..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

A Brief History of Recent Brazilian Cinema

On March 15, 1990, two men took Brazilian Cinema into the woods and shot it in the head.

Well, ok. Maybe that is too melodramatic. But, it is not inaccurate. On that day, Brazil's first democratically elected President - after more than two decades of a violent military dictatorship - assumed his job with the promise of fighting corruption and controlling inflation. Less than two years later, Fernando Collor de Melo, that same President, had lost his job after a dramatic impeachment process. The accusation? Corruption.

Fifteen years ago on that fateful day, nobody knew how badly things were going to end. However, we got a quick idea of it, thanks to the first decisions made by Collor and his ministers: Besides confiscating money from the citizen's bank accounts, he basically pulled the plug on the already ill Brazilian Cinema. Ipojuca Pontes, an extremely mediocre movie director responsible for some of the most awful Brazilian films, signed a bill as a representative of the President that extinguished Embrafilme.

Embrafilme had been created by the military government in 1969 with the goal of promoting (and controlling) Brazilian Cinema - an objective that attracted many directors who dreamed about strengthening the bond between our films and the audience. Curiously, most of those directors leaned to the left politically. But that didn't seem to bother the government. After all, by bringing those artists closer, they could control them better. There was always the tool of censorship to avoid "subversive" films being released.

By the middle 70s, the plan seemed to be doing great. Brazilian films were attracting about 40% of the domestic paying audience. Unfortunately, that triggered a red flag in the pockets of North-American studios, which didn't want to lose control of the market. Representatives of Hollywood started to pressure Brazilian officials who desperately wanted to fortify economic partnerships with the US. In time, they caved in and softened the laws that regulated taxes and importation of foreigner productions.

In order to compete with Hollywood, many producers started to invest in a genre they knew had more commercial appeal: erotic comedies. They were thinking about their immediate returns and didn't consider how those poor productions could, in the long run, drive away our own national audience from our films. And that's precisely what happened.

But there were more problems: in the 80s, the poor management of Brazilian economy by the military had driven the country to a huge crisis and production costs skyrocketed. Most of the costs (such as film stock and post-production) were calculated (and paid) in American dollars. And considering Brazilian currency devaluated in a daily basis, our producers were driven crazy by the constantly insane budget situations.

Oh, I forgot to mention. The tickets were sold in Brazilian currency. That means our films were made in dollars and sold in Cruzeiros (our currency of that period; today we have Reais), which just couldn't keep up with the inflation. (We now have an inflation of 5% a year. In those days, it was 3% a day).

When we finally started our democracy in 1985 with a civilian president elected by the Congress, the press started to question why the taxpayers should pay the bills for our cinema Embrafilme was a federally funded state organ and movie producers were often corrupt, using the money to pay for their personal expenses.

That was the picture on March 15, 1990 when Fernando Collor and Ipojuca Pontes killed Embrafilme with their pens.

Yes, it was a corrupted system. No, it wasn't working that well. But that was the only system our Cinema had to work with. And, instead of coming up with new solutions, Collor and Pontes put an end to Embrafilme. And that was it.

(A lot of people believe they were getting their revenge. President Collor resented Brazilian artists, since most of them supported his rival - current President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva - during the campaign. And Ipojuca Pontes supposedly had a grudge with Embrafilme because his film, the awful Pedro Mico, didn't get any support of the company.)

By 1992, Brazilian cinema's share of our theatrical market was less than 1%. That's when President Itamar Franco (who took the job after Collor was ousted) approved a bill that would start changing things. A revised bill allowed companies and private citizens to donate part of their taxes to cultural events and productions. The projects benefited would have to be previously approved by a committee nominated by the government, in order to avoid frauds. But Brazilian Cinema could breathe again.

That was only the beginning. After years of lame films, the audience had rejected homegrown movies and embraced the American way of filming. Consequently, exhibitors didn't want to show Brazilian features, fearing they would lose money. New bills had to be passed in order to guarantee a share of the market to our own productions.

In 1994 and 1995, two huge successes gave new life to our filmmakers: Carlota Joaquina - Princess of Brazil and The Nutty Boy. Then Walter Salles' Central Station took the world by surprise and made Brazilian viewers proud of our cinema once again. Audiences were willing to come back to the theaters that were showing national films. But even then, when a Brazilian movie topped the charts, you often heard people saying, "Well, it is good, considering it's a Brazilian film".

That prejudice is only now being defeated. Great films like City of God, A Dog's Will and 2 Filhos de Francisco are making the audience believe we can produce excellent movies. Finally, Brazilians who rather pay for crap American films like Fantastic Four, Monster-in-Law or Cursed than to "risk" their money on seeing a Brazilian movie are spending their money on Brazilian films

Now we're facing a promising future. Between 1990 and 1994, we basically produced a couple of features per year. Some never even got released. Nowadays, dozens of local productions have a chance to be discovered by the audiences.

However, we still have grave problems. The current system has many, many flaws and will not support itself for much longer if those issues aren't solved.

But let's enjoy the moment. I'll save the negativity until our next encounter.

August 30, 2005

Pablo Villaça is the editor of the Brazilian film publication Cinema em Cena and is a member of the Online Film Critics Society. You can e-mail him at pablo@cinemaemcena.com.br

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