Othon Bastos
A final conversation with departed actor, director and musical producer Julio Calasso Jr., a key character in the Brazilian artistic scene. At his old house in Butantã, São Paulo, Julio talks about his experiences, frustrations, joys and tragedies.
While waiting for a kidney transplant, a young pianist finds an unexpected connection with her doctor — and the courage to fulfill her musical dreams.
Locked up for decades in a maximum security prison, an old man tries to revive his glory days as a magician, putting into practice a perfect - but also very dangerous - escape plan.
The true story of Tancredo Neves, the first civilian president of Brazil after a 20-year military dictatorship, and the infamous hospitalization which led to his death before he ever managed to take office.
An engaging plot that talks about diversity, tolerance, the difficulties of understanding and accepting what is different, as well as the clash between the will and the ethical and moral limits that permeate the choices.
A father receives a devastating call: his son was found dead. This tragic news makes him travel in order to identify and release his son’s body for burial, a journey that will force him to recognize his absence as father and find a way to reconnect with the memories of his own child.
This documentary investigates the aesthetic, political and existential trajectory of emblematic Black Brazilian actor Antônio Pitanga. He career spans over five decades, and he has worked with iconic Brazilian filmmakers Glauber Rocha, Cacá Diegues and Walter Lima Jr. He was a prominent figurehead and outspoken activist during the Brazilian dictatorship, a period of unrest in Brazilian cinema. Pitanga deep dives into the world of Antônio and the history of Brazil. The documentary was directed by his daughter Camila Pitanga, one of widely recognised faces in Brazilian television and cinema right now. The film is also a poem, and a tender ode to fatherhood.
Lívia and Felipe are in a forbidden love story doomed to end tragically. A century later, they both have a new chance to make their love real again. “Time After Time” is an innovative romance set in two different eras in which characters hold the opportunity to make up for their mistakes, come to terms with the past and write themselves another story.
When returning to his hometown with his ill mother, Marlombrando meets again his father and the Drive-in cinema where he spent his childhood. Almeida keeps the cinema functioning with the assistance of only two employees: Paula, who takes care of the projection and the snack bar; Jose, an old friend of Almeida, who helps selling tickets at the cashier and cleaning up the place. The arrival of Marlombrando and the demolition threatening of the Drive-in will bring new directions to their lives.
José Alfredo is a man of humble origins who has always strived to do his best and spent his life building an empire. When he is still young, he suffers from a broken heart and from then on, he begins to take advantage of the people and opportunities he encounters. In a twist of fate, José Alfredo finds himself in the midst of the black market for precious stones and becomes a diamond smuggler. In Switzerland, he meets Maria Marta who comes from a traditional but bankrupt family and the two unite forces in a marriage of interests.
Giovanni Improtta is an offender who want to legalize and ascend socially. To this end, commit some offenses. Is betrayed in the crosshairs of the media and the police, under a wrongful murder charge difficult to be resolved through legal means.
José Henrique Fonseca crafts an ambitious and long overdue homage to a central icon in Brazil’s 20th century history. Reminiscent of film noir classics, the biopic tells the glorious and tragic story of the legendary football striker Heleno de Freitas. The sumptuous black and white cinematography reflects the chic life of Rio de Janeiro in the 1940s as it fell under the spell of sports royalty. Heleno was no doubt one of the most popular players of his time for his bravura in the field and magnificent goal-scoring that lead the Botafogo team to the top and himself into a vicious downward spiral.
Friends of the recently deceased Quincas take their pal's body on one last tour of his favorite spots in Brazil's Bahia.
The selfish Dr. André Luiz dies and awakes in the limbo called "Umbral". After a painful period in the gruesome swamp, he is rescued and brought in a white light to "Nosso Lar" (meaning "Our Home"). He finds a place of harmony, where people live in peace awaiting
A young musician of 13 years, a member of the Symphonic Orchestra of Agreste of the small town of Sao Caetano, 150 km from Recife, is kidnapped. The police believe the culprit is the creator of the orchestra, conductor Mozart Vieira. With the charge the work done so far with the poor community of the city is in danger of disappearing.
Covering the last years of the famous Brazilian fashion designer in her doomed quest for justice, Zuzu Angel follows the case of her activist son Stuart's arrest, torture, murder, and subsequent corpse disposal by the military forces in early 1970s Rio de Janeiro, during the darkest era of Brazilian military regime and media censorship.
Monarchists and republicans meet in Araruna, a small fictional town in the interior of São Paulo, in 1886. The novel portrays the love story of the beautiful and wealthy Sinhá Moça - daughter of the slave, Barão Ferreira de Araruna, and sweet and submissive Mother Candida - , with the young abolitionist lawyer Dr. Rodolfo Fontes - son of Dr. Fontes, and the housewife Inêz. Together, they face the difficulties in the campaign for the abolition of slaves.
Amid the civil-military dictatorship implanted with the 1964 coup, Sergio Muniz had the idea of making a documentary about the action of the Death Squad. At the time, the press still had some freedom to disseminate the work of these death squads formed by police officers of various ranks, and that he acted on the outskirts of cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The victims of police repression (as today) were men, poor and black, and this condition is supposed criminals.
A star medical examiner is called to Brasília, the administrative capital of Brazil, to confirm the identity of a beautiful, young congressional aide's dead body. But his scientific rigor soon leads him to details of a multi-layered political scandal.
It tells the story of two contrasting realities in the early 20th century: The construction of a railway in the Amazon rainforest and the glamorous life of Rio de Janeiro, where politicians and big businessmen lived. Consuelo is a young pianist heading toward the Amazon with her husband, Alonso. On the way, the two have an accident, and Alonso ends up losing his life. Alone and helpless, Consuelo gets lost in the middle of the forest, being weak and very sick. However, she ends up being supported by Joe Caripuna, a local Indian who welcomes the girl. The two become great friends, and Joe falls in love with the girl. He takes her to live around the railroad workers' camp, where she meets Dr. Richard Finnegan, who takes care of her health and all the workers who were in a dramatic situation. Richard also falls in love with Consuelo, who repays love, but the difficulties of work and the situations in which they find themselves make it difficult for them to get closer.
Alma Gêmea is a Brazilian telenovela that produced and broadcast by Rede Globo in 2005 and 2006. It was written by Walcyr Carrasco and directed by Jorge Fernando. Although the actors speak Portuguese, the program has been dubbed into other languages and syndicated internationally. It achieved record ratings for the 6 PM timeslot.
Colonel Furtado struggles to keep his lands, the Sobradinho Farm, and win the heart of his cousin Esmeraldina. In the process, he fights big beasts, experiences the taste of a bohemian life in town, fends usurers and thieves off, and uses all his cunning to get rid of haunting entities. His rival is the man he was brought up with, Pernambuco Nogueira, a werewolf.
Contemporary film critics regard the epic film I Am Cuba as a modern masterpiece. The 1964 Cuban/Soviet coproduction marked a watershed moment of cultural collaboration between two nations. Yet the film never found a mass audience, languishing for decades until its reintroduction as a "classic" in the 1990s. Vicente Ferraz explores the strange history of this cinematic tour de force, and the deeper meaning for those who participated in its creation.
Priest Marcelo Rossi visits a juvenile correction center, and gives Paulo, one of the interns, a Bible. He starts reading the story of St. Paul.
Ulisses has failed in his professional life, but leads a happy life with his wife Ângela and their two daughters. Until the day he is introduced to Bárbara, a very beautiful woman living in Rio de Janeiro. Ângela becomes her friend and gives her the dress Ulisses had given her. From then on, marital problems arise, and he becomes increasingly attracted to Bárbara.
A trip to the mental institution hell. This odyssey is lived by Neto, a middle class teenager, who lives a normal life until his father sends him to a mental institution after finding drugs on his pocket. The maconha cigarrete is just the final drop that exposes the family tragedy. Send to a mental institution, Neto gets to know a completely absurd, inhumane reality in which the people are devoured by a corrupt and cruel institution system. The documentary type language used by the director give this movie a sensation of realty that increases even more the impact of the emotions Neto goes through. In the mental institution, Neto is forced to mature. The transformations that he goes through change this relations with his father.
Brazilian badlands, April 1910. Tonho is ordered by his father to avenge the death of his older brother. The young man knows that if he commits this crime, his life will be divided in two: the twenty years he has already lived and the few days he has left to live, before the other family avenges their son's death. He is torn between fulfilling his ancestral duty and rebelling against it, urged by his younger brother Pacu. That's when a tiny travelling circus passes through the vast badlands where Tonho's family lives.
The ideological conflict between Joaquim Bolívar, a young barber member of the Communist Party and the powerful Coronel Gaudêncio, a typical province political leader.
The film tells the story of an intuitive, adventurous man who loved his country and being Brazilian. This man fought to be loyal to himself. His music is a transparent portrait of his genius, intuition, freedom, adventure and passion for Brazil.
Laís Bodanzky and Luiz Bolognesi travel around the small cities of Brazil, exhibiting short films in public squares. From the south of Bahia to the farthest parts of Amazon, this documentary discovers a country that watches a movie and sees itself on the screen for the very first time, in the turning of the 21st century. What’s seen and heard is truly surprising.
A movie about a Brazilian entrepreneur who rivalled American's richest man at his time, well-known Rockfeller. Irineu Evangelista de Souza in 1867 had $155.000 contos de reis, meanwhile the Brazilian Governement annual budget was 97.000 contos de reis. The movie shows his life from poverty to riches and back to poverty again, as is common in Brazil, rich people die poor.
An emotive journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.
Policarpo is a chauvinistic patriot, a major who tries to find solutions for Brazilian problems using only the resources of his own country. His visionary and idealistic temperament is behind his strange ideas about how to build a great nation.
Fernando, a journalist, and his friend César join terrorist group MR8 in order to fight Brazilian dictatorial regime during the late sixties. Cesare, however, is wounded and captured during a bank hold up. Fernando then decides to kidnap the American ambassador in Brazil and ask for the release of fifteen political prisoners in exchange for his life.
"Portraits and excerpts from Brazilian films from all times. Actors, directors and images that affirm cinema."
The principal character in Helvécio Ratton's delightful film has been adapted from a book and comic created by the Brazilian cartoonist Ziraldo, and tells the tale of a happy-go-lucky 10-year-old child growing up in a city in the 60s.
After suffering a plane crash, Leo receives a blood transfusion and, some time later, discovers that he ended up contracting the AIDS virus. Desperate, he does his best to find out the identity of the bearer of the blood he received, and suffers from the prejudice of friends and people close to him.
Documentary about the people who came from all over Brazil to work in the construction of the city of Brasilia, their stories, and the abuse and humiliation they suffered in the process.
Based upon the life story of Father Antonio Vieira, born in Lisbon in 1608 and deceased in Salvador, Bahia, in 1697. He's considered the first Brazilian writer and one of the most important aesthete of linguistic and of the Portuguese language of all times, a master in the art of metaphor, of verbal relations and analogy. He was persecuted and condemned by the Portuguese Court of Inquisition due to his position against native slavery, against the intolerance to the Jewish people and to the colonial politics of exploration.
Roque Santeiro is a Brazilian primetime telenovela produced and broadcast by Rede Globo. It premiered on 24 June 1985 and ended on 22 February 1986, replacing Corpo a Corpo and was replaced by Selva de Pedra. It was created by Dias Gomes —based on a play O Berço do Herói (Hero's Cradle)— and starred Regina Duarte, Lima Duarte, José Wilker, Lucinha Lins, Yoná Magalhães, Paulo Gracindo, Armando Bógus, Cássia Kis Magro, Elizângela, Fábio Júnior, Lídia Brondi, Cláudio Cavalcanti, Cláudia Raia, Lutero Luiz, Maurício Mattar, Eloísa Mafalda and Ary Fontoura. It was directed by Paul Ubiratan and has co-written by Aguinaldo Silva. Roque Santeiro became a great success, and is recognized today as one of the best telenovelas of all time. It was distributed to many countries around the world, and had an audience of 60 million viewers, remaining until today as the most-watched show in the history of Brazilian television.
A TV reporter tries to find out who is killing prostitutes in a São Paulo neighbourhood.
Documentary about the strikes that took place in São Bernardo do Campo, in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, circa 1979/1980. That moment was of utmost importance, since it revealed a Union leader, Luís Inácio "Lula" da Silva, who would later become President of Brazil. It was also the moment when PT, the Workers' Party, became a relevant political force in Brazil.
Fantasy comedy about Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade, one of the most important icons of Modernism in Brazil. In the film, Oswald is played by two actors: Ítala Nandi, as his feminine anima, and Flávio Galvão, as the masculine half.
São Paulo, late 30's. Alberto (Paulo César Pereio) is an intellectual and professor who announces to his friend and pupil Polidoro (Nuno Leal Maia) he won a scholarship to study in Paris. In Paris Polidoro receives a letter in which Alberto announces that he married Helena (Ana Maria Nascimento e Silva). Polidoro returns to Brazil in 1945, when there was a strong political agitation against the New State. Alberto invites Polidoro to spend a few days at his home in Campos do Jordão. After reaching the site he is told by Helena that Alberto was forced to travel urgently. She insists he should stay there until the return of her husband and, while waiting, she seduces him. Then, after several days of intense passion, she orders Polidoro to go away and never see her again.
Financial problems in a religious school for girls force the government to interfere. While waiting in the conference hall to communicate the fact to the school administrators, the intervenor falls asleep and a crazy dream begins, involving teachers, students and strange characters.
Documentary about Brazilian history, from 1945 until the 70s, focusing on president Juscelino Kubitschek, his political rise, his philosophy of economical development, his gigantic project ...
São Paulo, May 1978. Three slates compete for the leadership of the Metalworkers' Union of São Paulo, the largest in Latin America, with 300,000 associate workers, and presided over by a platoon since the military coup of 1964. In the midst of the Union electoral campaign, the first workers' strikes that would change the country began. Braços Cruzados, Máquinas Paradas reveals, in an engaging narrative, the Brazilian trade union structure of fascist inspiration.
Based on the novel "Totônio Pacheco", written by João Alphonsus. At the time of the decadence of the great farms of Minas Gerais, Totônio is a symbol of the golden age of state farms: old and accustomed to having all his wills obeyed. However, after moving to his son's home because of his wife's death and the resulting loneliness, he realizes that he has lost his job as a boss and is struggling to regain his prestige by moving to a brothel.
In this "fake documentary", a doctor returns to Brazil after his studies in Paris. Setting out to practice Medicine, he becomes an indigenous messiah and, in time, a cannibal.
The life and death of Colonel Orestes, a decadent coffee farmer, spanning three generations between despair, hallucinations, and the help of three different wives. The city, the synthesis of modernization, definitively buries the oligarch making buildings on the ground that had previously made the character's prestige.
The story of Paulo Honório, a poor ploughman who becomes a rich farmer. Obsessed by his desire to get even richer, he doesn't pay much attention to his wife, Madalena, a teacher who reacts against his tyrannical ways.
Report of a crawler, who helped the steering wheels to find traces of the cangaceiros in the caatinga and their knowledge to survive in this environment.
In the 1930's, in the South of State of Bahia, Brazil, an adventurer with no name or history, who had already been shot 7 times, gets involved in the battle for land and cacao plantations. His plan is to take the place of "Colonel" Santana, taking his wife and money. He starts a bloody conflict, in which many simple people and landowners die.
A new incarnation of Cangaceiro bandits, led by Coirana, has risen in the badlands. A blind landowner hires Antônio to wipe out his old nemesis. Yet after besting Coirana and accompanying the dying man to his mountain hideout, Antônio is moved by the plight of the Cangaceiro’s followers. The troubled hitman turns revolutionary, his gun and machete aimed towards his former masters.
Manuel and Rosa, a couple of peasants, are on the run in the drought-plagued Brazilian badlands of the 1940s, moving credulously from allegiance to allegiance until they finally learn that the land belongs neither to god nor devil, but to the people. The film’s storyline, somewhere between folk ballad and contemporary myth, contains a multitude of references to Brazilian history and culture.
The psychology and life of Brazilian hitmen, common in the Northeast part of the country. In this particular case, the story revolves around a young and idealistic politician from Salvador, whom the enemies are eager to eliminate.
Zé is a very poor man whose most prized possession is his donkey. When his donkey falls terminally ill, Zé makes a promise to Saint Bárbara: If his donkey recovers, he will carry a cross - like Jesus - all the way from his city to Saint Bárbara's church, in the state capital. Upon the recover of his donkey, Zé leaves on his journey. He makes it to the church, but the priest refuses to accept the cross once he discovers the context of Zé's promise.
