Co-presented with Travessias Brazilian Film Festival and Interbay Cinema Society

(Various Filmmakers, Brazil, 1981-1983, 1hour 40min, in Portuguese with English subtitles)

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, during Brazil’s military dictatorship, a group of queer filmmakers in the northeastern state of Paraíba were taking courses in “Direct Cinema” (also called Cinéma Vérité) at NUDOC (The Federal University of Paraíba’s Cinematographic Documentation Center), a documentary film workshop created by the great French filmmaker Jean Rouch, through his Ateliers Varan film school. The Direct Cinema workshop equipped NUDOC with film, Super-8 cameras, lighting equipment, tripods, and more. This had a major impact on the cultural scene of João Pessoa, as, for the first time, filmmaking was something possible for more people.

Inspired by what they learned, and the new possibilities of independent film production, these artists and friends formed a gay activist group and began collaborating on Super-8 films that used experimental documentary techniques to address queer issues in Paraíba. The Wave of Queer Cinema in Super-8 from Paraíba presents five of these fascinating and long-overlooked works from what is likely the only 20th-century queer film movement in Brazil.

Closes (1982), by Pedro Nunes, features interviews with Brazilians discussing gay rights, interspersed with a romantic story of gay love that culminates in sex on a beach.

Baltazar da Lomba (1982), by queer activist collective Nós Também, self-reflexively re-enacts the story of the first man convicted of sodomy in colonial Brazil.

Era Vermelho Seu Batom (1983), by Henrique Magalhães, examines stereotypes and discrimination within the gay community and the tensions between closeted and out men.

Finally, Perequeté (1981), by Bertrand Lira, is a more direct portrait of actor and dancer Francisco Marto.

There will also be one more *mystery film* in the program, definitely not one to miss!

Made during the military dictatorship, these films were shown in public environments subject to the repression of the authoritarian regime. They remain controversial to this day.

This program features new 2K copies, digitized during the project Traveling Digitization, which took place between October 2022 and February 2023 in six Brazilian cities (Brasília, Recife, João Pessoa, Teresina, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo). The Traveling Digitization is a project created by the Brazilian Audiovisual Preservation Association (ABPA) and the Brazilian Film Digitization Initiative (IDFB).

Synopsis and Descriptions courtesy of Cinelimite.