Gustavo Galvão

A Violent Dose of Anything has its shoot scheduled for 2012

400 FILMES’ third feature film is about to come off the paper, after four years’ development, improvement and restructuring – which included the consultancy of the internationally renowned Argentinian script doctor Miguel Machalski. With sponsorship from the Brasília’s Culture Support Fund (Fundo de Apoio à Cultura), A Violent Dose of Anything has its shoot scheduled for June/July 2012, on locations in Brasília and Minas Gerais.

The diversity of themes in its films and the experimentation with different narrative forms and esthetic propositions, combined with the objective of releasing one feature film per year between 2011 and 2013, is making of 400 FILMES a reference in the Center-West region of Brazil. The company’s first feature was released in October. Even though it was shown outside the competition, the documentary Is the City One Only? received an honorable mention from the jury at the Quinzena dos Realizadores (Filmmakers’ Fortnight), in Rio de Janeiro. Now, as we near the conclusion of the fiction feature Nine Chronicles for a Screaming Heart (launch in 2012), the company is preparing to undertake its third and most ambitious project.

With a budget of R$ 700,000 (US$ 375,000), A Violent Dose of Anything will be using the same structure as the one used in director and screenwriter Gustavo Galvão’s previous film, Nine Chronicles for a Screaming Heart. With a streamlined crew and a diverse cast (where the experience of some talented, recognized professionals complements the willingness to take risks of younger talents), everyone will be encouraged to create and reinvent themselves. The basis of this adventure is the story of two young guys travelling around central Brazil, searching for a reason to live.

The Brasília-born Vinícius Ferreira, whose first feature film was Nine Chronicles for a Screaming Heart, will share the screen with one of São Paulo’s most respected actors of his generation, Marat Descartes (outstanding in Hard Labor and The Tenants, as well as in Nine Chronicles). Chosen due to their ability to explore different registers with fluency and boldness, Vinícius and Marat play a crucial role in a project that seeks to incite the audience’s sensibility to controversial issues in Brazil today, using dark humor and self-irony.

Soon, more news about A Violent Dose of Anything!

With four shorts in the official selection of the 39th Brazilian Film Festival of Brasília (2006), 400 FILMES secured its place among the Brazilian capital’s most prolific film production companies. From then on, the company has stood out not only for the sheer volume of work, but also for its loyalty to a principle: to use audiovisual language as a tool for investigating human experience.

After one decade producing shorts, seeking to explore ways that would escape the conventional (16 in all), 400 FILMES entered a new phase in 2011 – the year of the postproduction of the company’s first two feature films: the fiction Nine Chronicles for a Screaming Heart (set to be released in 2012) and the documentary Is the City One Only? (confirmed for 2011). The exploration of new pathways continues to be one of our goals; what has changed is the format.

All the information on these shorts and features, on 400 FILMES and the four filmmakers who joined their experiences to create the company are gathered in its brand new website, which is available in two versions: one with content in English (www.400filmes.com/english/) and the other in Portuguese (www.400filmes.com). News on 400’s projects and films around the world will be published in the NEWS section.

And note: the Nine Chronicles’ official website is being prepared by the award-winning designer Ricardo Landim. More information coming soon, here and at 400filmes.com!

Simone Spoladore is in the feature Nine Chronicles
for a Screaming Heart (photo by Fred Chalub)

One day, a French friend of mine asked me why Brazilian feature films did not meet the expectations generated by the shorts. Curator of an international festival, she identifies in many shorts the pursuit of an aesthetics that seeks to avoid the obvious. But she does not think the same applies to most feature films produced in Brazil in the last few years.

Searching for answers, we discussed possibilities. We discussed the funding model in Brazil, which is founded on the use of subjective criteria to analyze projects and stand in the way of more innovative approaches; we talked about the private sector, which ignores the artistic potential of this country; we also talked about the filmmakers, of course. Many of them forsake boldness under the illusion that they can make popular films with the funding they get from state companies and governments.

Júlio Andrade and Denise Weinberg (photo: Cristiane Oliveira)

We spent two days discussing that. Nevertheless, I do not know whether I have found an appropriate answer. This is a deeply nuanced reality. Now, as I am involved in the editing of Nine Chronicles for a Screaming Heart, I realize that I am still trying to answer that question. Not with words, but with the film. The way it was conceived, the way it was made and the objectives we are pursuing are unusual in the Brazilian context (unusual at least to a certain Brazilian cinema aiming to follow industrial patterns).

First, we overcame the hurdles represented by the demand for a conventional screenplay and for some kind of extra-narrative appeal (commercial, social or moral), an unwritten requirement that determines the destination of the money invested in films in Brazil. Not at any point has there been a formal screenplay; what we had instead were nine stories developed by co-writer Cristiane Oliveira and me. They were then given to the actors, who had the chance to recreate them at each rehearsal. We rewrote dialogs and situations. Even the personalities of some of the characters were rethought during that intense process of dramaturgic construction.

Eucir de Souza and Larissa Salgado (photo: Cristiane Oliveira)

Interestingly, the rehearsals brought to the surface the personal side of the stories. They elucidated why the stories had such a pull on me, even though they were only sketches. I noticed that many of the actors experienced a similar degree of identification. That was because the rehearsals allowed us to recover what is basic, what is essential about being human. That was our guiding principle: to understand how the human manifests itself without any value judgments, nor concessions to common sense.

Ideas were renewed up to the last take of each shot. However, it never felt like we were adrift. The foundation for everything, including the work of the actors, was established in advance, in the discussions with my closest partners – cinematographer André Carvalheira, art director Valéria Verba and sound technician Ricardo Reis; as well as with Cristiane Oliveira, who was also assistant director. When I invited them to be in the project, I made it clear that each chronicle might take unexpected turns. It was crucial that we were able to create a solid aesthetic proposition that would be capable of connecting those narratives. That is how the “city” became a hidden protagonist.

Mário Bortolotto (photo: Fred Chalub)

Since 2007, I have had one foot in Brasília (a planned city) and the other one in São Paulo (a chaotic megalopolis). I have always identified with the “B side” of the megalopolis, with its derelict houses, their walls stained by pollution and the passage of time. These places convey to me an instigating sensation of lived experience. They exist, they are there before us, but they are not noticed. I myself have felt like that. What is that feeling? That is the key to understand the stories that make the movie.

We were aware of the role that the locations would play in defining the look of the film. Always with Cristiane and Valéria, I rummaged through São Paulo after that sensation of lived experience. We looked for places that would need little or no set designing interference. We found old mansions turned into slum tenements, hotels taken over by mites and even a little backyard shed being used as a toilet by rabbits.

Felipe Kannenberg (photo: Cristiane Oliveira)

We soon understood what is that feeling that I experience whenever I contemplate the “B side” of this city: it is the desperate emptiness caused by neglect. That led to the premise of situating the action in derelict settings. Rather than indicating a financial condition, the setting acts on the spectator’s unconscious and illustrates the characters’ state of mind. Thus we overcame another hurdle, the reduction of human drama to elementary social or economic issues – a recurring practice in Brazilian film, and also among those who judge the films made in Latin America, which are as diverse as the universe they represent.

The initial idea consisted in avoiding a social or moral justification for the plots, allowing them to be fed by their own contradictions and subtleties of behavior. All characters have their own particular misery. Be it the hooker who is tired of her work, or the exemplary civil servant. In that sense, to respond to the need for change is more than an act of survival. To confront neglect is to fight against indifference, to refuse to accept more of the same. That is why I was so determined to make this film, because it expresses the dimension of my inquietude.

* Feature film Nine Chronicles for a Screaming Heart is fundraising for post-production costs. More information will be published here, at the 400 Filmes’ web site (www.400filmes.com), and at the film’s official website, to be released in July 2011.

Simone Spoladore and Júlio Andrade in Nine Chronicles
for a Screaming Heart (photographed by Fred Chalub)

I admire personal films, they tend to take a hold on me. I feel that I am discovering something intimate – something that the filmmaker secretly confesses, or almost unwittingly lets slip out. Such intimacy interests me more and more, hence my fascination with “small” films. So much so, that I decided to make one. I had made some short films of that kind, I felt that the time had come to make a feature film. There were a lot of feelings I kept inside and I felt a pressing need to release them.

I don’t know when exactly I embarked on this adventure of making a feature film with little money, independently and urgently. What I do know is that I was obsessed with American and European counterculture artists, who did what they wanted with whatever they had available. In September 2009, I spent a few weeks in San Francisco and in New York, and the trip awakened stories I had kept for myself for a long time. I realized that those stories still moved me and felt a burning urge to make them visible. In November, I started calling some friends to make a movie. Yes, a feature film: Nine Chronicles for a Screaming Heart (Nove Crônicas para um Coração aos Berros).

André Frateschi, Carolina Sudati and Vinícius Ferreira
in another scene of the film (photo: Cristiane Oliveira)

The stories that make up the film were developed as literary texts that dealt with day-to-day issues and were free from the constraints of a conventional film script. That is why the term “chronicles” is in the title. They are nine stories that merge together and contaminate each other, all dealing with the same theme: people who meet at a kind of crossroads in their lives, in need of reinventing themselves soon, or else… I don’t know. What is important is to change.

I remember the day I invited Denise Weinberg to be in our cast. It was December 12th, and I was putting together a team of great actors – in a few days I had confirmations from Leonardo Medeiros, Júlio Andrade, Mário Bortolotto, Simone Spoladore and André Frateschi, among other important actors in the current Brazilian scene. In the afternoon of 12/12, I confirmed Denise’s participation. However, before she said yes, she asked me whose “screaming heart” it was. “It’s mine!”, I answered without hesitating.

Larissa Salgado (photo: Cristiane Oliveira)

Just as the characters, which were coming to life at each conversation and rehearsal, I also had an overwhelming need to reinvent myself. It was with that feeling, so evident in my eyes and in my words, that I approached the actors and technicians I wanted to have in the project. Even old partners like André Carvalheira (cinematographer), Marcius Barbieri (editor), Jimi Figueiredo (music score), Larissa Salgado and Vinícius Ferreira (actors). With their talent and commitment, we would endeavor to make a great “small” movie.

We shot the film between February 27th and April 5th. We did it mainly on weekends and holidays, as in the era of silent movies – in Brazil there was the famous case of Adhemar Gonzaga with the extremely personal Barro Humano (“human mud”, in free translation), dated 1929. During 17 days, we shot on 25 locations in and around São Paulo, aiming to compose a fictional city, stuck in time (which hardly fits São Paulo’s description). This is not a São Paulo film, but a truly Brazilian production, made by professionals from Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná… And considerably influenced by my connection with Brasília, a city that is only 50 years old.

Marat Descartes and Leonardo Medeiros (photo: Fred Chalub)

I was born and raised, and became a filmmaker in Brasília. It was in that city that I perceived the connections that are established between man and urban space. I even devoted a few shorts to the issue, specifically from a “Brasiliense” perspective. With Nine Chronicles for a Screaming Heart, I am expanding the theme by focusing on architecture as reflection of contemporary relationships. The nine stories take place in an unidentified metropolis. The plots unfold, in almost every case, in enclosed spaces, surrounded by faded, dirty or deteriorated walls. Everything here is in decay: the people and the places.

Taking this aesthetic premise to extremes, cast and crew put into practice what I had proposed to them at the start: to be open to experiment. When we are set free from the dictatorship of naturalism, we can cross the boundaries between different genres and styles. The finished film should span from the intimist to the surreal. At certain moments, extremes even come to meet and merge. Like the stories. Like life.

Vanise Carneiro and Rita Batata (photo: Fred Chalub)

That duality (or ambiguity, or paradox) corresponds to the drama that besets most characters in this panel of dreams, frustrations and transformations. That is because change involves a dilemma between the need to reinvent oneself and the fear of failing. I believe in people (and in films) who are not afraid of failing. “The goal of every film should be to take us to a different place”, Bertolucci once said. That is what I have been telling myself over and over for months, ever since I decided to embark on this adventure.

Crew
Directed, written and produced by: Gustavo Galvão
Co-writer and assistant director: Cristiane Oliveira
Cinematographer: André Carvalheira
Production designer: Valéria Verba
Sound technician: Ricardo Reis
Editing: Marcius Barbieri
Soundtrack: Assis Medeiros and Jimi Figueiredo
Sound designers: Miriam Biderman and Ricardo Reis
A 400 Filmes, Effects Filmes and Ludofilmes production

Cast (listed alphabetically)
André Frateschi / Cacá Amaral / Carolina Sudati / Charly Braun / Cristiano Karnas / Denise Weinberg / Eucir de Souza / Evelyn Ligocki / Felipe Kannenberg / Júlio Andrade / Larissa Salgado / Leonardo Medeiros / Marat Descartes / Marcelo Coutelo / Mário Bortolotto / Paula Cohen / Plínio Soares / Ramiro Silveira / Rejane Zilles / Rita Batata / Rodrigo Bolzan / Simone Spoladore / Vanise Carneiro / Vinícius Ferreira

* Feature film Nine Chronicles for a Screaming Heart is fundraising for post-production costs. More information will be published here, soon.

In the feature film A Violent Dose of Anything, the
depths of night evoke a country yet to be revealed

The first draft of A Violent Dose of Anything was written in 1994. As the script was developed, the protagonist was no longer just a car thief. He became a young, middle class man, around 23-30 years old. It is at that age that individuals come under pressure to affirm their role in society, even though in spirit they often are still adolescents. What if the character decided to hit the road to find his own essence, instead of doing what is expected of him?

This and other questions led to the conception of a script with a strong generational appeal. Now at the fundraising stage, the first feature film project by Gustavo Galvão (and by 400 Filmes) deals with the dilemmas of a generation squeezed between the lack of perspectives and excessive uncertainty. And it does it candidly and with humour. Both the mysterious Pedro and his travelling companion, the unpredictable Lucas, personify this generation. Both are adrift on the road – and, consequently, in life.

Pedro and Lucas meet at a roadside café somewhere in the Brazilian savannah. They are only passing by, but they do not know where they are bound. What has taken them to that place? The doubts that beset the characters lead them to a state of constant restlessness, intensifying what they experience in an unusual weekend.

In order to present the aesthetic and conceptual references behind the project of A Violent Dose of Anything, developed with funding from the Fundo de Apoio à Cultura do Distrito Federal (the Federal District Culture Fund), a series of texts will be posted here during 2009 – preferentially in Portuguese. It is a personal re-reading of some of the most inventive road movies in history, by directors such as Godard, Lynch, Jarmusch, and Kiarostami. The basis for the collection will be the material that Galvão wrote for the film exhibition Other Directions, held in Brasília, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, in 2005.

* Find out more about A Violent Dose of Anything and about other films in development in the Projects section.

The film My Own Way of Being Alone will be released
in the competition of the 41st Brasília Film Festival

The 41st edition of the traditional Brasília Film Festival was officially launched this Wednesday, October 15th, with the announcement of the selected works running for the Candango Awards. Among the 12 short films in 35mm chosen by the Committee, one is known by the readers of this web site (the first posts in Portuguese were published in March, 2008): My Own Way of Being Alone.

Sponsored by Petrobras, My Own Way of Being Alone is my seventh work as director. Written for the screen by journalist Bernardo Scartezini, it gathers the nationally acclaimed actress Silvia Lourenço and the young and promising actor André Araújo in a film made of dreams, frustrations and turnarounds. In a journey with no destination through Brasília night, a shy and discrete guy nicknamed Swede is followed all the way long by his muse – a certain girl named Melissa.

The short film’s making of is online at You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VAUhbyB4-k

This year’s Brasília Film Festival is scheduled to happen from November 18th to 25th, 2008. More details on the short film My Own Way of Being Alone can be found in the FILMOGRAPHY section.

Gustavo Galvão’s Life Next Door shows the moment when
one person notices the other’s presence in an urban setting

From October 2007 to January 2008, the short film Life Next Door will be screened in 16 European cities at five different countries – Spain, Sweden, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The film will take part in two events dedicated to promote Brazilian production overseas, besides a non-competitive section at the Spanish festival Curtocircuito with the most important Brazilian short films of the year.

Below is the full list of screenings – the confirmed ones until now, of course. Many other opportunities may appear at any time. And find out more about this and other films in the Filmography section.

Brasil Cine
Stockholm, Sweden: from October 04 to 07
Göteborg, Sweden: from October 12 to 14

Curtocircuito
Santiago de Compostela, Spain: from October 16 to 20

Brasil Plural
Munich, Germany: from October 11 e 14
Salzburg, Austria: from October 14 e 17
Frankfurt, Germany: from October 19 e 21
Köln, Germany: from October 25 e 28
Jena, Germany: from November 01 e 05
Hamburg, Germany: from November 08 e 11
Berlin, Germany: from November 17 e 21
Freiburg, Germany: from November 29 to December 02
Bremen, Germany: from December 06 to 09
Stuttgart, Germany: from December 13 to 16
Bern, Switzerland: from January 14 to 17
Würzburg, Germany: from January 24 e 28

A Violent Dose of Anything presents two young men
that are lost on the road. And, ultimately, in life itself

Away from routine, a person tends to observe the world – and himself – with very different eyes. This is also what usually happens in road movies. This genre is the basis for the first feature film project by Gustavo Galvão. In the script of A Violent Dose of Anything, two young men travel through Brazil to live each moment as if it were their last.

The expression “road movie” suggests a very specific type of film, in which the constructive plot alternates contemplation of beautiful scenery and yearning for speed. Actually, the style’s scope is much larger and offers various possibilities. Guided by this principle, the project starts off with a bold proposal. Instead of tracing a solid profile for each character, the plot omits the reasons which led them to travel. This stimulates curiosity in the spectator, and emphasizes details which are common to contemporary relationships (such as exaggerated individualism) and others which refer to Brazilian reality (in which hypocrisy and cynicism are widely accepted).

There is one characteristic which is present in every road movie, however radical: the impulse to take on the road. “From a spiritual outlook”, says the Spanish intellectual Juan Eduardo Cirlot in his Diccionario de Símbolos, “a journey is never just simple movement in space: it is also the tension behind the yearning for change which leads to movement and to the experiences derived thereof”. This tension impregnates every action and gesture of the main characters. They are two youngsters from the Brazilian capital who meet on the road and decide to leave their pasts behind.

Find out more about A Violent Dose of Anything here, shortly. And for other films in development, check out the Projects section.

In Gustavo Galvão’s first feature film project, two men
are driven forward by their yearning to taste a new life

The trees resist the August drought, twisting themselves under the hot midday sun. They are planted on red earth and among high vegetation. We are somewhere in the Brazilian savannah. Then, Pedro meets in a nondescript diner the person who will give his story direction. This is Lucas. “I want to die young”, Lucas declares with typical enthusiasm. It is this zest for life that seduces Pedro. Thus begins A Violent Dose of Anything, the first feature film project by Gustavo Galvão.

One of Brasília’s most active filmmakers, Galvão has directed, produced and launched six short fiction films between 2002 and 2006. With the shooting scheduled to start in August 2010, A Violent Dose of Anything follows the steps of two young men traveling through three Brazilian states in search of experiences capable of refreshing their lives.

A Violent Dose of Anything is an attempt to renew road movies from a structural perspective. Free from the restrictions of classic narrative, the script presents different apparel on many occasions. At certain moments, situations seem to belong to action movies; at others, they flirt with existential dramas. Simultaneously, there is a dose of suspense as a basis. This results from the main characters’ ambiguous behavior. They seem to be constantly hiding something decisive.

Find out more about A Violent Dose of Anything here, shortly. And for other films in development, check out the Projects section.

The short film Life Next Door has its presence
confirmed in English, Danish and Greek festivals

The film’s first challenge were the over 800 projects from all over Brazil enrolled in the Petrobras Cultural Program (2004-2005 edition). Life Next Door completed this phase victoriously. Next, the short film faced another selection and was launched in November 2006, in the 39th Brasília Film Festival – winning best actor prize for Leonardo Medeiros. A few months later, it began a successful career abroad.

Shown in Portugal (December 2006), Uruguay (March 2007) and Honduras (May 2007), Life Next Door (A Vida ao Lado) is now in season in Europe, starting off from England. Between the 5th and the 15th of July, the film will be shown in the 27th edition of the traditional Cambridge Film Festival. From the 27th of August to the 1st of September, it will participate in the 22nd Odense Film Festival, in Denmark. Between the 16th and the 22nd of September, it will be screened at the 13th International Short Film in Drama, in Greece. In the latters, entirely dedicated to short films, Life Next Door was invited to participate in the competition.

And there’s more good news. Also launched in the Brasília Film Festival in 2006, A Matter of Time (Uma Questão de Tempo) is going to Spain. Directed with Catarina Accioly, the film will compete in the 2nd Átalo en Corto. It will be played on the 21st of July, in the beautiful town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

Find out more about these and other films in the Filmography section.