The 14th Cine Esquema Novo - Arte Audiovisual Brasileira publishes the list of selected films for the competitive session Mostra Competitiva Brasil. The event will take place from April 10 to 15 in a fully online and free format.From the 395 entries, 31 works were chosen to be part of the festival's program's main attraction. More than 144 hours of material were evaluated and selected by the curator crew composed by Dirnei Prates, Gustavo Spolidoro, Jaqueline Beltrame, and Vinícius Lopes. 

Due to its online format, this year, the festival's organization came up with an innovation for its competitive session: the Artist's Notebook. The innovation will be featured in several contents built in partnership with each of the selected artists and available in a digital environment created for each participant. “We propose to the selected artists to choose another submitted audiovisual work to enter into dialogue with his own work, to be screened alongside their film at the festival. The work selected by the artist will not join the Competition but will be a part of what we call the Artist's Notebook, an area that will house not only the selected film but the work chosen to dialogue with it, as well as interviews, additional information, and other images, in this way inviting the audience to further their understanding of every director's universe”, say Jaqueline Beltrame, Ramiro Azevedo, Gustavo Spolidoro, and Alisson Avila, who are CEN's organization crew. The festival celebrates 18 years of existence in 2021.

Of the selected projects, 10 are signed by duos or groups, 8 are female directors, 19 male directors. Additionally, the festival features productions from non-binary and agender artists. Themes such as Brazil's current political scenario, Human Rights, the end of the world, mental health, Indigenous issues, memory and history, racism, loneliness in the contemporary world, queer identity, religiosity, future, nature exploitation, territoriality, family ties, and so son, are featured in the works that come from eleven Brazilian states - with the addition of two productions by Brazilians but filmed abroad (or in international co-productions).

Eu não sou um robô (Gabriela Richter Lamas, Maurílio Almeida, Felipe Yurgel, Lívia Pasqual, Guilherme Cerón, Rafael Duarte), O Ciclope (Guilherme Cenzi, Pedro Achilles), Per Capita (Lia Leticia), Performatividades do Segundo Plano (Frederico Benevides e Yuri Firmeza), sem título #6: o Inquietanto (Carlos Adriano) and Urubá (Rodrigo Sena) will have their worldwide premiere at the festival, besides four national premieres: 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Ana Vaz), A chuva acalanta a dor (Leonardo Mouramatheus), As vezes que não estou lá (Dandara de Morais), and Para Colorir (Juliana Costa).

The list also includes titles such as O Mundo Mineral, by Guerreiro do Divino Amor, who won the Pipa Award 2019 and is featured in CEN for the third time; 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Ana Vaz, which is part of the Forum Expanded session of the 71st Berlin International Film Festival. The title is inspired by Wallace Stevens's poem, and the work is composed of a series of attempts to regard and be regarded, which proposes a kaleidoscope of experiences, questions, and wonders of a couple of high school students after a year of experiences with the director, questioning what can cinema be. Here, the camera becomes an investigative instrument, a pencil, a song. ”The film is a song that you can see," wrote one of the students in a collective constellation of phrases and drawings made during one of the workshops. 

Perifericu, by Nay Mendl, Rosa Caldeira, Stheffany Fernanda, and Vita Pereira, brings the story of Luz and Denise, who grew up amid the adversities of being LGBTQA+ in the southern end of the city of São Paulo. Between vogue and poetry, from praise to access to the city, the dreams and uncertainties of youth, flood their existences. The short has already been screened at more than 70 festivals and events, and has received 25 awards, among them the Most Transgressive Film Award and the Popular Jury Award, at the 27th Mix Brasil, and Best Of at the Kino Forum competition. "Denise and Luz decolonize their existence with ancestry and a good dose of debauchery. They exist and they are here, every day, in the ing-form: loving, dancing, dreaming, being what they are. Or rather, what we are. We are poetic and political beings. Real, true beings, not just the voiceless portraits in the police news or the stereotypes that others give us out there”, says Well Amorim, director of photography and executive producer of the film.

The Mostra Competitiva Brasil has projects by names that have already been featured in other editions of the festival, such as the duo Frederico Benevides and Yuri Firmeza, with Performatividades do Segundo Plano, a continuity of a work in duo that maintains a research on projective images that begins with Entrempos and continues to question the power of modulation of the future, but also of present and past that these narratives take. “This time, we focused on the performance of the extras, two films rehearsals, and eight lenticular photos, where we get close to images that can be seen only as sophistication of the stratification that has always been placed between those who look and those who are looked at”, the directors say.

Creator Leonardo Mouramatheus has been fratured previously in the festival. In 2021, he presents A chuva acalanta a dor, based on Lucrèce bydeMarcel Schwob's short story. In the year 74 BC, Titus Lucretius Caro, a young man with bold ideas, tries to convince his friend Mêmio that going to study in the city of Rome is a complete waste of time. Years later, Lucretius returns from the capital. Trying to find a balance between his explanations of the natural world and his emotional experience of it, Lucretius lives a deep and troubled passion with Isa, his foreign wife. The film has been screened at festivals like IFFR / International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands, IndieLisboa International Film Festival in Portugal, Viennale – International Film Festival, and others. The Brazilian's premiere will be at the 14th Cine Esquema Novo - Arte Audiovisual Brasileira. 

 

#eagoraoque, by Jean-Claude Bernardet and Rubens Rewald, expresses the directors' anxiety and exasperation regarding the political situation in Brazil and the world. "The far right grows every day. Left-wing activists and intellectuals do not know how to react. The Academia seems increasingly distant from the periphery and its people. What should we do now? Fiction and reality are blended in this urgent search for answers,” they ponder. Lyz Parayzo Artista do Fim do Mundo, by Fernando Santana, follows the beginning of the artistic trajectory of Lyz Parayzo, a visual artist who, through his works and performances, puts into discussion the space of art in a non-binary body from the periphery. A performing artist born and raised in Campo Grande, a western and peripheral zone of Rio de Janeiro, Lyz has their body as their main support of work, and their daily performativity as a research platform reveals the mismatch between what is said and what is done: discourse and practice. 

 

Vil, Má, by Gustavo Vinagre, presents the story of Wilma Azevedo, a 74-year-old erotic short story writer and dominatrix, known as the Queen of sadomasochism in the 1970s and 1980s. But she is also Edivina Ribeiro, journalist, mother of three children, a pious, dedicated wife. Wilma / Edivina tells her stories to director Gustavo Vinagre in a documentary that works like a game of domination between director and character. The film was part of the Official Selection at the Berlinale and Queer Lisboa. Vento Seco, by Daniel Nolasco, another name that has already been featured in another edition of this festival, was also featured in 2020's Berlin Festival, and brings here the story of Sandro, who lives in a small town in Goiás' countryside. The protagonist divides his days between the club, his work, football practice, and social life, as well as his relationship with Ricardo. But his routine begins to change with the arrival of Maicon, a boy who arouses his interest and of whom everyone knows very little.

 

Another unreleased film that will be premiered at CEN is Eu Não Sou Um Robô, by Gabriela Richter Lamas, Maurílio Almeida, Felipe Yurgel, Lívia Pasqual, Guilherme Cerón, and Rafael Duarte. The film experiments with loneliness and the digital contact that became prominent during the pandemic of 2020. Failing countless times in a ReCAPTCHA test, which serves to differentiate humans from robots, Tânia wonders about what's real and yearns for any kind of face-to-face and physical contact, deliberating about life as she is visited by a fly. Eager to be together - but were unable to because of social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 -, Gabriela Lamas, Maurílio Almeida, and Felipe Yurgel held several online meetings to write "Eu Não Sou Um Robô". The film was then shot with a three-people crew: the director Gabriela Lamas; the screenwriter Maurílio Almeida, who also portrays the characters Tânia and Mosca, and the director of photography, Lívia Pasqual. “One could say that this film was yet one more attempt to stay sane during isolation and to understand more about the digital and the will to be 'together," they say. 

Debuting as a director, Juliana Costa joins the shortlist with the feature Para Colorir, an investigation into the possibilities and limits of erotic cinema. Romy Pocztaruk presents Antes do Azul, a short film that features multi-artist Valéria Barcellos as the protagonist. The film has circulated through several international festivals in 2020. Rodrigo Sena joins in with URUBÁ, a work that raises the spiritual questions of the main character Luiz. 

Davi Pretto, who was awarded the Cine Esquema Novo Highlight Award (Prêmio Destaque) for Rifle in 2016, joins the shortlist this year with his short film Deserto Estrangeiro, developed during his residency at DAAD Berlin Artists-in-residence in 2018. A young Brazilian man who has just started working in a huge forest in Berlin is dragged into a nightmare involving the German colonial past as he tries to find a girl lost in the woods. The film was awarded in three categories for Gaucho films at the Gramado Film Festival 2020. 

The Grand Prize Cine Esquema Novo 2021, with a trophy created by Luiz Roque especially for the festival, and services by Locall, TECNA/PUCRS, and CTAV will be awarded at the end of the event to close the Mostra Competitiva Brasil. This edition's jury will be disclosed soon, as well as information on two other non-competitive sessions, and the rest of the programming, which includes urban projections, debates in partnership with the Association of Film Critics of RS, the “Pensar A Imagem” seminar, and workshops. The works will be screened free of charge at the website throughout the six days of the festival.

 

2021's Visual identity signed by a visual artist duo 

During several editions of CEN, visual artists were invited to create the concept of the festival's visual identity. Artists Leticia Lopes and Paulo Lange sign the art of the 14th edition this year. Inspired by the chaotic and poetic beauty of the art process and of the creation of the Artist's Notebook theme, and also alluding to the renowned wormholes, a concept of Physics that works with the idea of “shortcut” through space and time, the duo came up with the art for 2021.

In Physics, "wormhole" is the name given to one exact solution of Einstein's equations for general relativity, a kind of tunnel that allows you to cut way in the universe, a shortcut through space and time. A wormhole has at least two "mouths" connected to a single "throat" or "tube", something similar to the trips we make in our search for inspirations and references. A click that leads us to another click and to another click, and so on. Creative wormholes, for Leticia and Paulo, are each of the entries in an artist's notebook, objects that are full of references, inspirations, as the logbooks of those who are in the creative process. "Each note that was written down, each drawing, each piece of paper stored inside an object like this, is a kind of journey that takes place without one having to leave one's place”, they say. 

Workshops with Open Registration

The 14th edition of Cine Esquema Novo - Brazilian Audiovisual Art will feature four free workshops that will take place online. Registration for three of them, held in partnership with Macumba LAB, a Black Audiovisual Professionals collective in Rio Grande do Sul, is open until March 14, and will offer Brazilian Sign Language interpretation (upon demand). Registration for the Camera Causa project, which is promoting this workshop for the third time in the festival's programming history, will be open on Monday, March 15. All information and application forms are available on the festival website. 

 

The 14th Cine Esquema Novo - Brazilian Audiovisual Art is brought to you by ACENDI - Associação Cine Esquema Novo de Desenvolvimento da Imagem. Project funded by Law No. 14.017 / 2020. For more information, go to: www.cineesquemanovo.org | www.facebook.com/cineesquemanovocen / @ cine_esquema_novo

COMPETITIVE SHOW BRAZIL - 14TH CINE ESQUEMA NOVO - ARTE AUDIOVISUAL BRASILEIRA - SELECTED

#eagoraoque - Jean-Claude Bernardet & Rubens Rewald

13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird - Ana Vaz

A chuva acalanta a dor - Leonardo Mouramateus

Antes do Azul - Romy Pocztaruk

As Vezes Que Não Estou Lá - Dandara de Morais

Atordoado, Eu Permaneço Atento - Henrique Amud & Lucas H. Rossi dos Santos

Caminhos encobertos - Beatriz Macruz e Maria Clara Guiral 

cantar é com os passarinhos - Amanda Teixeira

Célio's Circle - Diego Lisboa

Deserto Estrangeiro - Davi Pretto

Entre nós e o Mundo - Fabio Rodrigo

Eu Não Sou Um Robô - Gabriela Richter Lamas, Maurílio Almeida, Felipe Yurgel, Lívia Pasqual, Guilherme Cerón, Rafael Duarte

Fazemos da memória nossas roupas - Maria Bogado

Joãosinho da Goméa - O Rei do Candomblé - Janaina Oliveira ReFem e Rodrigo Dutra

Lyz Parayzo Artista do Fim do Mundo - Fernando Santana

Milton Freire, um grito além da história - Victor Abreu

O Ciclope - Guilherme Cenzi, Pedro Achilles

O Jardim Fantástico - Fábio Baldo e Tico Dias

O Mundo Mineral - Guerreiro Do Divino Amor

Os Últimos Românticos do Mundo - Henrique Arruda

Para Colorir - Juliana Costa

Per Capita - Lia Leticia

Performatividades do Segundo Plano - Frederico Benevides e Yuri Firmeza

Perifericu - Nay Mendl, Rosa Caldeira, Stheffany Fernanda e Vita Pereira

Rocha Matriz - Cristal Líquido (Gabriel Menotti e Miro Soares)

sem título # 6 : o Inquietanto - Carlos Adriano

Ser Feliz No Vão - Lucas H. Rossi dos Santos

URUBÁ - Rodrigo Sena

Vagalumes - Léo Bittencourt

Vento Seco - Daniel Nolasco

Vil, má - Gustavo Vinagre