Helena Solberg Cineclub
Running since 2012, and after a brief hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Cineclub of the Embassy of Brazil in London resumed its monthly programme of Brazilian and Brazil-related film screenings in April 2023. With a new curatorial approach, this cycle of the Cineclub aims to showcase a broad spectrum of films based on a variety of themes, from various periods with distinctive aesthetic and narrative styles, bringing fresh insights into Brazilian film production from the past and the present.
In its current phase, the film club has been named Helena Solberg Cineclub, as a homage to the exceptional filmmaker who has been part of Brazilian film history since the 1960s. Solberg has developed a seminal body of work which stands out for her feminist and social commitment, her attentive look at inequalities in an intersectional way, and her approach to Brazilian culture and identity. She directed her first shorts, The Interview (A entrevista, 1966) and Noon (Meio-dia, 1970), when Cinema Novo was emerging, positioning her as the only female director to participate in that movement. Upon moving to the United States in the 1970s, she directed the Women’s Trilogy with the International Women’s Film Project collective. Throughout the 1980s, she made a series of documentaries on the US interference with authoritarian governments in Latin America for PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service), including the Emmy winner From the Ashes... Nicaragua Today (1982). On her return to Brazil, she directed several acclaimed documentaries and fiction films, such as Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business (1994), Diary of a Provincial Girl (Vida de menina, 2004) and Jandyra, a Brazilian Tragedy (Meu corpo, minha vida, 2017). To learn more about Solberg’s career trajectory, read the article The Emerging Woman.
Keep an eye on this page and our social media channels (Instagram | Facebook | Twitter) in order not to miss our first-rate lineup. For updates, you can subscribe to the Helena Solberg Cineclub mailing list at cultural.london@itamaraty.gov.br.
The screenings are planned to take place monthly. Admission is free, but RSVPing is required through our Eventbrite page.
WHAT'S ON
JULY SCREENING
BUCCANEER SOUL, by Carlos Reichenbach
17 July 2024 / 6pm (doors open)
Alberto Cavalcanti Auditorium / Embassy of Brazil
14-16 Cockspur Street, London SW1Y 5BL
RSVP link here
There will be drinks and nibbles to welcome the audience, and the screening will start at 6.30pm
The HELENA SOLBERG CINECLUB brings to London the subversive work of Carlos Reichenbach (1945 – 2012), an avant-garde filmmaker and scriptwriter whose filmography offers a miniature history of Brazil’s shifting social and political terrain throughout his four-decade career. Having explored several genres, including melodrama, porn and experimental, and being committed to social critique, his films are an ode to utopia, dream and desire. Our pick Buccaneer Soul delves into the life of two poets and their friendship in a generous film filled with grand scenes of kitsch and whimsy.
THE FILM
Buccaneer Soul | Alma Corsária
Dir. Carlos Reichenbach | 1993 | Brazil | 112 min. | Portuguese with English subtitles
Two childhood friends (one working-class, one from the bourgeoisie) publish a fourhanded poetry book. The launch party in a downtown São Paulo bar gathers a varied group of prostitutes, yuppies, outcasts, musicians, intellectuals and journalists. As the celebration goes on, the film flashes back to the 1950s, tracking the birth of their friendship, then moves into the 1960s and 1970s to recap how their stories progressed, and frequently returns to the party to tie the past to the present. Inspired by the experiences of the director and his friends, described in the opening voiceover as “a generation driven by faith in utopia,” the film offers a sweeping chronicle of the era by charting the lives of the two young writers while passing through several historically important moments for Brazil.
Fragmented like memory, Buccaneer Soul dabbles in an array of genres and tones, constantly moving between the poetic and the grossest comedy, the greatest gestures and the most unfair. Even more wide-ranging are his nods to international filmmaking influences, from jokey asides (Samuel Fuller being casually handed an Oscar) to direct citations evoking Godard, Vigo, and Mizoguchi.
Reichenbach’s 11th feature film was produced in one of the most challenging moments in Brazilian film history: right after the collapse of Embrafilme (the Brazilian film agency that had funded the majority of the national film production, closed down by Fernando Collor de Mello’s neoliberal government), and before the rise of Retomada (revival), with the implementation of a system of financial and institutional public promotion for cinema. Made with minimal structure and budget, Buccaneer Soul shared main prize honours in the traditional Pesaro Fest’s 30th anniversary feature competition, and swept the main prizes of the Brasília Film Festival: best film, best director, best script, best editing and critics’ award.
This screening is only possible thanks to a handful of people, to whom we are grateful: Sara Silveira and her team at Dezenove Som e Imagens for retrieving a digital copy of the film, Luca D’Introno and DocLisboa for sharing the English subtitles, and Eugenio Puppo and Heco Produções for kindly connecting us with them.
Watch a rib-tickling VHS trailer here.
THE DIRECTOR
Carlos Reichenbach (1945 – 2012) was born in Porto Alegre and raised in São Paulo, where he spent his entire life and became a crucial figure on the local filmmaking scene. His first short So This Is Augusta Street (Esta rua tão Augusta) was released in 1968. In the following years, much like other directors of his generation in São Paulo, he shot and directed several low-budget films in the central region known as Boca do Lixo (Rubbish Mouth). He is considered a pioneer of the Cinema Marginal movement (also called Cinema of Invention or Udigrudi – a parodic mishearing of the English “underground”). He is critically acclaimed for his clever combination of popular and erudite elements in his films, most notably Lilian M: Confidential Report (Lilian M: Relatório confidencial, 1975), The Empire of Desire (O império do desejo, 1981), Suburban Angels (Anjos do arrabalde, 1987), Girls from ABC (Garotas do ABC, 2003) and Fake Blonde (Falsa loura, 2007), in a trademark directorial style focused on themes of sex, philosophy and poetry. He wrote and directed more than 20 productions being short, medium and feature-length films, shown in renowned film festivals worldwide, such as Rotterdam and Locarno. In 2010, he received a Golden Unicorn for Career Achievement at the Amiens International Film Festival, and his work was posthumously recognised at DocLisboa in 2022. As Giovanni Marchini Camia accurately described in Film Comment for the occasion of Doclisboa’s retrospective, Reichenbach’s “intellectually sophisticated but resolutely anti-highbrow films, genre versatility, and political commitment warrant his recognition as a fierce, independent auteur who understood cinema as an instrument of both protest and pleasure.” Read Marchini Camia’s beautiful article with a briefing of Reichenbach’s trajectory here.
COMING SOON
AUGUST SCREENING
BITTERSWEET RAIN, by Haroldo Borges
14 August 2024, 6pm (doors open)
Alberto Cavalcanti Auditorium / Embassy of Brazil
14-16 Cockspur Street, London SW1Y 5BL
There will be drinks and nibbles to welcome the audience,
and the screening will start at 6.30pm
Pain, acceptance of a marked destiny, and the power of community are at the core of Bittersweet Rain, HELENA SOLBERG CINECLUB’s August choice to warm this wintry summer. Portraying its main characters with understanding and kindness, the film follows 15-year-old Bruno as he faces a degenerative eye disease that will eventually lead to blindness amidst all the uncertainties of adolescence. How does he cope with these setbacks?
THE FILM
Bittersweet Rain | Saudade fez morada aqui dentro
Dir. Haroldo Borges | 2022 | Brazil | 107 min. | Portuguese with English subtitles
Bruno, a 15-year-old growing up with his mother and brother in a small town in the Brazilian hinterland, doesn’t have it easy. As if adolescence was not hard enough, the fatherless teenager confronts a degenerative eye disease that will ultimately leave him blind. He is an excellent drawer, and the news knocks him hard – his whole existence is shaken to the core.
As his vision deteriorates and he prepares to face a distressing future, Bruno tries to deal with concerns typical of a kid his age: school is no piece of cake, and he goes through the pain and confusion of his unreciprocated first love. Eventually, he will have to learn first-hand how to see life with different eyes while his arduous fate is turned into a collective learning experience.
A powerful, sad but wonderful film, Haroldo Borges’ exploration of thorny adolescence in Bittersweet Rain took the Best Film and Audience awards at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, Best Film at the Rio de Janeiro Film Festival Novos Rumos Competition, and was the winner of the first edition of the coveted Netflix Prize. It has also been shown at dozens of festivals worldwide, such as Giffoni, Shanghai, Málaga, World Cinema Amsterdam, and BUFF – International Children and Young People’s Film Festival in Malmö, among others.
Our feature film is a fiction with a documentary’s soul. We shot in a small village in the backlands of Bahia, where we lived for six months. None of the boys are professional actors. We met them right there, in the region. During the selection, we went through the schools and those who were most excited to make a film were invited to participate in a creative lab. Nobody read the script, everything was transmitted orally. The scenes were born from many improvisations. Our film dialogues with the Brazil of today, a country that has gone blind, and that now needs to learn how to see again. (Director’s notes for the premiere of the film in 2022)
Watch the trailer here.
THE DIRECTOR
Haroldo Borges (Salvador, 1977) is a screenwriter, director and cinematographer. Alongside Paula Gomes, Marcos Bautista and Ernesto Molinero, he co-founded Plano 3 Filmes, a collective of filmmakers from Bahia. As part of Plano 3 Filmes, he has carried out over 15 projects, such as the award-winning documentary Jonas and the Backyard Circus (Jonas e o circo sem lona, 2015), in which he was the writer and cinematographer, and Son of Ox (Filho de boi, 2019), his first feature film as a solo director, followed by Bittersweet Rain. They have been screened at festivals in more than 30 countries, such as IDFA, Cinélatino – Rencontres de Toulouse, Busan International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and Guadalajara International Film Festival. Haroldo has also been teaching in workshops and providing project consultancy in film labs such as ApanLab, NordesteLab and Sesc Audiovisual. Currently, he is working on the production of the documentary Sam and the development of features Ana, Samson (Sansão) and Imperial Hotel (Hotel Imperial).
PREVIOUS SCREENINGS
Screening date | Film title | Director | |
19 June 2014 | Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter (2022) | Gustavo Vinagre | download pdf |
22 May 2024 | I'll Raffle Off My Heart (2011) | Ana Rieper | download pdf |
17 April 2024 | Incompatible with Life (2023) | Eliza Capai | download pdf |
20 March 2024 | All Together Now: Sisterhood in shorts by Brazilian women filmmakers (2017-2021) | Various directors | download pdf |
7 February 2024 | The Wizard and the Sheriff (1983) | Fernando Coni Campos | download pdf |
17 January 2024 | The Book of Delights (2021) | Marcela Lordy | download pdf |
13 December 2023 | The First Fallen (2021) | Rodrigo de Oliveira | download pdf |
29 November 2023 | The Silence That Sings for Freedom (2022) | Úrsula Corona | download pdf |
10 October 2023 | ÔRÍ (1989) | Raquel Gerber | download pdf |
20 September 2023 | Welcome Back, Farewell (2021) | Marcos Yoshi | download pdf |
16 August 2023 | Three Summers (2019) | Sandra Kogut | download pdf |
19 July 2023 | Crossings: Afro-Brazilian Women Filmmakers Now (2015-2020) | Various directors | download pdf |
21 June 2023 | The Devil Queen (1974) | Antonio Carlos da Fontoura | download pdf |
24 May 2023 | A Yellow Animal (2020) | Felipe Bragança | download pdf |
13 April 2023 | Carmen Miranda: Bananas is my Business (1994) | Helena Solberg | download pdf |