Cláudio Willer

Transposition of the myth of Faust to modern Brazil. The heir to a bankrupt cigarette factory, amidst a personal crisis, leaves everything behind and heads for a supposed paradise he has seen in a tourist agency, where he believes he could find self-knowledge. In his search, he is inspired by a Mephisto-like character.

Maya is accompanied by Glória, her best friend, who promises that she will always be with her, into a clandestine appointment. Both trans women, Maya wants silicone, but a timely intervention leads her to change her mind. When they leave, it’s Christmas night and it’s pouring rain. They take refuge in a bar, owned by a Nigerian refugee named Kakule. Bia also takes refuge there, fed up with constant fights with her boyfriend. And so their paths cross.

Urban Haunting with Roberto Piva was part of the 1st DOC-TV: Program for Promotion of Production and Broadcasting of the Brazilian Documentary, which was called by Imaginary Brazil. The program is a documentary about the life and poetry of Roberto Piva, a charismatic and contradictory urban figure that portrays in his verses or chaos that he observes life in the city of São Paulo. Roberto Piva emerged in the São Paulo scene of the 1960s and shows how his life is completely linked to the poems he made.

In this short, Willer’s poetic images and his voice dress the streets, the skies, the avenues. Here is Willer, the great poet and living legend of the sixties generation, in front of the camera, letting us into his universe, which Priscyla Bettim & Renato Coelho approach as a poetic encounter, in which experimental cinema becomes a powerful catalyst for his poetry. From an erotic and personal approach, the filmmakers give substance to what Willer states...or perhaps it’s the reverse: it is the images that coexist freely with the sound field of words and music.