Filme sem Querer, Film or not Film

Yes, the name was invented for fiction, but it came from a real situation, where during the COVID-19 pandemic, people from the film industry fiercely took resources that were intended for emergency actions in the favelas of Brazil and left the population in need in this dynamic of realizing they were being used, but at the same time needing basic resources to live. It was a very sad time in Brazil, not only because we had a fascist government in power with Jair Bolsonaro, but also because people in the cultural sector took advantage of loopholes and exploited the situation.

So let’s say that the name of the institution in the film changes, but the practice reveals how many institutions like the one represented in the film operate.

Yes, all the actors participated in writing the script. We are a film collective, of which I am a member, and in this film I act as director. In other films in our filmography, I perform other roles, even as an actor.

One very important thing in the process of making this film was precisely to bring in the experiences we had, many of which were very traumatic, because we work and make our films intrinsically linked to the community, and during the pandemic we even went hungry, even though we have a recognized name in a certain film circuit. So, the scenes were discussed in groups, and the actors themselves suggested the direction of the film. I had a script that was a patchwork of writing, but it always depended on those bodies, voices and that documentary aspect of expressing feelings of injustice without giving our tormentor what he wants: our death. So, this “class depression” was faced precisely by giving the actors the freedom to propose, and as a director, my mission was to create an environment that allowed everyone to feel comfortable experimenting, both in front of and behind the camera. I would like to highlight the sound design work of Priscila Nascimento, for example, because from the beginning we wanted to play with the idea of sound not being “perfect” and have a characteristic of broken sound axes, as if there was something wrong inside all the time. Then, as the film unfolds, we realize that the mistake is actually a political position, and that making a film “unintentionally” is a powerful form of experimentation in the face of the oppressive form of paternalistic cinema and contemporary capitalism.

The idea for the film came from exactly the same situation in which it takes place: after we had to make videos and listen to people asking about the deaths of people in our neighbourhood during the pandemic, when I went to edit and realized that I couldn’t locate the speech because of the mask, it seemed like a powerful thing to reverse a game of intentions present in this type of institutional relationship. For me, it was very funny to be able to rewrite the entire film because there was something covering the mouth, a great metaphor for the real situation that the film presents.

There are many hills in my neighbourhood. I have always found the movement of bodies going up and down these hills curious. And the word “morro” (hill) in Portuguese can have a meaning derived from “morrer” (death). So I thought of an audiovisual rhyme that would bring these “hills” and death into the film. The film begins with a song by rapper Brisa Flow, who sings repeatedly: “stay alive, these are days of love and war,” and ends with a song by Mateus Fazeno Rock that says “This is the death of oblivion, colonial death, unhurried, with pain and movement,” which affirms that killing oblivion is essential. So, I can say that these hills and these deaths teach me to make art, to look with sensitivity at the ground on which I stand and the sky in which my head navigates.

I really like to think of cinema as Hip Hop, and that the elements of this rich culture can inspire people who come from places like mine and see in this art form something much closer to themselves than cinema itself. Little by little, I feel that we are building a cinema that is closer to the logic of sampling that the first DJs in history created, where they humanize the machine, exercise their creative power, and reinvent forms from old archives and songs. In this sense, rap, as one of the elements of Hip Hop culture, is treated in my films not only as something to manipulate the viewer on a superficial level. RAP is Rhythm and Poetry, so I like to think that the songs speak like the characters speak. But not only that, because my dream is to make films that make people dance, or at least move, look at the reality they live in a poetic way and with rhythm.

Adirley is an OG (Old Gangsta) to me. When I saw A Cidade É uma Só for the first time, it was like hearing rap for the first time, only in the cinema. When I met him, I had already been making films for a few years, and we immediately identified with each other because of our political positions and desire to tell stories from our territory. We became great friends and, for me, it’s still very important to listen to him because, since I started making films, I felt very orphaned, not having people from my class, indigenous people who also made films and had their own body of work. Today, thanks to affirmative public policies and lower production costs, there are many of us around the world; you just have to look to see us. But for me, Adirley continues to be the voice of an elder who is not satisfied with the status quo and continues to defend our culture and make films that take risks and are radical, which for me is essential to filmmaking.