Category Archives: Latin America

SOCRATES

A Film by Alexandre Moratto

This debut feature film from 29 year-old Brazilian-American filmmaker Alexandre Moratto follows Socrates, a 15-year-old left reeling after his mother’s sudden death, struggling to make a decent living and avoid homelessness even though the odds are stacked against him. It is a unique film being that it was the first feature to be produced by the Quero Institute in Brazil, an organisation supported by UNICEF which works to teach audio visual skills to young people from low income communities to stimulate talents and expand their professional horizons. In their workshops, they promote cultural inclusion with classes in citizenship and entrepreneurship, resulting in more awareness and participation from these young people.. They have stated about the films they create that they focus on themes related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, further fostering an awareness in their students about the wider world and sociological issues.

As a UNICEF backed project, it was co-written and produced by at risk teenagers from the local area in Sao Paulo. In describing how this project came to fruition, director Alexandre Moratto discussed how in 2009 he had volunteered at the Quero Institute in Brazil and was inspired by dedication of these young people to make a better life for themselves. It was through this experience that Moratto recognised the importance of making films about underrepresented cultures and communities.

Impressively, Socrates was able to be made on a micro budget of under $20,000, which led to it being nominated for the prestigious ‘John Cassavetes Award’ at the Film Independent Spirit Awards. This award is presented to the creative team of a film which was budgeted at less than $500,000, which further illustrates just how tiny Socrates budget was. At these awards Socrates was also awarded the ‘Someone to Watch’ Award and nominated for ‘Best Male Lead’ for its young star Christian Malheiros who plays Socrates.

SOCRATES In Cinemas and On Demand Now
IAmSocrates.co.uk

Revealing the BODY ELECTRIC

Marcelo Caetano - dir

Director Marcelo Caetano

BODY ELECTRIC is a boudoir film. With each bed Elias lies in, a new universe opens from the narratives told by the characters. Bodies embracing and caressing each other, voices that speak softly and quietly, lovers who tell of their encounters, sexual adventures and dreams. My desire was to address love as something serial and repetitive, portraying a kind of affection that distances itself from romantic love and its already soiled conflicts.

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Elias loves in a lightly, solar and anarchic way. He is 23 years old, openly gay, a migrant from north-eastern Brazil. He uses each encounter to shape his personality by becoming a kind of human prism, capturing what he can from his partners. He changes his colour, and transitions between the masculine and the feminine. He can be a committed worker, but also a mocking anarchist. In this way, the film questions the socially established places for gay people, black people, immigrants, and workers. My aim is always to seek the individual, avoiding the discourse of identity that tries to capture and classify everybody.

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BODY ELECTRIC is also a Bildungsroman. Elias comes into adulthood with great difficulty while trying to balance his personal pleasure with professional life. He is resistant to some conflicts simply because he does not believe in the high value that professional success and marital happiness have in our society.  For him it is necessary to grow on his journey. I love filming these encounters and I love them more, the more unlikely they are. Perhaps the film’s most prominent political face is resisting intolerance by building links between socially distant people.

 

The film is influenced by Walt Whitman’s poem I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC in which the American author celebrates the beauty of bodies, regardless of age, gender, colour and form. I was also very touched by cinema of the 60’s and 70’s, especially the relation between word and image that I found in the poetic cinema of Pasolini and Joaquim Pedro de Andrade. The choice of words and the strength of the narration are structural to me. This is how I found the way to speak of these bodies, this group of workers, and Elias is my spokesman: Like Scheherazade in ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, he recounts his adventures as if he wanted, by the seduction of the story, to postpone the end of his youth.

Marcelo Caetano

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