ventures such as the U.S. independent film Francis Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012), a favourably reviewed box-office success that earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Comedy / Musical Film. Among many other projects, RT's biggest successes were O cheiro do ralo (Drained) (Heitor Dhalia, 2007), O abismo prateado (The Silver Cliff) (Karim Aïnouz, 2013) which was shown at Cannes Critics Week, and Alemão (José Eduardo Belmonte, 2014) which drew over a million viewers.

Sofá Digital is working in partnerships with production companies in São Paulo and other states on an interesting initiative that aggregates content connected to the main digital channels. Based in São Paulo, the company is headed by Fábio Lima, who has been foremost in digital projects for Brazilian theatres since 2004. Sofá Digital is active in 17 Latin American countries and uses various VOD platforms to distribute full-length feature films.

São Paulo's state capital holds several standout film events and festivals. In 1977, during the darkest period of the dictatorship, Leon Cakoff organised the São Paulo International Film Festival, one of South America's top film events first held at the Cinema department of Museu de Arte de São Paulo – MASP, to show censored films. As a focal point for resistance and cinema lovers, the festival challenged censorship as it gained strength and international recognition, spreading to venues in many areas of the city over the years. This event, which screens over 300 titles every year, has hosted great directors that include Manoel de Oliveira, Abbas Kiarostami, Wim Wenders and Park Chan-Wook, while honouring distinguished figures in Brazilian cinema too. Festival É tudo Verdade – Festival Internacional de Documentários (It`s All True – International Documentary Film Festival) is a leading documentary event. After 20 years, this festival is now Brazil's main platform affording visibility for documentary films. Every year films come from various countries for previews, competitions, retrospectives of the work of directors renowned for their documentaries such as Werner Herzog, Orson Welles, Errol Morris, Vladimir Carvalho, Eduardo Coutinho, João Moreira Salles, among many other Brazilian and foreign filmmakers. In addition to exhibiting films, its International Documentary Conference has also provided a fruitful setting for thought and discussion. The festival has developed partnerships with major international events of its kind such as the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam – IDFA. Showing recognition of its international prestige, in 2015 the festival started to forward the short films winning its international competition to Hollywood's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to consider their eligibility for nominations as Best Short Film Documentary at the Oscar Awards.

Festival Internacional de Curtas Metragens de São Paulo – Curta Kinoforum (São Paulo International Short Film Festival) is one of the world's largest and most traditional events covering this format. Since 1990, the festival has been a highpoint on the city's cultural agenda due to its broad and diversified program and screenings free of charge at several theatres and cultural centres in the city. Every year, about 400 films are selected from a wide range of countries. Kinoforum, a not-for-profit cultural association that supports Brazilian audiovisual in many outlying areas of the city and maintains an important database of film events, the Kinoforum Audiovisual Festival Guide, organizes the Festival directed by cultural producer Zita Carvalhosa.

The city of São Paulo is also home to an important art circuit. The Cine SESC Theater located on Rua Augusta is a hotspot for São Paulo film lovers showing a diversified program of art-house and Brazilian films while also staging its own events and working in partnership with the city's leading film festivals. Another point of reference is Museu da Imagem e do Som de São Paulo, the image and sound museum now under new management, which has joined the circuit of major exhibitions featuring contemporary themes and exhibitions related to film festivals. Its history has also been marked by partnerships with major festivals and film events such as São Paulo's Short Film Festival. Finally, another highpoint on the city’s art circuit is Caixa Belas Artes, a cinema that originally opened in July 1967 under the name “Cine Belas Artes”, with programs selected by the Friends of the Cinematheque Society. Since 1980, it has been divided into six theatres named for Brazilian artists: Villa-Lobos, Candido Portinari, Oscar Niemeyer, Aleijadinho, Mario de Andrade, and Carmen Miranda. With its alternative program of films from different national origins and its long runs in some cases, Cine Belas Artes became one of the city's most important intellectual and artistic meeting points. In the same category are Circuito Espaço and Espaço Itaú de Cinema, both headed by Adhemar Oliveira, formerly a member of film societies (cineclubes) in the 1980s, and the original Grupo Estação. His Espaço de Cinema is one of Brazil's top ranked exhibitor companies. Oliveira realized that his cinemas could mix art films and blockbusters, hence the neologism "artplex". He is also active in distribution and has been an important partner for Brazilian cinema since digital cinemas have provided more opportunities for Brazilian content with a more creative approach to programming these films across the circuit in states covered by his network.

In the public sector, institutions that should be highlighted include the city of São Paulo's Department of Culture, which has been fostering audiovisual projects since the 1990s. Moreover, the current mayor's administration has backed one of most important public-sector projects for cinema in Brazil: the São Paulo Film and Audiovisual Company, or SPCine. Drawing on the model offered by the city of Rio de Janeiro's RioFilme, SPCine was founded to develop, fund and implement programs and policies for cinema, television, games and the Internet, thus recognizing and stimulating the economic and creative potential of São Paulo's audiovisual industry and its cultural and social impacts. It also works in partnership with São Paulo's State Government and the Ministry of Culture through the National Cinema Agency – ANCINE. In addition to SPCine, the City Government acts as a facilitator through Escritório de Cinema de São Paulo (São Paulo City Film Commission), which provides extensive support for both local and international filming activities. At state level, in addition to partnership with SPCine, the Department of Culture's audiovisual policy is projected through its Cultural Action Program (ProAC), including tax incentives and procurement tenders. In both cases, exclusive credit facilities for the film industry may be added to funds from other public-sector entities.

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