Despite its apparently enigmatic title (that has a meaning related to the material used on old films, a source of great power of combustion and explosions and that's how most films and archives were lost over the decades of poor storage), "Nitrato" is an outcry exposing the historical importance of Brazilian Cinematheque to culture and visual arts, and the ignorance and contempt from political administrations of the period that failed to keep the place alive, refusing to provide budgets (or giving very little), a decent structure to restaure films or keep them in storage without damages.
It didn't get any better from 1970's: several fire incidents happened, many TV and film archives were lost; and only recently, after one fire and with the help of private aid that the Cinematheque got back on its feet, with film sessions, a digitalized archive (already existing for quite some time) but their website is a little chaotic with some errors.
Director Alain Fresnot interviews administrators from the place, their experiences there, and also makes a series of visual chapters on the films, the celluloids on fire, all that makes us down and upset as we are forced to deal that a huge part of our cinematic history and memory were gone for good. Brazil cinema started in 1896, but none of those late 19th century shorts exist today, only the informations about them. Early 20th century goes almost the same way - a few films survived, little are available (the oldest I've seen were from 1909/1910).
Why did that happened? A total disregard for past, history, cinema (at its early days wasn't considered a respected art form) and culture representatives who simply didn't care, just as the political leaders.
A short like "Nitrato" served to alert us about that peril of not having a film register and the loss of memory and identity Brazil cinema was going through. That battle hasn't ended but a little progress was made to help our culture cause. 9/10.
