How can cities and their architectures face climate emergencies in the face of exponential tragedy, beyond construction strategies and their technicalities?
Faced with such uncertainties, cinema—and culture in general—presents itself as a fundamental tool for denunciation, raising questions that challenge everyone. But not only that. Sequenced moving images are fertile ground for imagining other futures, reinventing social dynamics, broadening the debate on consumption, and truly agreeing on a balance between humans, built space, and the environment.
The challenges are stacked up.
This film screening, aligned with the curatorial thinking of the 14th BIAsp – Extremes: Architectures for a Hot World, seeks to critically provoke the public through a selection of feature and short films, both fictional and documentary, Brazilian and non-Brazilian, framing human rights, traditional knowledge, science and experimental constructions, extraction of natural resources, preservation and climate justice as central characters.
Rafael Blas – curator/programmer
————
All screenings are free. Tickets can be picked up at the Cinemateca box office one hour before screenings.
Cinematheque: Largo Sen. Raul Cardoso, 207 – Vila Clementino, São Paulo – SP, 04021-070
————
SESSION 1
BREAKING
Documentary, short film, 23 minutes
Year: 2024
Country: Brazil
Directed by: Janaina Wagner
Production: Janaina Wagner
Synopsis
A counter-spell, QUEBRANTE explores the ruins of the Trans-Amazonian Highway BR-230 and its phantasmagoria, portraying its stones and its ghosts. Set in the small town of Rurópolis, Pará—the first to be built on the highway, serving as a base for its construction workers—QUEBRANTE follows Dona Erismar, known locally as "The Cave Woman." A retired elementary school teacher, Dona Erismar was responsible for discovering the region's caves: she entered the dark, unknown holes to their ends, holding only a candle and a lighter tied to her pants—in case the flame went out. A conversation between the stones and the moon, QUEBRANTE is loosely inspired by Robert Smithson's project THE TRULY UNDERGROUND CINEMA (1971) and Maya Deren's film THE VERY EYE OF THE NIGHT (1958).
IRACEMA: AN AMAZONIAN SEX
Documentary/fiction, feature film, 90 minutes
Year: 1974
Country: Brazil
Directed by: Jorge Bodanzky, Orlando Senna
Production: Stopfilm
Synopsis
In 1970, a truck driver from the South, in Belém, Pará, during the Círio de Nazaré festival, meets Iracema, a young Indigenous prostitute. He gives her a ride, dropping her off in a small village on the side of the road. The trip, like the entire film, serves as a pretext for depicting the region's problems—deforestation, poor working and health conditions, and the sale of peasants, all in conflict with fanciful institutional propaganda.
————
FULL PROGRAM
September 17 | Wednesday | 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Session 1 | Quebrante + Iracema: an Amazonian sex
September 21 | Sunday | 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Session 2 | Interior of the Earth + Top
September 24th | Wednesday | 5:30pm to 7:30pm
Session 3 | Colors Burn + Sky Falls
10/1 | Wednesday | 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Session 4 | Heyari + Fisherman's Street No. 6
02.10 | Thursday | 5:30pm to 7:30pm
Session 5 | Cold Recife + Fisherman's Street No. 6
08.10 | Wednesday | 5:30pm to 7:30pm
Session 6 | The Institute of Weather Modification + The fall of the sky
09.10 | Thursday | 5:30pm to 7:30pm
Session 7 | The Time It Takes + The Silence of the Oysters