Brazilian Shorts

We open with the great Joaquim Pedro de Andrade’s Vereda Tropical (The Tropical Trail, 1977). Originally made as his contribution to the omnibus feature length project Contos Eróticos (Erotic Tales, 1977), with four short films adapted from award-winning short stories published on Status – a well known men’s magazine. Vereda Tropical was shot in the lovely island of Paquetá just off the coast in Rio, its main character played by Claudio Cavalcanti is a man sexually attracted to fruits and vegetables...

The iconic artwork for Contos Eróticos is a reference to Andrade’s film, a large watermelon with a slit in the middle, a striking and politically daring film poster displayed in commercial cinemas in broad daylight during the military regime. A remarkable set of ideas and images of eroticism link this wonderful film to Tsai Ming-liang’s The Wayward Cloud, made 25 years later in Taipei.

Ilha das Flores (Flower Island, 1989) is a short film blockbuster in Brazil made by Porto Alegre based filmmaker and writer Jorge Furtado. It is shown in schools and it follows the misadventures of a tomato through the kind of hyper-montage style that would later be made popular by films such as Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) and Jeunet’s Amélie (2001). A strong, sardonic but humanistic film about capitalism and inequality. Juliano Dornelles’s Mens Sana in Corpore Sano (2011) moves into body horror using Recife as backdrop. An obsessive body builder gradually loses control over his own body.

A cinematic gem which leads us into A Gente Acaba Aqui (We End Here, 2021) by Everlane Moraes, from Bahia. An intimate chronicle with images of a family gathering, the goodbye to Everlane’s uncle. A personal film, a family video, the documentation of a funeral in 21st-century Brazil.

Cao Guimarães’ gorgeous six-minute observation of children playing out on the street, shot from a hotel window is the kind of filmmaking pulled out of thin air. Da Janela do Meu Quarto (From My Bedroom Window, 2004) is the dreamy reality of life on camera. Children are also a strong element in Tiao’s amazing visual mystery of a film, Muro (Wall, 2008). The references to Lynch or Jodorowsky are probably too distant to even mention, but one might even see some Australian cinema in its very Brazilian images. Tiao’s film is strong visually and in atmosphere, the union of the Brazilian sertão region and space travel, childhood and the acts of walking and breathing.

– Kleber Mendonça Filho, curator