Paulo Alvarenga

The Legend of the Paraguay War Legend tells that during the Paraguay War (1864-1870), families that lived near the border and soldiers who were leaving for battle used to hide their valuable belongings by burying them in secret spots, in order to safely recover them after the war. In several cases, though, the only people who knew about the secret spots of those personal treasures died before they could go back to recover them. According to inhabitants of that region, the spirits of those tormented men would reveal the location of those "buried and hidden" treasures to chosen people in their dreams, visions or by haunting them. "The Legend of the Paraguay War" approaches local legends in a historic and literary way. Those legends were born from within the biggest conflict in South America, and were developed and influenced by the local imaginary view of the world and which can be considered a relevant part of those people's identity up to this day

Hailing from a big city, a man moves to a small village in Mato Grosso do Sul. He feels isolated in that new environment until a mystical experience reveals a myth that haunts the area.

A return to the story of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele's passage through South America. Conspiracy theories report that the border of Diadema, Sao Bernardo do Campo, and Sao Paulo was the center of German immigration. In the Eldorado neighborhood, on the border of these cities and bathed by the Billings Dam, lived a gentleman named Pedro Hochbichler, one of the aliases adopted by the alleged Mengele. Mengele fled to the US leaving a double in Brazil.

Love, Possession, Betrayal, Jealousy, Selfishness. And it is a reinterpretation of the traditional Stories of treasures buried during the War of the Triple Alliance, which deeply marked Brazil – especially the Pantanal people – since 1864. It is based on Alvarenga's manuscripts from when he lived among the Kadiwéu, Kinikinanau, in the village São João, between 2002 and 2004.

Carried out in the video workshop at Centro Cultural Taboão in Diadema, O Escritor das Ruas tells the tragic story of Salvador, a pixador from São Paulo. Daily life on the outskirts of big cities.