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Brazil’s past and present
Discussion and debate over the past few days has been prolific and illuminating. Yesterday, the 7th of October, the Odeon was the busiest it’s been all festival, as 200-strong crowds flooded into the theatre to watch Nise – The Heart of Madness directed by Roberto Berliner. The film, based on a true story, follows extraordinary psychiatrist Nise da Silveira, a radical practitioner who refuses to use traditional methods such as electroshock therapy and lobotomy on her patients. Outcast by the doctors, Nise, played by Gloria Pires, is left to take over the abandoned Occupational Therapy Department, where she begins a revolution guided by love, art and madness.
The film’s director, Roberto Berliner, revealed that the film took three years to complete, during which it underwent an extreme process of transformation. The film was inspired by the book Nise – arqueóloga dos mares (Nise – Archeologist of the Seas), written by Bernardo Horta, who accompanied Nise during the last 12 years of her life. “She had a very intense existence. For those of us who know Dr. Nise this whole process has been extremely emotional. Seeing her there on the screen tops it all off”, he declared.
The cast and crew noted that the story of Nise is so complex, rich in detail and filled with life-changing events that it was difficult to select should be included in a relatively short amount of screen-time. The plot could have taken many different twists and turns.
Actress Gloria Pires highlighted Nise’s important role as a pioneering business-women, in particular with relation to her enterprising work with art-therapy. Pires also stressed how useful it was for the actors to be able to use the actual psychiatric hospital where Nise worked to rehearse and shoot the film. “Being there – in that environment – really brought home the pain and sorrow of the place.”
Simone Mazzer and Roney Villela, actors that play two of the female doctor’s patients, agreed with Pires about the value of the realistic preparation period. “We were basically interned there for three months,” Mazzer remembered, “It was difficult after that to go home to sleep, and to look at people in the same way. After two days in the hospital I swore never to complain about anything in life again!”
Also present was psychologist Gladys Schincariol, the current coordinator of the Museo das imagens do inconsciente (Museum of sub-conscious images), founded by Nise. Schincariol congratulated the whole team, especially the director, for what she termed an extroardianry movie. Nise’s “ex-clients” (she preferred to call them this, rather than patients), also contributed to the discussion with some incredibly moving testimonies, confirming that they felt the film had given them a voice.
The director’s closing comments were nothing short of a eulogy: “Nise was capable of doing something radical, something no-one before her had ever done. She was able to see past society’s rejection of the mentally-ill as nothing more than perverted rags of human-kind. She refused to comply with the terrible medical practices of the time. She was defiant, even, revolutionary.”
Also sparking heated debates on the 7th October was the documentary Mario Wallace Simonsen, Between Memory and History (Mário Wallace Simonsen, entre a memória e a história) directed by Ricardo Pinto e Silva. A discreet man with English grandparents, Mario Wallace Simonsen (1909-1965) was a businessman and great entrepreneur, the owner of more than 30 companies, including the airline Panair do Brasil. After the coup d’etat in 1964 Simonsen was considered a threat and an enemy by those in power, who set about to destroy him. The documentary investigates the reasons behind the dictatorship’s actions.
It was the sordid details of the political plot to end Simonsen’s career that kicked off the debate, led by journalist Chico Otávio. The director, Silva, explained that his film was born of this desire to comprehend and reveal Brazil’s historical truths, delving to the depths of this murky past to find new explanations and interpretations of what happened during the dictatorship. For this he relied on members of cast and crew who had lived through the period first-hand, but also Brazilian history scholar such as Daniel Leb Sasaki, one of the documentary’s scriptwriters.
Sasaki, also present at the debate, quoted his book, Pouso forçado (Forced Landing), published in 2005, that investigates the dictatorship’s interventions in the running of many private companies, in particular in the closing down of the Airline Panair. The book is the fruit of a long research project, investigating new information discovered in archives released by the National Truth Commission. Luiz Carlos Barreto, the filmmaker interviewed in the documentary, draws a parallel with the questions raised about this historical period and those relating to the present-day. He added, “Today it’s important not just to take what’s published in the media as fact, but to try to understand what is going on. I think that we need to take this film and screen it in public spaces for everyone to see.”
Simonsen’s
daughter was also present, and stressed the influence this documentary could
have on the rewriting of official narratives to depict what really happened
during this period of political unrest. She especially highlighted that 2015
was a symbolic year, marking 50 years since the demise of Panair and her father’s
death, and hoped that film would live on as a message for future generations.
On Tuesday 6th, the Estação NET Ipanema hosted a special double session of Cine Chat, with the global premieres of UPRISING! (LEVANTE!) and The March of the White Elephants (A marcha dos elefantes brancos) two documentaries that deal with public protests and the democratic battles of the last few years – and, most importantly, the role the media plays in all this.
After much recent comment on the devastating financial aftermath of the World Cup of 2014, journalist Patrick Granja, who led the debate, reminded the audience: “The World Cup is just the tip of the iceberg”. He stressed the continual social problems that Brazil faces, social exclusion and rampant inequality, issues often deliberately left out of public debate. In light of the arrival of the Olympics in 2016, it seems an appropriate time to start questioning where public money is being spent, and how this is benefiting citizens.
Producers Laura Colucci and Neil Brandt agreed with the necessity to promote this film on a large-scale, in order to reach as many people as possible. They displayed an interest in screening in cinema-clubs, universities and even online. Brandt was also interested in hearing the present audience’s response to the documentary. One comment stood out: is Brazil really a democratic country? Vik Birkbeck, part of the selection committee for the Frontiers series, replied in turn with a thought-provoking and incisive counter: “Is there such thing as a democratic country? What is democracy?”
Adapted by Gill Harris from texts by Maria Caú, Juliana Shimada and Clara Ferrer
Photos by Lariza Lima and Nathália Benjamin
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