Notícias

Illustrations by Stephanie Lane Gage.As the year draws to a close, we’d like to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of our contributors. Here are some of their finest essays, interviews, festival coverage, and more from this year. We’re looking forward to much more in the new one. As always, thank you for reading.ESSAYSIllustration by Zoé Mahamès Peters.The current cinema:Sasha Frere-Jones on Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi’s GIFTPhilippa Snow on Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor ThingsAdam Nayman on Pascal Plante’s Red RoomsCassie da Costa on RaMell Ross’s Nickel BoysAmanda Chen on Trương Minh Quý’s Việt and NamSanoja Bhaumik on Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s The SettlersNathalie Olah on Andrea Arnold’s BirdRobert Rubsam on Alice Rohrwacher’s La chimeraGrace Byron on Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV GlowZach Schonfeld on M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap and Michael Showalter’s The Idea of YouSam...

In Banel & Adama, writer-director Ramata-Toulaye Sy expresses the delirium that comes with love and the downfall that’s doomed to follow it. This fable-like film about ephemeral bliss takes shape in a remote village in Senegal, where gender expectations are particularly pronounced. Crucial to the story isn’t only the expiration date that comes with feverish infatuation and society’s disciplinary powers, but the lack of synchrony between lovers—that is, when one lover’s allegiance to the relationship never seems to last as long as the other’s.

Per local tradition, Banel (Khady Mane) marries her deceased husband’s younger brother, Adama (Mamadou Diallo). If she’s to be left in peace, Banel is expected to excel as a wife. Which means doing the laundry, always sitting gracefully, working alongside the other women, and getting pregnant before her mother-in-law (Binta Racine Sy) threatens to find Adama a second wife.

Barren Lives.Before I reread it late this past winter, my clearest memory of Graciliano Ramos’s 1938 novel Vidas Secas (Barren Lives), a classic of Brazilian modernism, was of the dog, Baleia. I’d first read the novel in high school, and my teacher, Ivan, had an illustration of Baleia tattooed on his arm. Barren Lives was a favorite even among those pupils who, unlike me, didn’t obsessively read every book assigned. We all adored Baleia; though she is a dog, she has as much of a consciousness and a perspective as any of the human characters in the book. Her tragic death left us all equally moved and indignant.In Brazil, literature is singular and filmmaking is mostly ignored. I saw online that a movie theater in São Paulo not far from where I grew up was playing a rare print of the film adaptation of Barren Lives...

What I love most about international film festivals is the opportunity to discover rare gems and stimulating foreign indie flicks, which may otherwise get lost in the mainstream blockbuster shuffle. One of this year’s contenders is a compelling Brazilian slave drama, set in the isolated backlands of this lush country, in the early 19th century during its painfully colonial times. Vazante is tragic story of slave trader Antonio, who in the event of losing his wife in child labor marries his late wife’s 12-year-old niece.

While waiting for his child wife to mature and irritated by a lack of diamond production in the Diamante Mountains, Antonio is advised by one of his foremen to cultivate and farm his vast rugged land with his captive slaves. Isolation, fear, violence, betrayal and prejudice are all at the premise of this beautifully shot black and white film, with minimal dialogue and score.

2. For Paulo Rocha

Weekend 2 - Day 1 - December 13th, 2013

The second Harvard-Gulbenkian program centers around a vitally important yet still under appreciated figure of the post-WW2 Portuguese cinema, the late Paulo Rocha whose influential masterpiece of poetic neo-realism, Mudar de vida (1966) is offered both in tribute to his recent passing and as an occasion to reconsider Rocha's cinema and legacy. Looking beyond the historic "Cinema Novo" movement with which this film and Rocha himself are most closely associated, Mudar de vida is placed here within a broader, alternate context: in dialogue with the films and presence of Víctor Gaviria and Billy Woodberry, two directors inspired, like Rocha, to renew the promise of a truly "popular cinema" intimate with the stories, experiences and landscapes of the people depicted and ultimately empowered by their films. Unseen in Portugal, the films of Gaviria and Woodberry offer revelational compliments to Rocha's lyrical realism, each...

"From Vidas Secas to Central Station, Brazil's northeast has long held a cinematic place as a sweltering netherworld of struggle, madness, and stark landscapes," writes Fernando F Croce in Slant. "It's an area that holds particular interest to writer-directors Karim Aïnouz and Marcelo Gomes, who have examined its rapport with characters in previous features (Love for Sale and Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures, respectively) and who team up for a far more experimental take in I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You."...