Corpo ("Body"), the feature debut of directors Rossana Foglia and Rubens Rewald, is the best Brazilian fiction I've seen in quite awhile. It's an elegantly crafted meditation on the bloody residue left behind by the military dictatorship of Brazil's past, focusing consciously on the present and those who occupy it, both living and dead.

In Corpo, bones are unearthed in an unmarked grave in present-day São Paulo along with the mysteriously preserved body of a woman who has been dead for almost 30 years. In an attempt to discover the identity of this woman, forensic doctor Artur (Leonardo Medeiros) encounters young actress Fernanda (Rejane Arruda), who has an uncanny resemblance with the cadaver. But when Artur searches through archives of prisoners during the dictatorship, he finds the dead woman shares names with Fernanda's (still alive) famous sociologist mother. Something isn't right.

Though Artur's need for the truth despite apathy or outright resistance from his peers (embodied by his boss Lara, played with relish by Chris Couto) is fairly standard in a story about crimes of the past, Corpo defies genre by resisting answers or the illusion of closure. What happened before is impossible to truly understand; what matters are the distortion and discrepencies we live with now. And yes, at the center of all this is the human body, raw, erotic, political: signs of torture and a blue ring mark the unknown cadaver, simultaneously exposing her ideology and her vanity.

Corpo is vague enough that it invites repeat viewings to really understand what happens. Thankfully there's more than enough meat on its bones to justify a closer look.

Yet another São Paulo GLBTT Pride Parade came and went! I'd have written about it sooner but a nasty bout of the flu left me unmotivated. It seems like everyone has given up trying to estimate how many people were there, but the general guess seems to be somewhere between three and five million people. That's more than the entire population of New Zealand (where my parents and sister live) or Uruguay, for example.

This was my third parade and unfortunately the event is a victim of its own success. Just a few years ago I could still dance in the street with all my friends, but last year and especially this year that has become simply impossible. It's great that the parade has gotten so much support and visibility, but the flip side is that many people who could care less about gays (or pride) now come for the huge street party it has become, getting way too drunk/drugged and causing lots of problems like fights and robbery. I'm starting to think the Feira da Vieira, a queer cultural fair that happens annually the Thursday before the parade, was more fun and manageable with the 125,000 people that went this year.

Still, I think it's important to participate in the day's activities in one way or another. This year the parade started earlier -- at noon -- in an attempt to prevent the festivities from dragging into the night. The parade starts on Avenida Paulista and then turns onto Rua da Consolação (the street I live on) and makes its way to a plaza downtown. This picture above, taken by a friend of mine, is of Consolação after the parade had already ended!

In related news, below is an interview my boyfriend and I gave with Globo the Friday before the parade:

Directed by Eduardo Escorel, O Tempo e o Lugar ("The Time and the Place") is a documentary that portrays activist Genivaldo Vieira da Silva. Inspired by three encounters between filmmaker and subject -- in 1996, 2005, and 2007 (with footage from the last two encounters resulting in the final version of the film) -- Genivaldo tells of his life that has been framed by fighting for agrarian reform in the poor, semi-arid region of the Northeast, specifically his home state of Alagoas.

What makes Genivaldo a character worth watching is his involvement in some of the defining social movements in Brazil and his choices to abandon them for a more personal type of politics. Genivaldo was a regional leader of the Landless Workers Movement, which works principally by identifying land that does not fulfill its "social function" and occupying it by force. He also received training from the Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla organization from Peru, before starting extensive work with the Pastoral da Terra, a leftist branch of the Catholic Church formed during the 1970s as a response to the military dictatorship. He even ran for mayor of his hometown as a candidate of the Workers' Party (PT), a political party that was co-founded by current Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula).

In some ways, Genivaldo and Lula share similar backgrounds, as they both head-strong men from humble backgrounds that started as leaders of leftist movements. Where Genivaldo's life starts to differ from Lula's is his growing disillusionment with political power, which he comes to believe "changes nothing." He is still involved with agrarian reform but on his own terms, preferring no longer to participate in the huge organizations that influenced his past.

Genivaldo has some interesting stories to tell and his opinions are informative of broader social contexts. Yet I can't help but think that even with Genivaldo's history, O Tempo e o Lugar is not very compelling as a film. The people Escorel chose to interview are expected but not exactly inspired; he dutifully shows each of Genivaldo's family members but not all of them have something to say before the camera. Beyond serving as a lesson of Genivaldo's life seen through his own eyes and a glimpse of political life in Alagoas, I'm not sure I took much more from watching O Tempo e o Lugar.

I remember reading somewhere a little over a month ago that Vincent Cassel is in Búzios filming a movie for Heitor Dhalia (Nina, O Cheiro do Ralo)... and then promptly forgetting about it until now. At this point available information is mainly about casting: Camilla Belle (who speaks fluent Portuguese as her mother is Brazilian) joins Cassel as one of the leads, along with Taís Araújo and Débora Bloch. The title is À Deriva, it takes place in the 1980s, and it is a O2/Focus co-production.

Kátia Lessa interviewed Dhalia in April for Revista Trip (translation mine):

How did the project À Deriva come about?
I had just finished filming O Cheiro do Ralo and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Then I had loose thoughts with no connection. Something about a girl who discovered that her dad had a lover and who saw her dad having sex with this woman. I wanted it to be a story on the beach.

Have you had some sort of similar experience in your life?
It is not an autobiographical film, but it is strongly personal. I lived on the beach for 20 years and my parents separated when I was the same age as the character, 14. It seems like a light story, but it is much deeper than it seems. It speaks of family, which is a great universal theme and this is a delicate subject for everyone. People get emotional on set. Children are involved, so... it hits home.

Dhalia goes on to say that his next film will take place in Haiti (!). Maybe he should get in touch with Jørgen Leth for some tips.

Blog da 02 Filmes has some pictures up from the first week of filming.

It feels kind of lonely around here and nothing much is happening. Where is everyone? Oh, right, Cannes. Moving on...

I don't watch the current novela on Globo, Duas Caras, but awhile back the the creator said he had written a scene with a kiss between gay couple Bernardinho (Thiago Mendonça) e Carlão (Gui Palhares) for the final episode of the series. (Novelas - soap operas - in Brazil show six nights a week in limited runs, typically about 9 months.) In the real world, a kiss between two men is no longer such a big deal. A gay wedding was recently shown on another broadcast channel, MTV Brasil shows gay kisses regularly, not to mention all the gay characters on cable. Globo, however, is frustratingly consistent and has decided to censor the Duas Caras kiss, just as it's done several times on previous novelas. The reason they gave is that their quality standards do not allow "affection and kisses between homosexuals."

I could go on and on about Globo's influence on Brazilian society. Decades back it was used by the dictatorship as a means of uniting the country. Its monopoly on Brazilian television has, until recently, seemed unstoppable. According to wikipedia, it's the fourth largest broadcaster in the world with a daily audience of 80 million people.

I'm not saying Globo is evil. Recent novelas have made great progress in avoiding the caricatures of before and portraying minorities like homosexuals in a positive light. Practically every novela these days has a few gay characters. I just get tired with the bullshit television networks pull by constantly underestimating their audiences and always playing to the status quo. Sure, some areas of Brazil are extremely conservative, but on the flip side, this country has the largest gay pride parade in the world. Something tells me Globo's power will not be threatened by a simple gay kiss (and they might earn some respect in the process).

That being said, I leave you with my two favorite novela characters ever: Bebel (Camila Pitanga) and Olavo (Wagner Moura) from Paraíso Tropical, which ended last year. Bebel, a tough-talking prostitute who always looked out for herself but had a weakness for her scheming john (Olavo), became a pop culture phenomenon. As far as novelas go, it doesn't get any better than her.

Ironically, the big winner of the 13th It's All True International Documentary Film Festival, Pan-Cinema Permanente directed by Carlos Nader, features a subject that declares, "I don't need truths! Just lies. Essential lies." That pretty much sums up poet Waly Salomão's over-the-top attitude in this film that is a loving portrait made by a dear friend. Salomão was an excessive personality who made life a performance.

As someone who had never heard of Salomão before watching this film, there are two scenes that I remember very fondly. One is footage of an interview Salomão gave on Syrian television. (Salomão's father was Syrian and he goes to the fatherland to reconnect with his relatives there.) The calm, polished demeanor of the interviewer plays at perfect odds with Salomão's eccentricity, to revealing and hilarious effect.

The other scene is a confession by the director that Salomão simply never let his guard down for the camera. The only glimpse we have of him relaxed is when he is sleeping, but even that footage is not as straight-forward as it should be. Opaque in every way, Salomão actively creates and projects his own image throughout the film.

What I loved about Pan-Cinema Permanente was that Nader lets Salomão have center stage while not one-upping him. The editing is quick and playful and the visuals, full of color, are approached in surprising ways. Watching Salomão's endless energy can feel a bit exhausting at times, but the impact of his art and life on those around him must have been a wonderful thing.

Harrison Ford and Alice Braga in Crossing Over

I'm amazed at how many roles Alice Braga is landing in Hollywood lately. At 25 years old, she's only starred in one Brazilian movie (Cidade Baixa), and she's foregone the traditional path to celebrity here by acting in soap operas on TV Globo (though her aunt, Sônia Braga, is a famous soap actress who once tried to make a career for herself abroad but it is probably best known to mainstream audiences as Samantha's lesbian lover on Sex and the City).

Alice's agent must be doing something right. She's currently showing in U.S. theaters in David Mamet's Redbelt, plays "the girl with dark glasses" in the Cannes-opener Blindness (reuniting with Meirelles after a bit part in City of God), and has roles alongside stars like Harrison Ford and Jude Law in two upcoming films. All of this after starring last year in the Will Smith blockbuster I Am Legend.

The only other Brazilian actor I can think of getting this level of exposure is Rodrigo Santoro, who also has a role in Redbelt. Rodrigo is actually much more famous in Brazil, due to his career in soap operas and well-regarded films like Bicho de Sete Cabeças and Abril Despedaçado ("Behind the Sun"), but I feel like he's been trying to break out internationally much longer than Alice. Ironically, Alice said in an interview last year that she wishes she could do a Brazilian soap opera but hasn't been able to find the time. I guess the grass really is greener on the other side.