Jornal da Mostra
Nº 393 > 29ª Mostra > 11/11/2005
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Dates for the 30th Mostra and something of Mostra history
The 30th Mostra International Film Festival in São Paulo will be held in 2006, October 20 through November 2. In thirty consecutive years of Mostra film festivals (today directed by Renata de Almeida and Leon Cakoff), the event has had reason to be proud of its contribution to circulating ideas and furthering cultural diversity in São Paulo and in the country.The Festival was instituted in 1977 by film critic Leon Cakoff to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the founding of Masp - the Assis Chateaubriand São Paulo Art Museum. In the seven years Mostra was organized by the Masp Department of Cinema directed by Cakoff, many challenges in terms of censorship had to be overcome, for the country was under military dictatorship. Only in 1984, and independent from Masp, could Mostra defy censorship and sue the Federal Government for the right to show selected films directly to the public, with no prior censorship, as was the case until then.
Although Mostra won the lawsuit against the Federal Government (1984 was the last year of dictatorship), Mostra programming was suspended one week after the 8th edition had begun. Mostra was suspended for four days, enough to allow the censors from the Ministry of Justice, under Ibrahim Abi-Ackel, to see all of the films programmed for the festival. The dictator violence met with negative repercussions all over the world and a deadlock ensued for the next year, with Brazil in a process of re-democratization and an end to the cycle of military dictatorship.
By suggestion of Mostra itself, Minister of Justice Fernando Lyra, signed an administrative ruling to exempt all film festivals from prior censorship as from 1985. This measure was soon extended to all of Brazil to cover other film festivals that had passively incorporated advance government censorship to their norms. With this legal battle won, the 9th Mostra International Film Festival took place October 15 through 31, 1985 with no prior censorship.
The first edition of the Mostra International Film Festival presented 16 features and 7 short films from 17 countries with 40 sessions in the Masp Auditorium and was a start to the modality of public vote never again to be relinquished. The winner of the Prize from the Public was "Lúcio Flávio, passageiro da Agonia", by Hector Babenco. Sad it is to recollect that 'Jornal do Brasil' actually wrote that Mostra was the only place in Brazil where people could exercise their right to vote. The right to universal suffrage was withheld in Brazil from 1961 (with the ill-fated election of Jânio da Silva Quadros) until 1990 (with the ill-fated election of Fernando Collor de Melo).
The programming for the 29th Mostra BR de Cinema - Mostra International Film Festival in São Paulo will include a selection of 359 features and 62 short films, a total of 1,159 film sessions distributed over 20 movie theaters.
