Gabriel Mascaro
A global portrait documenting the year's events, Cinetracts '20 features the work of an international lineup of 20 filmmakers. Capturing the zeitgeist in their own backyard, the artists' short films are the culmination of a year-long residency project.
In 2027 Brazil, civil servant Joana mainly deals with divorce cases. As a member of a branch of evangelical Christians known as the Divino Amor group, she uses her position to offer a kind of physical therapy to couples who want to separate. Although Joana and her husband Danilo regularly consummate their marriage, neither her constant prayers nor any other methods of assistance seem to be able to fulfill their desire for a child.
Iremar is part of a rodeo troupe that tours the Brazilian northeast. His task is to send bulls into the arena. Intensely exciting physical scenes alternate with contemplative episodes that sketch a painterly portrait of the members of the troupe. Sublime images, which alternate with a less idyllic reality: the hard work amidst the cows. Jointly they form a fabulous choreography, against the background of a rapidly changing society.
Seven lives, seven stories, one passion: Frevo. The collaborative writing of a piece which welcomes us to the world of seven great maestros of Pernambuco. Jose Menezes, Nunes, Clovis Pereira, Guedes Peixoto, Duda, Ademir Araujo and Edson Rodrigues - living legends of this rhythm that is an intangible heritage of Brazil. A journey through Frevo.
Shirley has left the big city to live in a small seaside town and look after her elderly grandmother. She drives a tractor on a local coconut plantation, loves rock music and wants to be a tattoo artist. She feels trapped in the tiny coastal village. She is involved with Jeison, who also works on the coconut farm and who free dives for lobster and octopus in his spare time.
The film shows the images made by the police during demonstrations of 2013 (Brazil). In times of anonymous faces, what to do with the feet?
Seven adolescents take on the mission of filming, for one week, their family's housemaids and hand over the footage to the director to make a film. The images that confront us uncover the complex relationship that exists between housemaids and their employers, a relationship that confuses intimacy and power in the workplace and provides us with an insight into the echoes of a colonial past that linger in contemporary Brazil.
Rodrigo is a young deaf man from Recife, northeast Brazil who works installing car stereos in a small dealership on the outskirts of town. Despite his deafness, sound penetrates his day to day life and he harnesses its vibrations, allowing it to pulse through his veins.
Avenida Brasília Formosa provides a sensorial insight into the contemporary reality of a neighbourhood that was tranformed following the removal of families to make way for the construction of a coastal highway. This is about film of encounters, memories and desires.
Entering the virtual world of “Second Life”, Brazilian visual artist Paulo Bruscky meets film director Gabriel Mascaro. Mascaro, an ex-film film director from north-east Brazil currently lives and works making machinima (virtual short films) in the “Second Life”. Paulo hires Gabriel to make a machinima documentary of his adventures as a newcomer to the “Second Life”.
In 1965 a VW Beetle is sold in São Paulo, Brazil. Forty years later, the car ends up in a Recife scrapyard in the northeast, with the license plate KFZ-1348. The documentary “The Beetle KFZ-1348” presents the stories of this car through its eight owners, whose lives show a unique portrait of a country.
