São Paulo – The 39th São Paulo International Film Festival opens next Thursday (22nd) featuring 311 films from 62 countries. All productions will be showing until November 4th, including newly-released and old films made in Arab countries. Five feature films from 2014 and 2015 were shot in Egypt, Syria and Palestine.
Additionally, a Moroccan documentary and two Egyptian feature films have been restored by The film foundation, an organization established by the American filmmaker Martin Scorsese to restore productions from around the world. This year, the foundation turns 25 and 25 of the 700 films it has restored since its inception will be shown as a tribute to it. Among other movies, Scorsese directed Taxi driver (1976), Goodfellas (1990) and The Departed, which earned him an Academy Award for Best Director in 2006.
Festival director Renata de Almeida told ANBA this Thursday (15th) that one of the goals this year is to showcase the restoration work carried out by Scorsese’s foundation, which helps preserve the memory of cinema.
“We were considering having this retrospective last year and showing the situation of Cinemateca Brasileira (which also preserves and restores films in Brazil and was struggling with a crisis), but because of our 25th anniversary celebration, we decided to postpone it to 2015. Scorcese started his project with Italian movies, because he’s a descendent and has strong ties to their cinema; then he moved on to American productions, before finally going global. They even reached out to Arab filmmakers, who pointed towards iconic films from their countries to be restored,” she said.
The director said the Arab productions being featured attract descendants and members of the Arab community in Brazil, and portray the conditions in the countries they were made in. “They end up conveying some knowledge about the culture and the region, so they enlighten the public too,” she claimed.
Other films
The Mother (2015), by Basil Al Khatib, shows how the conflict in Syria affects the lives of the population. It shows six sons trying to get to their mother’s funeral at a remote village. Each of them goes through a different journey trying to give their last goodbye. In Four O’clock at Paradise, Mohamed Abdulaziz shows the lives of seven characters intertwining over the course on one day in Damascus, the Syrian capital.
Shot in black and white, Decor (2014), by Egypt’s Ahmad Abdalla, features Maha, a character who bounces back and forth between reality and imagination as she seeks respite from the pressures of daily life.
Two other Egyptian productions have been restored by Scorcese’s foundation and will be shown during the Festival: The Mummy (1969) depicts the smuggling of mummies and relics unearthed at an archaeological site in 1881. The Eloquent Peasant (1969) is set between 2160 and 2025 BC and tells the story of a farmer accused of theft for unwittingly trespassing on a nobleman’s lands.
Another restored production, the Moroccan documentary Trances (1981) follows the career of the band Nass El Ghiwane, which rose to international prominence with its politically-charged lyrics during the 1970s.
The documentary Us, them and me, by the Argentinian director of Jewish descent Nícolas Avruj, rebuilds, in 2015, the time he spent living in Palestine and Israel 15 years earlier. In the feature film, the director recounts his experiences straddling two different realities on two different occasions, as well as how his work evolved during the period. The film is a Palestinian-Israeli-Argentinian coproduction. Palestinian, Israeli, and French directors are among the authors of Sport, which was shot in five countries and uses sports to portray the reality of Palestinians and Israelis.
The festival will also feature five restored films by Italian filmmaker Mario Monicelli, marking his centennial. Nordic cinema will be given special attention, with 60 titles from Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
The silent film My best girl (1927), by Sam Taylor, will be shown on October 31st outdoor at São Paulo’s Ibirapuera Park. The screening will be accompanied by the Heliópolis Symphonic Orchestra, under the American conductor David Michel Frank, who composed an original soundtrack for the movie in 1999.
39th São Paulo International Film Festival
October 22nd to November 4th, São Paulo-São Paulo
For additional information go to http://39.mostra.org/br/home/
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
