Maria Inês Villares

The scientist Udo Gierer is on the trail of Theodor Koch-Grünberg, the famous Amazon researcher at the beginning of our century. While traveling on a river steamboat, he meets and becomes friends with 14 year old José Junior. He takes José with him on a flight over the rain forest and tells the boy about the importance of the Amazon as the lung of the world.

...discussion of leftist attitudes towards democracy and popular movements; in parallel, a discussion about the role of militant cinema in relation to real political struggles.

On Jo's birthday, her mother, and later, her father, discover that she is not a virgin anymore - she is taking pills. The birthday party turns into a complete mess, since Jo's mother can not hold herself and accuses her daughter in front of all guests of not being a child that everyone thought she still was. Jo rebels and leaves the house, and discovers that her boyfriend listened to everything and did not help her. She decides to leave him, and to start her life again. As a woman, now.

Documentary about the strikes that took place in São Bernardo do Campo, in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, circa 1979/1980. That moment was of utmost importance, since it revealed a Union leader, Luís Inácio "Lula" da Silva, who would later become President of Brazil. It was also the moment when PT, the Workers' Party, became a relevant political force in Brazil.

Documentary about the strikes that took place in São Bernardo do Campo, in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, circa 1979/1980. That moment was of utmost importance, since it revealed a Union leader, Luís Inácio "Lula" da Silva, who would later become President of Brazil. It was also the moment when PT, the Workers' Party, became a relevant political force in Brazil.

"Carandiru Women's Prison. An opportunity to talk about the freedom, loneliness and hope of women who, although incarcerated, keep their dreams alive." Adopting the semi-open prison regime, a penitentiary in São Paulo allows inmates to work outside. According to the psychologists of the establishment - who during the film talk about the scientific level and the practical results of their work - this system is seen and developed as a fair achievement of the inmates and not as a privilege, gradually ensuring their social reintegration. In their testimonies, the inmates expose the problems they face on the outside in the face of a society that marginalizes them, even after they have served their full sentence. Stimulus Award from the São Paulo State Culture Secretariat, 1982.

35mm, Color, 95min42seg, 2.624m, 24q, Eastmancolor

August, 1980. Evandro Carreira, a Brazilian senator leaves his party's office in Manaus to visit his constituents in the state of Amazonas. Interviews with farmhands, loggers, explorer Paulo Lucena, Brazilian and Peruvian Indians and a representative of the National Indian Foundation (Funai) were recorded from the city of Benjamin Constant to the village of Cavalo Cocho. A visit to the indigenous village of the Ticunas and the lands of the Maiuruna people culminate with an interview and the actions of José Francisco da Cruz, a member of the Order of the Holy Cross. Throughout the trip, the economic potential of the Amazon and its problems (corruption in the indigenous policies and the pollution produced by factories) are shown.

Short documentary on workers' movement in Brazil in the 1970s, such as the Movement Against Famine, and the policial repression against demonstrators and activists.

Short documentary on workers' movement in Brazil in the 1970s, such as the Movement Against Famine, and the policial repression against demonstrators and activists.

Documentary filmed in the Jari Project area – multinational enclave, located between Pará and the then Federal Territory of Amapá, on the occasion of the visit made to the Project by the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry about the devastation of the Amazon. Jari is the largest known land occupation in the Amazon, and probably the largest in the world, to belong to a single owner, the American millionaire Daniel Keith Ludwig.

In the late seventies, a group of Brazilian documentary filmmakers traveled to the ABC region in the suburbs of São Paulo with the purpose of recording a wave of worker strikes taking place in response to the negligence of the increasingly powerful and abusive automotive industry. Documenting striking women metal workers, Olga Futemma and Renato Tapajós’ Trabalhadoras Metalúrgicas is a particularly vigorous work among the films produced during this moment in São Paulo worker history. Scenes filmed during the first Congress of Metallurgical Women of São Bernardo and Diadema in 1978 are intercut with images documenting the appalling working conditions against which the women featured in the congress were striking.