{"id":258368,"date":"2019-09-27T15:50:51","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T18:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=258368"},"modified":"2019-09-27T15:51:21","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T18:51:21","slug":"documentary-constantino-to-be-screened-at-arab-chamber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/documentary-constantino-to-be-screened-at-arab-chamber\/","title":{"rendered":"Documentary Constantino to be screened at Arab Chamber"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 The documentary \u201cConstantino,\u201d which tells the life story of the moviemaker Otavio Cury\u2019s great-grandfather will be screened at the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce<\/a><\/strong> auditorium on October 2nd<\/sup> at 7 pm in S\u00e3o Paulo. The session celebrates ten years since the shooting in Syria in 2009 and, after the movie, there\u2019ll be a talk with the director. Admission is free and registrations can be made on this link<\/a>. Pictured above, a scene of the movie.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cConstantino\u201d runs for 80 minutes and is spoken in Portuguese, English and Arabic, subtitled in Portuguese. The movie was launched in 2012. \u201cIt was my longest, most challenging project,\u201d Cury told ANBA. The idea of the documentary came about when the director went to Syria in 2001 and found his great-grandfather\u2019s book, \u201cComplete works by Daud Constantino Al-Khoury,\u201d and decided to translate it into Portuguese. The book was translated three years later but has not yet been published.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs September 11 happened and the world stood against the Arab and Islamic world, I tried to get closer to my background through my great-grandfather story,\u201d he said. Constantino was as a journalist, actor, poet, and became an important figure for his time in Damascus and Homs from 1880 to 1920. He founded Homs\u2019 first newspaper that is around until these days and was an important collaborator of the Syrian drama, being one of the first playwriters to ever stage plays in the Arab world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI show the political and historical background of those times but delve into my family\u2019s lanes of poetry and memory about my great-grandfather,\u201d explained Cury. The movie, he said, was born from a wish to translate the book and talks about the process of a \u201clabyrinthine search with layers from the past. Everything gets mixed. The movie\u2019s theme is time, memory, immigration,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Cury recreates scenes from 2001, when he visited the country for the first time, staged his great-grandfather\u2019s texts with Syrian actors on a Roman theater ruins. \u201cI make a freer interpretation on a nonlinear narrative about this poetic journey through my family\u2019s memory,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Otavio Cury was born in S\u00e3o Paulo in 1971 and, besides \u201cConstantino,\u201d directed documentaries \u201cCosm\u00f3polis,\u201d \u201cHist\u00f3ria de Abraim\u201d and \u201cComo fotografei os Yanomami.\u201d<\/p>\n

Check out the trailer below:<\/p>\n