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CYCLE – SYLVIO BACK´S CINEMA The Cycle of Cinema Sylvio Back will occur in one of the conference rooms of Vila Galé Porto, from 23rd to 25th of September and will have the support of Porto Film Commission.
Hotel Vila Galé Porto has the cinema like the main subject. All of the conference rooms have the name of famous actors or directors such as : Francis Ford Coppola, Jean Luc Godard, Luis Buñuel, Manuel D’Oliveira, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Visconti, A. Pedro Vasconcelos Maria de Medeiros, César Monteiro, Fonseca e Costa or Joaquim Leitão. Sylvio Back is going to be the president of the jury of ART&TUR Festival, held in Barcelos from 27th to 29th of September, so we took the opportunity to create na association with Vila Galé Group and we will pay homage to this well known Brazilian director, presenting a movie Cycle in the weekend before of the beginning of the event (23rd-25th September) in Vila Galé Porto.
PROGRAM Friday, 23rd of September Beginning : 21h30 Opening session and press conference Exhibition of the movie YNDIO DO BRASIL (1995) – black/white, colour, 70 min. End: 23:15 (approximately) Saturday, 24th of September Beginning: 16:00 Exhibition of the movie ALELUIA, GRETCHEN (1976) - colour, 118 min. Exhibition of the movie RÁDIO AURIVERDE (1991) – black/white, 70 min. Talking with Sylvio Back - open session (15 to 20 minutes) End: 20:15 (approximately) Sunday, 25th of September Beginning: 16:00 Exhibition of the movie CRUZ E SOUSA - O POETA DO DESTERRO (1999) colour, 86 min. Exhibition of the movie LOST ZWEIG (2003)- colour, 114 min. Ending Session End: 20:10 (approximately)
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Sylvio Back is one of the most famous and respected directors of cinema in Brazil, and in April of 2011 he received the highest badge of honor from the President Dilma Rousseff .
Sylvio Back is a Brazilian filmmaker, poet, screenwriter and writer. Former film critic and journalist, he began motion picture direction in 1962. To date he has directed and also produced most of his thirty seven films, which include short and medium-length documentaries, eleven full-length films. As poet and writer, he has published twenty one books (poetry, essays and several of his screenplays). 1986 marks the publication of his first book of poems, The Erotic Notebook of Sylvio Back, (O Caderno Erótico de Sylvio Back), followed by Coins of Light, 1988 (Moedas de Luz); Desire's Vineyard, 1994 (A Vinha do Desejo); Our Indians – film's poems, 1995 (Yndio do Brasil (Poemas de Filme); boudoir, 1999 (boudoir); Eurus, 2004 (Eurus); Translating is writing poetry on reverse – Langston Hughes translated, 2005 (Traduzir é poetar às avessas, Langston Hughes traduzido) Eurus (bilingual: Portuguese-English, 2006; kinopoems (@-book, 2006); and (Women come by listening, 2008 (As mulheres gozam pelo ouvido). With 74 national and international prizes, Back is one of Brazil's most awarded filmmakers. His erotic poem’s books are, as well, considered as one of the most important actually published in Brazil. In 2011, Sylvio Back receives the insignia of Officer of the Order of Rio Branco, granted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the set of his film work and as a screenwriter.
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YNDIO DO BRASIL (1995)
Synopsis A collage of dozens of national and foreign films – fiction, news movies and documentaries – revealing how the movies see and listen to the Brazilian Indian since he was first shot in 1912. They are surprising images, framed by thematic music and poems that take the spectator to an idyllic and prejudiced, religious and militarized, cruel and magic universe of our Indians. Credits (35mm, B&W/color, 70 min.)
Researches and screenplay Sylvio Back Editor Francisco Sérgio Moreira Executive producer Margit Richter Production Usina de Kyno Direction Sylvio Back
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Critics The most well succeeded of Sylvio Back’s movies. – Hugo Sukman ("Jornal do Brasil”/995). Back likes to take off the ideological varnish from the established truths, exposing the backstage of the official facades. (…) In the mounting, Back manages to show that after Marshall Rondon, all approximation with the Brazilian Indians was made using a militarizing pedagogical project. – Luiz Carlos Merten ("O Estado de S. Paulo"/1997). In "Our Indians", once more, Back escapes from the obvious view, of the official discourse making a collage of images that reveal how the movies see and listens to (or ignores) the Brazilian Indian nations. – Eros Ramos de Almeida ("O Globo"/1996).
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ALELUIA, GRETCHEN (1976)
Synopsis Saga of a German immigrant family that escapes from Nazism and settles down in a city in the South of Brazil, around 1937. Before and during World War II, members of the family get involved with the Fifth Column and the Integralism. In the 50’s, thanks to dangerous liaisons with the remnant of the War, the Kranz are visited by ex-officials of the SS, who come to South America. The plot extends until the present days. Cast Carlos Vereza, Miriam Pires, Lilian Lemmertz, Sérgio Hingst and Lala Schneider. Credits (35mm, color, 118 min.) Original story Sylvio Back Screenplay Sylvio Back, Manoel Carlos Karan and Oscar Milton Volpini Director of photography José Medeiros Original musical score "O Terço" Editor Inácio Araújo Production Paraná Filmes Director Sylvio Back
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Critics One of the best Brazilian movies ever. – Salvyano Cavalcanti de Paiva ("Illustrated History of the Brazilian Movies"/1989). Dense and heavy, "Hallelujah, Gretchen" remains as the most serious attempt to discuss the actions of the adepts of the Nazi-fascism in Brazil, showing as yesterday’s thoughts survive in disguise in today’s behaviors. – Luiz Carlos Merten ("O Estado de S. Paulo"/1997).
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Rﾃ．IO AURIVERDE (1991)
Synopsis With unpublished images and sounds of Carmen Miranda and of Brazil during World War II, the movie enters the unknown universe of the psychological war that hindered the presence of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) in Italy (1944-1945). Using a clandestine radio cheerful and mocking musical broadcastings, a taboo-theme among the troops, the movie also reveals the tragicomic relations between Brazil and the US during the conflict, whose consequences have never ended. Credits (35mm, B&W, 70 min.) Researches and screenplay Sylvio Back Editor Francisco Sﾃｩrgio Moreira Executive producer Margit Richter Production Embrafilme/Usina de Kyno Director Sylvio Back
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Critics More than a movie about the FEB, "Radio Brazil" is a film about the Brazilian image during a highly exposed episode. Cruel, pamphleteer, an inconvenient corollary of a movie that was not born to please nor to court. – Carlos Alberto de Mattos (in "Sylvio Back – Movies on the other Margin"/1992). ... courageous, undaunted, and unimaginable. – Guido Brilharinho (in "The Brazilian Movies in the 90’s", Uberaba, MG/2000). … the notion that maybe moves all Back’s cinematography, the desire to break the ingenuity and the festivity of certain moments under a historical point of view. An intent that has cost him one of the most uncompromising debates of the recent national cinema, in the "Radio Brazil" enterprise, a criticized vision of the role of the Brazilian troops in World War II. – Orlando Margarido ("Gazeta Mercantil"/2001).
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O POETA DO DESTERRO (1999)
Synopsis Biography of the Brazilian poet João da Cruz e Souza (1861-1898), son of slaves, the founder of Symbolism in Brazil, considered the biggest black poet of the Portuguese language. By 34 "visual stanzas", the film goes from the poet’s breathtaking passions in Florianopolis (SC) until his social, racial and intellectual cornering, and his tragic end in Rio de Janeiro. Credits (35mm., color, 86 min.) Original story and screenplay Sylvio Back Director of photography Antonio Luiz Mendes. Original musical score Silvia Beraldo Editor Francisco Sérgio Moreira Executive producer Margit Richter Production Usina de Kyno Director Sylvio Back
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Critics It is, so to speak, your best film ever, one of the most beautiful of the recent Brazilian cinema. – Luiz Carlos Merten ("O Estado de S. Paulo"/2001).
Its speeches, theatrical, poetical and cinematographic at the same time, enrapture the public. Back uses the movies as a pretext to demonstrate the ability in metamorphose itself in several different supports. It is an aggressive movie by its lyricism that strikes with its poetry. – Alécio Cunha ("Hoje em Dia"/2001).
I think it is an admirable film. – Alexei Bueno ("Jornal do Brasil"/2001).
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LOST ZWEIG (2003)
Synopsis The last week of the life of the Austrian-Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, author of "Brazil, the Country of the Future" and his young wife, Lotte, who, in a pact surrounded by mystery, commit suicide in Petropolis, nearby Rio de Janeiro, after Carnival in 1942, which they watched together. A gesture that still today, 60 years later, raises doubts and awe by its premeditation and emblematic character. Cast Rüdiger Vogler, Ruth Rieser, Renato Borghi, Daniel Dantas and Odilon Wagner. Credits (35mm., color, 114 min.) Original story Sylvio Back Screenplay Sylvio Back/Nicholas O’Neill Based on "Death in Paradise", by Alberto Dines Director of photography Antonio Luiz Mendes Original musical score Guilherme Vergueiro and Raul de Souza Editor Francisco Sérgio Moreira Executive producer Margit Richter Production Usina de Kyno 12
Critics Remarkable by the quality of the staging in its various aspects – in photography, sound track, interpretation, scenarios and costumes – the recreation directed by Sylvio Back concentrates on the last days of Zweig’s life. – Sérgio Rizzo ("História Viva"/2004). History, for Sylvio Back, is not a well-educated lady to whom we owe respect. It is, all the same, a slut always open to free dramatization and metaphorical licenses. His party is the doubt, the questioning of certainties. So he did with the Jesuit missions ("The Guarani Republic"), the Paraguayan War ("The Brazilian War"), the part of Brazil in World War II ("Radio Brazil"). The same happens with Stefan Zweig’s "Brazilian life", which he depicts in the compassed and solemn rhythm of a requiem. – Carlos Alberto de Mattos ("O Globo"/2007). Back balances in a remarkable way the intimate and the epic, the attention to the character and his circumstance: the exiled humanist and the Brazilian cordial Fascism, where the party and the barbarism dwell in a most intricate way. – José Geraldo Couto, movie critic and writer.
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