Pages

Friday, September 30, 2016

Clarisa Campolina Winner Emerging Voices 2016 Film Award

Special Report: 

Clarissa Campolina, winner, Emerging Voices 2016 Film Award

‘I wanted to tell a fable where God is feminine,’ says the Brazilian director
Brazilian filmmaker Clarissa Campolina in Morro da Conceição, a historic neighborhood overlooking Rio de Janeiro's port area
In the city of Belo Horizonte, where Brazilian experimental film director Clarissa Campolina grew up, nothing is permanent. The capital of the state of Minas Gerais (“general mines” in English) climbs a hill that has been hollowed out on one side for its rich deposits of iron ore.
Another once commanding hill, on the road to a friend’s house, one day simply disappeared and last year a mining disaster led to a mud tsunami that polluted one of Brazil’s largest river systems. “This landscape in a certain way gave me the sensation that the world had already ended, that we are already dealing with the end of time,” Campolina says.
The general sense of devastation in Minas Gerais presented Campolina with the idea for her latest short film, Solon, a work that has solidified her reputation as one of the country’s most creative directors, particularly among those outside the creative hubs of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
Rather than using the destruction of Minas Gerais to create a tale of cataclysm, she turns it into the background for a creation myth. In a kind of moving installation that combines fine art and film, a creature emerges from a burning, arid landscape, spouts water and eventually turns into a woman.
We meet to discuss her latest work at Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Art, a landmark in the city’s beautified Centro district. “I never want to stay in my comfort zone — I always want to experiment with something new,” Campolina says. “I think that with Solon I wanted to tell a fable of the reconstruction of the world, where God is feminine, not masculine, with a body that forms part of the landscape and vice versa.”
Born in 1979, Campolina got her start in cinema in 1997 as an assistant director after studying communications. She worked with Rafael Conde, a director and professor of fine arts at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, before becoming a partner in Teia, a collective production outfit, between 2002 and 2014. She has since founded her own company, Anavilhana.
Campolina took inspiration from the landscape of her home state of Minas Gerais © Getty
Campolina has made five short films and one feature, Swirl, which she co-directed with Helvécio Marins. It had its premiere at the 2011 Venice film festival, where it won the Interfilm Award.
Several of Campolina’s works have experimented with a documentary style, using ordinary people and their stories to build a narrative that blends fiction with dreamy reality.
In Swirl, Bastú, an 81-year-old widow starts a new life after the loss of her husband. She is played by Maria Sebastian Martins Álvaro, a resident of the Minas Gerais sertão(back country) along the São Francisco river. “Time doesn’t stop — it’s us who stop,” Bastú remarks in the film, one of many of her characteristically blunt observations.

2016 Emerging Voices Film Award Winner

Working with non-actors is rewarding, Campolina says. But it can take time — Swirltook six years to film.
She uses a similar tactic in Stretch, another partnership with Marins, in which the two directors follow a central character, Libério, as he retraces a 2,300-km journey along Brazil’s highways that he had made eight years previously. “The journey is a reconstruction of a journey — it could be fiction. We filmed the points along the way that he remembered,” Campolina says.
Working in partnerships has been a big part of Campolina’s work, she says. Having a second opinion helps to “divert a bit some of my obsessions and keep me in check”.
“I like the sense of exchange very much,” she adds. “Having someone else’s opinion helps me to hone my own perspective.”

Tania Cattebeke, runner-up, Olia

Tania Cattebeke explored death through the eyes of a child
Tania Cattebeke may be the only film-maker who has arranged for a cast member to play himself without him knowing it, reports Rose CarrOlia is inspired by her family’s struggle to explain to her nephew the death of his nanny — “My sister told him that it was a long trip” — and the resulting film is a personal exploration of death, seen through the eyes of a child.
Using only black and white stills and strong audio production techniques, Olia tells the story of the aftermath of the nanny’s death. “One day I returned from university and found my mother at home crying because my nephew had told her the night before that his nanny had been calling him with a bell.”
The sound of the bell both spooked Cattebeke and sparked her imagination. “That event was the inspiration for Olia,” she says. With no budget, Cattebeke cast her family in the production; her mother and nephew took leading roles. This presented its own problems, especially when it came to her nephew. “It was very difficult because when we were shooting I didn’t want him to understand that the film was about him,” she says. “He still hasn’t seen [it] because I think it would scare him if he knew.”
With little in the way of a film industry in her native Paraguay, Cattebeke, a former psychology student, started making short films on her own before embarking on a full-time career as a cinematographer in 2013. She has since been recognised for her work at international festivals and says she hopes this might help her win a scholarship to go to film school.
“Paraguay is starting to tell stories with film, but this is new for my country,” she says. “We don’t have a cinematography industry here yet, but we have so many stories to tell.”

Camilo Restrepo, runner-up, Impressions of a War

Camilo Restrepo discovered a new Colombia after years away from the country
“I belong to a generation of Colombians who were strongly affected by the most violent years of the conflict and who bear the stigmata of the war,” says Camilo Restrepo. Born in 1975 in Medellín, Colombia, Restrepo explores the pervasive effects of a 50-year-long internecine war on a society that has been ravaged by guerrilla groups, drug traffickers, military and paramilitary forces, and mafia-style gangs, reports Rose Carr. “The country has turned into a battlefield, leading to a climate of generalised violence gradually settling across the whole of society,” he says.
The visible traces of the conflict have been etched into the landscape, in the cityscapes and on the battlefields, and these physical wounds form the visual backdrop of Restrepo’s Impressions of a War. “My goal was to capture visible traces of the violence in the daily lives of the people who live in that country,” he says.
Restrepo has lived and worked in Paris since 1999. Since then, “memories, encounters, telephone conversations and the media have been my substitutes for living [in Colombia] day to day”, he says. “Over time, a different country from the one I used to know has taken shape for me.” His foray into film-making started in response to revisiting Colombia, and contrasting “the recomposed Colombia in my mind with the country’s reality”.
Restrepo is a member of the film-makers’ collective L’Abominable, an experimental film lab. Impressions of a War was shot on 16mm film, a decision that imposed certain restrictions on the process. “I create the image mentally as I am manipulating it physically, and my films evolve constantly in response to technical decisions,” says Restrepo.

FT Latam Viva For 30 September, 2016

6:47 PM (8 minutes ago)
to me
Give peace a chance
By Andres Schipani 
September 29, 2016
It was definitely not Charles De Gaulle marching through liberated Paris. Still, the ceremony of the signing of the peace agreement between Colombia’s government of President Juan Manuel Santos and Marxist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) in Cartagena was quite emotional.
A choir of Afro-Colombian women, victims of a massacre, hailed the moment, singing "we feel very happy the Farc will leave their weapons behind". Meanwhile, miles away on the same day, after ten of years imagining he was dead, a mother was reunited with her son who had joined the rebels as a teenager.
In Cartagena, some 2,000 people including victims dressed in white as a symbol of peace wept, sang, and cheered "no more war" as Mr Santos and the Farc's commander shook hands to agree to end a five-decades drug-fuelled war. One of the world's oldest conflicts has finally come to an end.
Well, not yetOn Sunday, 34m Colombians are entitled to head to the polls in a national referendum to vote on a simple but emotionally-charged question: "Do you support the final accord to end the conflict and build a stable and lasting peace?"
Every peace agreement is a compromise. With divisions running deep, the success or failure of the peace accord will be a function of the personal feelings of millions of Colombians who abhor Farc rebels for their heinous crimes. Just as Brexit divided the UK, the peace accord has triggered ambivalence, splitting Colombia between opposing camps.
When it comes to divided societies, bondholders can now put their faith in an Opec deal for the highly-polarised Venezuela to make good on its debts. After failing to entice investors with a bond swap, the state oil company sweetened the deal as tries at all costs to stave off default.
Many wonder what would happen to Venezuela's $68bn in outstanding foreign bond debts if the country, which is battling its worst economic and political crisis in decades, is drawn into an internecine fight. They, like the Colombians, should perhaps listen to John Lennon and "give peace a chance."
Quote of the week
“From now on our only weapons will be words" - Farc's top commander, Rodrigo Londoño, nom de guerre Timochenko, at the signing of the peace deal.
Special reports
Andre VieiraAndre Vieira
Other views
Chart of the week
As Donald Trump rallies, the Mexican peso falls.
¿Prefiere leer el FT en español?
Lea una selección de nuestros artículos en español: 
The week in review
Farc accord is no done deal as Colombians prepare to vote
 
Most Colombians are deeply ambivalent about something the rest of the world enthusiastically supports
 
 
Opec output cut a boon for US shale sector
 
The higher prices rises, the more rigs can be put back to work, writes Ed Crooks
 
 
In charts: Mexico’s Trump rate dilemma
 
Central bank faces tough choice at last scheduled policy meeting before US election
 
 
Elliott pushes for shake-up at Colombia’s Avianca airline
 
US hedge fund holds talks with senior executives
 
 
Turnround starts at scandal-hit Petrobras
 
New chief begins gargantuan task of reviving oil group by cutting its vast debts
 
 
Oil group PDVSA sweetens debt swap offer
 
Bonds boosted by Venezuelan group’s new proposal of $5.3bn deal
 
 
Colombia: ‘Leave the rifles behind’
 
The country prepares to vote on a peace accord with leftwing rebels to end five decades of conflict
 
 
Venezuela’s desperate attempt to avoid bond default
 
Government and oil company’s assets at risk if Caracas fails to meet its obligations
 
 
Brazilians seek political renewal in poll
 
Voters jaded by corruption look for fresh faces in local elections
 
 
Footprints of Colombia’s five decade-long civil war
 
As half a century of violence comes to an end, the country’s film-makers are shifting their focus to what will be left behind
 
 
Brazilian director Daniel Ribeiro on making films beyond the favelas
 
The 34-year-old artist has won international recognition by exploring universal themes from angst to sexuality
 
 
Colombia and Farc sign historic peace deal
 
Marxist rebels to form political party as western-hemisphere’s longest-running conflict ends
 
 
China visitors draw Castro into public eye
 
Former Cuban president meets with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and his wife
 
 
Venezuela: lurching towards political change
 
The country’s crisis is nearing its endgame but its future is far from clear
 
 
Colombia peace deal with Farc spurs hope of a family reunion
 
Accord after long and bitter civil war raises chance of bringing mother and son back together