Luiz Sá

A quite interesting short documentary that presents the life and work of famous cartoonist Luiz Sá. He talks about his experience in the world of cartoons with his famous creations through several decades such as Reco-Reco, Bolão and Azeitona that appeared in 1930's magazines.

And there's a brief change of career when he directed a series of animated shorts that sadly disappeared from view except for "As Aventuras de Virgulino" (1938) which appears in this film. It's a fun animation very reminiscent of early Betty Boop and similar animations, with a specific charateristic of Sá's own works with round characters and round figures. The short still exists and it's fully presented in the movie - however, it doesn't contain the ending. Sá talks about the meeting he had with Walt Disney who was curious in seeing his works but the propaganda and press department of the time considered as a work of low quality and they didn't allowed the director show his film to Disney.

A great issue brought on this movie is about the artist struggle against the foreign competition of its time when American HQ's and cartoons were widely available to the public thanks not only to its better quality, technological advances in the cartoon industry but mostly because of its price, a lot cheaper than the national product. Artists friends of Luiz Sá detail about this point where the man's career almost ended. This was one of his final interviews and back then in the 1970's he was still producing new work. Check it out if you can.

9/10.