Ricardo van Steen, Heitor Dhalia, Tocha Alves and Regis Faria
In Search of the Right Kind of Poet
Heitor Dhalia: Stuck to the CharactersSo that the main character would take the screen the whole time, with the camera stuck to his neck, it was necessary that everybody, from actors to technicians, spontaneously believed in a collective project. Who tells this story is Heitor Dhalia, director and screenplay co-writer of Drained, his second feature film that is part of the 30th Mostra’s selection. He confesses that the experience in making the film was already unique, since it was a project doomed to be filed away. Nobody believed in it and the title was rejected. Everybody was astonished when the team decided to do it at any cost. When the film was finished, it won awards, got the distribution and has won many people’s heart. “It’s the classic story of making it to the bottom up,” says Dhalia, but with a special touch. “All the love the team put into this work is reflected on screen and bounces right back at the spectator”, he says.
Main character, Lourenço, is always in the scene because the camera follows Selton Mello. In his last film, Nina (28th Mostra’s selection), the camera was stuck to Guta Stresser. Dhalia confesses his tendency to get stuck to his characters, making them omnipresent. He says his next film will be like this as well. But it’ll be an even greater challenge, since his main character will be a 14-year-old girl. He still says that his characters are anti-heroes that have imperfections and make mistakes, because in a way, the anti-hero humanizes people. In Drained, where the main character is a cruel bastard, it’s still more interesting. There’s something in him with which people identify. Everybody has a stinky clog that is not always possible to hide. Dhalia says he’s amazed by people’s reaction to the film, since its (black) humor makes people laugh in extremely cruel moments. To him, it’s necessary to show this darker side that lives in every person, especially if one can laugh at oneself. He also concludes that: “Some imperfections are endearing.”
He describes his methodology: “Sometimes, I like to think of the film as a concert. A rock concert, actually. Few instruments, few notes and a lot of punching. That’s why the soundtrack to Drained, created by Apollo Nove, is pure punk. It also has French, Hungarian and Italian songs, a sample like those Lourenço sells at the store”, the director explains. Dhalia thinks that without this diverse soundtrack the film would be something else. He has two other projects on the move, and the first one is called À Deriva. It’s the story of a 14-year-old girl’s sexual discovery, motivated by her parents’ relationship crisis. The director says this film follows the Argentinean model – pure human drama. The other project he is starting to develop is called Porto Príncipe. It’s about a Brazilian soldier in Haiti, about the war, the misery and also about hope. Since it’s an international production, Portuguese, English, French and Creole will be spoken. An intense film, a major project that the director can’t get off his mind.
Tocha Alves: A Diverse and Dynamic Documentary
Carandiru, the biggest penitentiary in Latin America. Around ten thousand prisoners and just few employees to monitor them. While it was functional, it was the target of many articles, documentaries and fiction films. But almost nothing was said of those employees, almost prisoners themselves, who lived under a tense routine. In the 30th Mostra’s selection, God and Devil on the Top of the Wall, documentary directed by Tocha Alves and Daniel Lieff, portrayed this exact angle. Alves says that the idea came up in 2002, when Carandiru was shut down. Doctor Dráuzio Varela (author of the book Estação Carandiru, taken to the movie screens by Hector Babenco) talked about these people. He worked there as a volunteer for thirteen years, and made many friends. Most of them were employees that had been working there for a long time, who very respected, explains Alves. He said their future was always uncertain. The film is a kind of tribute to these people that, deep inside, supported that penitentiary with a lot of work, malice and a good dose of rascality. Those people report the everyday life of the penitentiary.
The public’s avid interest in documentaries is a recent trend that, according to the director, is due to the spectator quest for information. The documentary does this in a diverse and dynamic format. He also outlines that to all festivals he and Lieff have sent God and Devil on the Top of the Wall, they were informed that a record-breaking number of documentaries had been signed up. To Alves, his partnership in directing alongside Lieff was an interesting process. “There are moments in which one of us is more into the different phases of the film”, he explains. With that he highlights that they were able to make decisions calmly, since it took four from the idea to the premiere. And their partnership also made it possible to do other independent activities and projects. Alves intends to continue directing documentaries and confesses that he is already developing two other projects: one on Brazilian music here and abroad and the other on Brazilian skateboarders. He is interested in shooting a fiction film, a completely different project, because he thinks it’s good to work with actors and tell stories that would be difficult to put in a documentary. But he mainly hopes that Brazilian cinema continues in this great phase for productions.
Regis Faria: In the Universe of Cinema and TV
Regis Faria was born to a family connected to cinema and TV, his father is the actor and director Reginaldo Faria, consequently his first contact with the field happened almost naturally. Participating in the 30th Mostra with Carlos Oswald – The Light Poet, his second feature film, the director confesses that as a child he never considered being an actor or director. But living amidst it, in his father and uncle’s film production company and later on television, becoming a professional in the field was almost inevitable. He also says that, when he was a teenager, he wanted many things, as teenagers often do: music, literature, history, and cinema. In the beginning he felt more comfortable with music, in theater soundtrack. Later on, he was an assistant director and finally director. He confesses that all his longings were put into this work since a director works with editing, screenplay, music, image and actors. With the ludic, the human and with technology, he adds.
The documentary Vida Bandida (Leonardo Pareja), even though it wasn’t shown in movie theaters or festivals, was Regis’ first experience with feature films. He says he made the film in 1996, kind of impulsively, without thinking of the consequences, and he thinks the results are consistent and relevant, even if they are raw in certain aspects. Released in 1998 by Canal Brasil, it has been constantly shown and, according to Regis, it increases or maintains the number of spectators when it is aired, according to Ibope’s data.
Regis then received the invitation to make Carlos Oswald – The Light Poet that, at first, would be a medium-length film for TV. But when he saw the vast research material and the vast work of the artist, Regis persuaded the producer Mário Jorge to make it full-length. He adds that this was a great challenge, because, contrary to Pareja, who was enormously socially appealing and contemporaneous. Carlos Oswald is a “well-behaved” artist, despite his work’s modern aspect in the Brazilian context. It would then be necessary to make the film interesting and dynamic and, at the same time, show the indifference and the lack of faith in Brazilian plastic arts.
Two challenges arose during the process that had begun in 2004. The first one was the bureaucracy faced to register a few of Carlos Oswald’s work, even though he did have previous authorization. The second one, the one that Brazilian filmmakers run into: funding to finish the film. After recording an exhibition with Oswald’s work in 2004, Regis stopped shooting and resumed his research in March 2005. After three months collecting information, he did two weeks of shooting and recording. It took three more months to edit and in the end of 2005, the film was ready. The final touches were only done in October 2006, just before the Mostra began.
Such opposite themes made Regis and his team taste a bit of two opposite universes. The director says that in Carlos Oswald he found the lyricism that was absent in the cruel universe of Leonardo Pareja. In Vida Bandida, the film was shot almost entirely inside the penitentiary, where the crew experienced the tense environment. And even when the shooting sessions were light and casual, there was always a threat in the air. And the only protection was the one offered by Pareja’s gang, who later on murdered him. In Carlos Oswald, the shooting was done in museums, public buildings, churches and freely all around the cities.
Regis, also being a TV soap opera director, says that the immediacy of TV doesn’t contaminate him. He thinks directing movies is more like authorial work, in which he gets to participate in all phases, from the first idea to the last color and sound detail. Even though director’s mark is also evident in television, it is not present in all the phases. Regis is already collecting material for another documentary, a project with singer and composer Moraes Moreira and his son Davi Moraes.
Ricardo van Steen: A Dive into the World of Samba
His personal passion for samba and Noel’s rich biography led filmmaker Ricardo van Steen to shoot the film Noel. In this project, the director saw the chance to spend years plunged in the world of samba, in the circles and on the dance-floors, which he considers a unique pleasure. Furthermore, taking this victorious icon to the big screen in the form of poetry made sense to Van Steen. The director was sorry, however, to have to leave so many interesting facts about Rosa’s life out of the film. He also says, “My original script had enough content for five one-hour chapters”. There were many details that could not be included in the film: Noel’s many affairs and his unbelievable deftness to juggle many girlfriends at one time, the radio soap operas and the soundtracks he would compose in the middle of a shooting.
Van Steen also highlights the importance of Luiz Felipe de Lima’s work. He is the person responsible for the film’s soundtrack. He is not only a skillful composer and instrumentalist, but he is also the oldest member of the staff. More than just taking care of the soundtrack, alongside the samba community he has been a sort of ambassador to the project. “He introduced me to practically the entire cast, and also took part in the readings. He corrected things that weren’t making sense and pointed out subtleties from the universe of samba”, says Van Steen. The composer also introduced Van Steen to the samba elite of Rio de Janeiro, which he says generously welcomed them and understood all the difficulties.
Rafael Raposo, who plays Noel in the film, also deserves praise from the director. “Rafael is extremely capable, very much focused and full of ideas. His attributes combined with Christian Duurvoort’s technique to coach our actors resulted in splendid work”, he says. For the director, the frailty of the leading actor served to counterbalance the fact that he is not as short as Noel. The filmmaker thinks that the real Noel would be more focused, emotionless and mature. But he remembers the critic and teacher Jean-Claude Bernardet as he says that filmmaking is not reality, there is no point in copying it. The film’s Noel is a result of the poet’s personality interpreted by five different people: the biographer’s, the screenwriter’s, the actor’s, the coach’s and the director’s. Noel also has the rock star Supla playing the role of Mário Lago. For Van Steen, Supla was the perfect person for the role since he has a similar personality to Lago: enthusiastic, who enjoys different types of environments, a fighter, active, elegant, polite and charming. “Not even to mention the physical resemblance. They really do look alike”, he declares.
Nowadays he is working full time with cinema and he says that he has four projects in the making, all period films. “I`m interested in the time of Brazil’s discovery, the late 19th Century to the early 20th Century and in the 1950’s and 1970’s”, he states. Although he has not yet officially confirmed it, his next film is based on the book Madrugada, written by his mother, Edla van Steen. The story revolves around a burglary that occurred during a funeral at the Araçá cemetery in 1970, where five coffins were being mourned. According to the filmmaker, it is “a dive into the eccentricity of basfond located on Rego Freitas Street (downtown São Paulo), in the bourgeois monotony of the maecenas of the Teatro Municipal, in the purity of spirit of the circus performers and the complicated lives of the homeless who live inside ‘empty’ graves.