Brasil Pitoresco: As Viagens de Cornélio Pires

Nearly 100 years ago, Cornélio Pires decided to make a long trip to the west coast of Brazil capturing the shores from São Paulo to Sergipe in a long and enthusiastic journey observing everything that he found fascinating or worth showing on film. The result is one of the few surviving Brazilian films of the silent era, "Pictoresque Brazil: The Travels of Cornélio Pires".

It all begins with a great shot of the Independence Monument at the Ipiranga Museum in São Paulo, moving on to Santos and from then it's a boat journey that takes him to Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santos, Bahia and closing with Sergipe. However, Pires enthusiasm and fascination happens in Bahia where he spent most of the time (or at least when he got out of the boat) filming the fishermen, the street market, farms, fruits and plantations, a cock fight and many other things. He even appears on some shots with other people, almost like a little kid who feels impressed with everything he sees on the journey.

Of great historical importance today as a time machine in seeing a huge part of ancient Brazil, the short is quite well preserved, plenty of great quality in its images and everything shown was special to see. It doesn't have that newsreel effect, it truly gets a view of someone preserving a special trip he did, his only known film release (in fact Pires wasn't filmmaker by trade). Simply beautiful and special. 9/10.