BECO
PerSo Award
by Camilo Cavalcante
Brasile, 2019, 72’
Venerdì 9 ottobre ore 19.00 Cinema Zenith
Sabato 10 ottobre Postmodernissimo Sala Donati ore 15.00 (replica)
International title: Alley
Director, Screenwriter and Producer: Camilo Cavalcante
DoP: Camilo Soares
Editing: Caio Zatti and Fernando Coster
Sound: Nicollas Hallet and Simone Dourado
Production Company: Aurora Cinema
Italian premiere
SYNOPSIS
Afogados is a neighbourhood in the southern part of the city of Recife, with an intense commercial activity. This is an urban exclusion zone, with one of the highest levels of violence in the city. The name “Afogados” comes from the fact that many fugitive slaves are drowned when trying to pass by the river Cedros, an affluent of the Capibaribe river, which borders the neighbourhood.
In the heart of Afogados, next to the subway station and the market, you will find an alley of bars. A meeting place for ordinary people in search of food, drink and entertainment. Flirting, conversation. A typical place, whose goers, workers, passers-by reveal an honest picture of everyday life in the northeastern suburb of Brazil.
Director’s Statement
This alley is a popular divan. A place where people search encounters, especially with themselves, releashing catarsis, where hidden feelings come afloat. Love and pain, happiness and deception are condensed on the table, between shots of cachaça, typical food, cigarettes and beer glasses.
We chose to use the camera as a mean to register this ongoing reality, in a way where it can be seen as true nature captured by facts, in other words, an eye-cam capable to filter subjective interferences of life and overstep the audiovisual to lead the spectator into a feeling of being inside this atmosphere, sharing this universe.
The intention was to shot a raw movie, in which, besides capturing revealing, sensitive and intense moments, on its lead, can also propose a reflection about the relation of power that happens between who’s shooting and who’s being shot, creating a critical layer where proposition of “what’s true” ends up being questioned and subverted. Through the tension that raises from the discussion around identity representations, flourishes the perverse result of the dominant oppressive elite which, throughout centuries, has fomented an exclusive social abyss.
CAMILO CAVALCANTE
Camilo Cavalcante works as a producer, screenwriter and director in Recife, Brasil. He holds a Master’s Degree in Cinema from UBI, Portugal; graduated in journalism at UFPE (Brazil) and attended a script workshop at EICTV, in Cuba.
He’s made 15 audiovisual short pieces in a variety of formats, among them: THE OLD MAN, THE SEA AND THE LAKE (2000); RHAPSODY FOR A COMMON MAN (2005); HAIL MARY or MOTHER OF BACKLANDERS (2009); MY WAY (2010). These works have received over 130 awards in film festivals. He directed, in partnership with Cláudio Assis, the documentary for tv EU VOU DE VOLTA (2007) supported by Rumos Itaú Cultural. In 2013, Produced and directed the tv series OLHAR (CLOSER LOOK).
In 2014, he released THE HISTORY OF ETERNITY, his first feature film at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which won 27 awards in Brazil and abroad. The movie was presented at Havana Film Festival, Durban International Film Festival, Mostra Internacional de São Paulo, Ourense International Film Festival, among others. He is currently launching his new fiction feature KING KONG EN ASUNCIÓN.