Jahsira Williams

I really enjoyed this film. The way Guzman uses filmic techniques through framing, lighting, and dissolves to further support the narrative was beautiful. It was equally inspiring for him to be able to reflect on his earlier film that changed the world in a way. One of our auditors was talking about how a person can have significant impact in their personal life, but limited impact in the larger society. For the most part I agree, but it really is a wonderful, rare thing to witness an artist who is capable of doing both. I saw myself in the students that Guzman depicts in this film. Before the screening many have a studious and arrogant, but harmless, stance of on the dictatorship. However, after the viewing, the editing completely slows down and lets us see the total shock, grief, and pain many students have to grapple with. It really speaks to the power of filmmaking and being a force of truth in the world. On one level, Guzman bravely made The Battle of Chile. The film reaches success internationally, and Guzman could have stayed in Paris. Then, on another level, he fights for it to be shown in Chile where it’s most important to be seen. Within this film, all of these layers are colliding and it’s a sight to see.

-Jahsira Williams

The cinematography of the film was very beautiful. For mostly outdoor scenes, daylight scenes in white clothes, the characters looked gorgeous. The narrative of the film was comprehensible but lacked an emotional connection for me. Firmino definitely felt more like a trickster, chaotic character than one that deeply cared about his community. He was willing to sacrifice anyone (Cota, Aura, Vincent etc) in order to shake the foundation of the community. I do agree that a revolution was needed, but Firmino’s desires felt unfinished, especially as the film leave us mourning with the community with another death (or potential sacrifice to Yemenja) of a fisherman.

The themes of religion are potent. It seems like most socialists/communists/Marxists do struggle with the role of religion in the revolution. For Africans who were trafficked and enslaved, elements of their religion are what ties them back to Africa. It provides a tether to their home identity. However, maybe the domination they experienced and the Catholic elements are what keeps oppressed people in a state of coping with their situation instead of revolting.

Rocha does allow space for the power of Candomble and women to shine in the film. The precipice of the “turning wind” means that Yemenja is powerful, her daughters are powerful—so sacrifices are required. He (and Firmino) seems to call on the religion to provide that “turning wind” for a new social order.

Lastly, for me, Rocha’s lens and story is lacking for the female characters: Cota firmly placed in her status and is used by Firmino and Naina in her constant weeping.

I also do accept that there’s tons of context I’m missing as an American, and non practitioner of Candomble.

I enjoyed Rocha’s film theory about the didactic and the epic. His writing it works a lot like his films.  “How can the intellectual of the underdeveloped worldovercome his alienation and contradictions and attain a revolutionary lucidity?”

His films like DI and MARANHAO 66 reflect that desire to reach this “revolutionary lucidity”  through breaking away from the colonialism structures and mores of European society through film. I noticed the use of close ups, frenetic editing, and handheld camera. He was willing to be crude to make audiences and others uncomfortable with the truth of life. This seems to be line in the standard of Cinema Novo.

AMAZONAS, AMAZONAS is probably the calmest and more “standard” of his films, so it was cool to see the evolution of this didactic/epic idea.

I also really enjoyed the CAT SKIN short film because of the way it was a simple story that reveals the truths and difficulties of race and class in Brazil.

Jahsira Williams

Jahsira Williams, 2/25 Cinema Novo by Eryk Roucha

It’s a quite romantic idea that the son carries on the ideas brought forth by his father and his collaborators. Reflecting on what was said towards the end of the film, Cinema Novo was never a movement, but an idea that will live forever, to paraphrase.

This film itself is interesting as it is Cinema Novo redux of the productions of the original Cinema Novo group of the 1960s and 1970s. The images they were able to produce make so much sense situated as a descendant of Italian neorealism and a revolutionary attempt at anti imperialism/colonialism. It’s so interesting though– this group of middle class white men had the wherewithal to be class or even race conscious, but they still fell short on their imagination of the Brazilian woman. They very much seem enthralled with the idea of woman-ness because of another that stuck out to me, which I will also paraphrase: “a loved woman and a revolution are the same.” 

Maybe this is a flaw of with Eryk’s interpretation of Cinema Novo ideas, and not with the films themselves. I think the images of naked women can be respectful, beautiful, and/or artistic but it threw me off, especially after Sara Gomez’s work where women have so much voice and agency, regardless of their physical beauty.

Gomez’s film One Way or Another was a film that shows its maker with their finger on the pulse. Sara Gómez, at the risk of censorship, made the best film that she could to represent the people at the ground level. The revolution is more than its ideals and its institutions, but rather, it has to be the people. She obviously believed in socialism and had a revolutionary mindset but her biggest strength is her ability to be comfortable in the contradiction. She didn’t shy away from the truth of men’s use of Abakua and women’s use of Santeria, of the exaltation of light skin mulata women in in Cuba. She was also rather aware of the class bias, how they can undermine revolutionary goals in a well meaning person like Yolanda. Yolanda’s class comfortability didn’t affect her ability to love a macho man like Mario, but she judged the women quite harshly (Lazaro’s mother and the other mother of 11 children).  Gomez also shows how a man like Mario obviously takes code and honor seriously as a macho Nanigo man but he still cracks under pressure when presented with a new code. This film is really fresh so many years later because it simply shows people at their best and their total worst, but the work isn’t done yet and there’s still hope.

I was deeply inspired by Agnes Varda’s Salut les cubains. Going back to Julio Garcia Espinosa’s manifesto, imperfect cinema may be an editor’s dream. I really loved how alive the film felt. It was whimsical and joyful. It’s revolutionary because it disrupts the idea if the Hollywood conventions of linear editing and story telling. In Varda’s film it’s not really the story that gets disturbed, but rather the structure and convention of how a story should be told.

On a more personal note, I also appreciated Varda’s sentiments about being a filmmaker and a mother. She and Sara Gómez had that in common. Varda didn’t believe that she had to sacrifice anything to “make it.” Women still struggle with this home-career balance in this day and age, so it truly was revolutionary of her and Sara Gomez to take complex risks for the sake of their art in the 1960s.