UCI Illuminations Holds First of Four Part Event on Black Brazilian Cinema
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Loading... - Matias Munoz
- 22 Jun 2022
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UCI Illuminations hosted the first of four hybrid events centered around Black Brazilian Film in the Humanities Gateway Screening Room on April 6. This event featured guest speaker Dr. Kênia Freitas and two film screenings by Black Brazilian directors Zózimo Bulbul and Raquel Gerber.
The event description for “Black Brazilian Film: Roots of Afro-Brazilian Cinema” highlighted the ever-growing film scene in Brazil, stating that young filmmakers are “changing the absence of Afro-descendants” in cinema and challenging the erasure of representation of Black life in Brazil. According to Time Magazine, Brazil’s Black population is only second to Africa, with 56% of Brazilians identifying as Black.
The evening opened with guest speaker Freitas, who holds a Ph.D. in communication and culture from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Her opening remarks surrounded the history of Black Brazilian cinema, the new generation of Black filmmakers from 2010-onwards, narrative strategies and epistemologies of Black Brazilian cinema.
“It’s been a long way to get [representation],” Freitas said.
Because of this ongoing struggle, Black Brazilian filmmakers have assumed different strategies of storytelling. One of these includes the performative presence of Black bodies as “intense in the ways of showing [the] self,” as Bulbul’s movie demonstrated.
Bulbul’s “Alma no Olho” (Soul in the Eye, 1973), an 11 minute short film in which he stars, depicts Bulbul in a sterile white room as the camera jump-cuts to different parts of his body: first his teeth as he bares his bright while smile, and then, his buttocks while jazz pioneer John Coltrane’s music swells in the background. Bulbul then undergoes multiple physical transformations — from happy, naked dancer to anguished, chained man and from imaginary farmer to preacher in a white suit — all while shackled. It is a narrative reminiscent of the ascent of the Black man from slavery to present day.
Freitas continued by stating that producing these kinds of movies made for a difficult continuity; Bulbul never directed another movie like “Alma no Olho,” and “Amor Maldito” (1984), directed by female director Adélia Sampaio, has not been recognized as a female-directed film until recently.
A short Q&A was held afterward in which viewers from Vimeo and inside the screening room asked Freitas questions, including whether she thought that the film movement connects to the fight for racial equality and social justice, referencing the Black Lives Matter and Black Panther movements. Freitas responded by saying that creation and social justice are inextricably linked. Read More...
