En attendant le carnaval

Although very low-profile and not as highlighted as some colleagues, Marcelo Gomes is certainly one of my favorite Brazilian directors. His fiction films are excellent: "Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus" is a masterpiece which I hope will still be worldwide properly acclaimed; and I have also watched "Joaquim" and "Era uma Vez Eu, Verônica", which are also very good. Well, "Estou me guardando para quando o carnaval chegar", differently from these film I mentioned, is a documentary. Marcelo Gomes contrasts his childhood experience traveling with his father in Brazilian Northeastern hinterlands with nowadays' reality: relatively small-size town Toritama, which used to focus on agriculture and cattle and was very quiet, turned to produce 20% of all jeans Brazil makes! With a fabulous and smart cinematography, a good text (about dreams and time), great testimonies and a particularly amazing character (Léo, the happy and contradictory wannabe prophet), this documentary explores labor reality, the neo-liberal workaholic ethos, and the unprecedented collective compulsion for stopping that blue-jeans "Modern Times" only during carnival, when almost the entire population do all efforts to travel to the beach.

... but try it. The photography and the plot of this film may be a little difficult to understand if you are not Brazilian, but giving this film a chance is really a good things. First because it reveals an background full of nice things to see and to debate. Second because of the twist of the plot. By "twist" I mean that the firt two thirds of the narration deals about jeans the city of Toritama make. Then, in the last part, we understand the title of the film and another narration begins.

Really, I think you should try it.

Toritama is a small village in the Pernambuco's Agreste region, known as the capital of jeans, whose inhabitants are self-employed jeans manufacturers, enjoying their financial freedom. Renowned Brazilian filmmaker Marcelo Gomes ("Once Upon a Time Veronica", "I Travel Because I Have To") scoops out the lives of these hardworking folks, their exhaustion, perspectives, honesty and humble concepts, as they go through memories and curiosities of themselves and the place, all while they wait for the fun and freedom of Carnival season. Poetical, humane and original, Gomes scores another goal in his accomplished career.

This is one of most underrated documentary, If are not Brazillian maybe this Don't sounds good. It's a perfect description of Brazil, with harder work, exploration, but with a good purpose, It's a perfect representation of capitalism.

I guess it was well produced and film making tools used to their very extent but it is so cliche and sad, again, to see only stories of the poor, melancholic, under educated people in the screen, from a country with a huge and diverse culture of over 200 million people. Let's start to show the ups instead of the downs of our Brazilian land, please, directors. I can assure you there is poetry in that too.