Getting to know a few more about Brazil

We dedicate special sessions for foreign movies, but we are very proud to also display what is produced here. Our feature movie invited for the session Panorama in 2011 is Morte e Vida Severina em Desenho Animado, directed by the Brazilian Afonso Serpa. The film is an animated version of the book Morte e Vida Severina, Brazilian writer João Cabral de Melo Neto’s master piece. The movie has already been adapted to the theatre, the television and was even transformed in music by the world-famous Chico Buarque. In 2005, the text became a graphic novel, illustrated by Miguel Falcão and then was brought to life in Serpa’s animation movie. The soundtrack was idealized by Lucas Santanna and the voice of the main character belongs do the Brazilian actor Gero Camilo.

The film, a P&B made with 3D technology, portrays the harsh life of Severino, a migrant that leaves the dry northeast area of the country because of the poverty and lack of opportunities. In Brazil, the hunger and malnutrition that has made tons of victims in the lasts centuries is not a matter of climate conditions, is actually the result of the almost eternal Brazil’s concentrate land issue, a reality that remains strong until today. The art design of the movie embodies the roughness of the dry place where Severino live and walks upon and the simplicity of the pencil’s trace makes it hard to define what is land and what is person. The character is practically molten to the land that he will never be able to call his. The movie is not only a tribute to one of Brazil’s most recognized writer and poet, but also a wake up call that shows that this unfair situation has never left us, in spite of how much money our economy makes.