São Paulo – Two Brazilian documentaries are going to be exhibited by Al Jazeera, the television channel from Qatar, starting next week. The productions were selected at Viewfinder, a project by the network that promotes independent movies all around the world to tell, through local characters, how global happenings affect communities in each country. For the Latin American edition, two Brazilian, two Mexican, one Colombian and one Bolivian option were chosen. The movies from Brazil are Open Arms, Closed Doors, by Fernanda Polacow and Juliana Borges, from São Paulo, and Rio’s Red Card, by Susanna Lira and Luciana Freitas, from Rio de Janeiro.
Documentary Open Arms, Closed Doors presents immigration in Brazil through the story of the Angolan Badharó, who lives in Maré slum, in Rio. “It shows the story of a series of immigrants who came to Brazil seeking an open and multicultural country but found a very different reality: a racist, biased and closed country. The saga of character Badharó, a rapper who uses his music to denounce these faces, clearly shows another side of our country,” said Polacow.
Al Jazeera chose a movie with a strong guiding character. Badharó, who came to Brazil to escape the war in Angola, tries to show, with his music, a truth lived by immigrants. He wrote a song in honour of an Angolan student who died in the city of São Paulo due to racist conflicts, hoping that the crime will not go unpunished. “The production of this song is the theme of the movie. From his life in the slum in Rio to a trip to São Paulo. The movie tells the trajectory of this rapper who is still a silent voice to this day,” said Polacow.
Rio’s Red Card tells the story of Altair Guimarães, a community leader in Vila Autódromo, in Rio. Guimarães presides the association of residents of the region. They are to be evicted due to the construction of the Olympic Park for the 2016 Olympics. According to Luciana Freitas, one of the screenplay writers and producers, the London office that developed the park forecasted the permanence of the community, but the Rio City Hall decided to expand the project, affecting the population.
A Al Jazeera selected 11 Latin American projects and came to the six winners after promoting a workshop with the movie producers in Montevideo, Uruguay. Production of the documentaries was accompanied by the television channel, through producer companies. "They did not interfere in the theme of the project, neither in the choice of the character, but they participated actively in the writing of the screenplay and the editing process. Al Jazeera has a strict editorial line, and producing a movie in their format was a challenge,” said Polacow.
The movie maker says that some care with images showing alcohol consumption or scantily dressed bodies was taken. "It was very nice to work with such a different channel, albeit open to so many themes that no other media shows interest in. The work Al Jazeera has been developing, opening opportunities for journalists and documentary producers to cover controversial and sensitive themes is very important” said Polacow. Producer Freitas also pointed out the work developed by the company to show worldwide.
The movie producers
In Red’s Rio Card, the screenplay was by Freitas and Susanna Lira, with production by the former and direction by the latter. Freitas and Lira, together with Tito Gomes, own producer Modo Operante, in Rio de Janeiro, and have produced several movies. One of them is award-winning documentary Positivas, which tells the story of women who live with HIV after having acquired the virus from their husbands or partners. Lira is a journalist, advertiser and is post-graduated in Human Rights as well as having operated in cinema for over ten years. Freitas is also a journalist and has been operating in the audio-visual market for over 15 years.
Open Arms, Closed Doors had research, screenplay and direction in the hands of Fernanda Polacow and Juliana Borges. The former graduated in Communications, as well as in Social Sciences, and works in social and environmental projects. Borges is also a journalist and author of a book of article about the war in Angola. She lived in the African country, where she helped set up the first local paper. The two are in charge of project “tás a ver?”, in which they and a group of collaborators show cultural and behavioural productions in Africa.
Red’s Rio Card will be broadcast by Al Jazeera in English on the 12th of February, and Open Arms, Closed Doors on the 18th of February. They were produced in Portuguese, but will be shown subtitled in English. The documentaries may also be seen on the Al Jazeera site after the same dates, on link www.aljazeera.com/programmes/viewfinder. The Latin America project is developed in partnership with DocMontevideo, an institution that works in the fostering of the documentary market in the region.
*Translated by Mark Ament
