Director of Photography
A documentary about Umbanda, Brazil's fastest-growing religion. Centers on the cult's pageantry and public festivals as well as its more esoteric, exotic, and rarely-seen ceremonies. Shot on location in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Brasilia, and Fortazela, this film includes commentary by numerous authorities and practitioners, and it places Umbanda in the context of Brazil's turbulent history and its cultural and racial melting pot
Director of Photography
Tropicália was a Brazilian cultural movement that occurred between 1967 and 1968, inspired by Oswald de Andrade's anthropophagic ideals, pop art and the concretism. Twenty years later, this film revisits the movement and shows that Tropicalismo will never die.
Additional Photography
From its very title, Cláudio Kahns and Antônio Paulo Ferraz's Santo e Jesus, Metalúrgicos is crystal clear about where it stands and about its messianic flair. Through a wordplay with the religious connotation of the names of the two men, murdered during the worker strikes of the late 1970s in São Paulo, it associates sainthood and Christ himself with the working class. That association is reaffirmed throughout the film, from the very beginning, including by a priest. The martyrdom of metalworkers Nelson Pereira de Jesus and Santo Dias da Silva is the starting point to denounce the working conditions faced by factory workers, and the repression which ensues whenever they try to resist them. However, the film also presents us with the 'official' version of the facts, going so far as to feature interviews with the man who killed Nelson. Obviously, it sides with the workers, as it conveys the strength of the oppressed and the impudence of the oppressors.
