Mário Peixoto

In 1930, the Brazilian filmmaker and poet Mario Peixoto produced a masterpiece of Brazilian film history, the two hour long silent film Limite, inspired by European expressionist and avant-garde cinema. In 2014, Joel Pizzini paid homage to the film, and in particular its filmmaker, by creating a film montage using images from Limite and additional documentary material of interviews from the 1970s and 1980s. Mario Peixoto never finished another film, even though he continued to work on diverse projects. Mar de Fogo also features a freely imagined new sequence for Peixoto’s next, but never completed film as envisaged by Joel Pizzini. He tries to invoke Peixoto’s vision while making Limite and to visually explore the feeling he had when he had the inspiration for the film.

On 17 May 1931, the young director Mário Peixoto released his masterpiece "Limite" in a premiere in Capitólio Theater in Rio de Janeiro to astonished audiences bewildered by the impressive and poetic images. Considered by many viewers the best Brazilian movie ever made, this feature has never been released commercially. However, in a great paradox, Mário Peixoto has never made any other movie. The director Sérgio Machado pays a great tribute to the life and work Mário Peixoto a.k.a. Maçarico by his close friends with this documentary, using his diary; footages of "Limite", the never concluded "Onde a Terra Acaba" (1933) and the short "O Homem do Morcego" (1980); and interesting testimonies of Olga Breno, Ruy Solberg, Nelson Pereira dos Santos and Walter Salles among others.

An astonishing creation, Limite is the only feature by the Brazilian director and author Mário Peixoto, made when he was just 22 years old. Inspired by a haunting André Kertész photograph on the cover of a French magazine, this avant-garde silent master­piece centres on a man and two women lost at sea, their pasts unfolding through flashbacks propelled by the music of Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and others. An early work of independent South American filmmaking, Limite was famously difficult to see for most of the twentieth century. It is a pioneering achievement that continues to captivate with its timeless visual poetry.

An astonishing creation, Limite is the only feature by the Brazilian director and author Mário Peixoto, made when he was just 22 years old. Inspired by a haunting André Kertész photograph on the cover of a French magazine, this avant-garde silent master­piece centres on a man and two women lost at sea, their pasts unfolding through flashbacks propelled by the music of Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and others. An early work of independent South American filmmaking, Limite was famously difficult to see for most of the twentieth century. It is a pioneering achievement that continues to captivate with its timeless visual poetry.

An astonishing creation, Limite is the only feature by the Brazilian director and author Mário Peixoto, made when he was just 22 years old. Inspired by a haunting André Kertész photograph on the cover of a French magazine, this avant-garde silent master­piece centres on a man and two women lost at sea, their pasts unfolding through flashbacks propelled by the music of Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and others. An early work of independent South American filmmaking, Limite was famously difficult to see for most of the twentieth century. It is a pioneering achievement that continues to captivate with its timeless visual poetry.

An astonishing creation, Limite is the only feature by the Brazilian director and author Mário Peixoto, made when he was just 22 years old. Inspired by a haunting André Kertész photograph on the cover of a French magazine, this avant-garde silent master­piece centres on a man and two women lost at sea, their pasts unfolding through flashbacks propelled by the music of Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and others. An early work of independent South American filmmaking, Limite was famously difficult to see for most of the twentieth century. It is a pioneering achievement that continues to captivate with its timeless visual poetry.

An astonishing creation, Limite is the only feature by the Brazilian director and author Mário Peixoto, made when he was just 22 years old. Inspired by a haunting André Kertész photograph on the cover of a French magazine, this avant-garde silent master­piece centres on a man and two women lost at sea, their pasts unfolding through flashbacks propelled by the music of Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and others. An early work of independent South American filmmaking, Limite was famously difficult to see for most of the twentieth century. It is a pioneering achievement that continues to captivate with its timeless visual poetry.