Rodrigo Lima

In September 2007 Júlio Bressane goes to Ferrara. In the cemetery of the Italian city he ends up making two movies.

Between February an May of 1970, Julio Bresane and Rogerio Sganzerla made 7 films for their company Belair that were forbidden by the Brazilian censorship that reveal today images of an unique freedom.

A man is mysteriously called to the entrance gate of an abandoned country home. As if she was coming out of a water mirror, a woman emerges from the mud at the bottom of a lake. As they approach each other, a spell is cast. Together they experience the enchantment of hallucination, memory and dreams. Reflections on the water will reveal secrets hidden in the nature of the soul. The Mirror is a recreation of Machado de Assis’ (1839-1908) homonymous tale

A man is mysteriously called to the entrance gate of an abandoned country home. As if she was coming out of a water mirror, a woman emerges from the mud at the bottom of a lake. As they approach each other, a spell is cast. Together they experience the enchantment of hallucination, memory and dreams. Reflections on the water will reveal secrets hidden in the nature of the soul. The Mirror is a recreation of Machado de Assis’ (1839-1908) homonymous tale

Calypso and Ulisses live in exile in a collapsing world.

For this behemoth, Bressane took his opera omnia and edited it in an order that first adheres to historical chronology but soon starts to move backwards and forward. The various pasts – the 60s, the 80s, the 2000s – comment on each other in a way that sheds light on Bressane’s themes and obsessions, which become increasingly apparent and finally, a whole idea of cinema reveals itself to the curious and patient viewer. Will Bressane, from now on, rework The Long Voyage of the Yellow Bus when he makes another film? Is this his latest beginning? Why not, for the eternally young master maverick seems to embark on a maiden voyage with each and every new film!

In a primitive future, Amerindian, Mediterranean graphics are drawn, facing a silent and decrepit bay of Guanabara.

Sequence plans in full freedom of investigation of bodies, of their shadows, means and desires. It is the extension of the movement and the apprehension of the light on the frame. The end is loud. A visit to Brazil's visual past. About exploring these images (or ideas) to the fullest to innovate language. Swallowing the old and, from there, creating the new. It reminds us a little of what marginal cinema was like.

Bressane (together with his partner Rosa Dias and young filmmaker Rodrigo Lima) guide us through the beautiful Swiss Sils Maria, where Nietzsche spent no less than eight summers. In his letters, Nietzsche indicates which spots brought him to a different understanding of philosophy. He discovered, beyond the philosophical text, a source for ideas in the pure air, in the mountain landscapes, in the water of the lakes, and in the age-old forests.

A montage of 48 Brazilian films made between 1898 and 2022. The moments, the frames, where we feel a glimmer, an innovation, some experimentation and emotion coming to us at different times. A fine thread that runs through cinema since its birth, and even before.