The Mandarin

Collective film with five segments around the works and life of brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade.

A 1972 Portuguese language drama/adventure film written and directed by Júlio Bressane, starring Rosa Dias and Elyseu Visconti.

Cropped hair, a rosemary branch behind the ear, yellow shirt of shiny satin, he's behind the wheel of his car when passing by a woman who walks by the roadside. Strongly painted lips, printed dress with round skirt and red shoes matching the color of the lipstick, she catches his attention. He gives her a ride, the two of them stare in silence for a few moments. They introduce themselves to one another and between the two establishes an absurd dialogue and full of metaphors. And they are driving around in corners of Rio de Janeiro, to the sound of Noel Rosa and Lamartine Babo. Eva and Antena, she a seer, he, an assassin on the run, initiate an unusual case of love, a marginal love, where boredom often gives way to tragedy, creating the agony of a holiday spent in an abyss.

Sônia and her homosexual brother are both believed by their mother to be possessed by the devil. She works as a prostitute in the streets of Copacabana and he’s a servant who falls madly in love with his employer.

Santamaria and Urtigo are two bandits on the run, one is white, the other black. Santamaria is a mystical visionary and believes in the imminent coming of a purifying angel. Urtiga, his inseparable companion, is a simple-minded and ingenious man who follows Santamaria around and participates in the crimes he commits. The two bandits take over a house after kidnapping its owner and his girlfriend.

A man living with his parents in a low middle-class apartment in Rio de Janeiro coldly stabs them with a razor and then goes to the movies. Marcia, a rich and dissatisfied young woman, takes advantage of a trip from her husband to go to her home in Petrópolis, where she receives a visit from an old friend, Regina.

The fictional encounter in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (in the 30s) between popular songwriter Lamartine Babo and inconoclast poet and playwright Oswald de Andrade.

Story with some autobiographical touches taken from director's life.

The rare short film presents a curious dialogue between filmmaker Julio Bressane and actor Grande Otelo, where, in a mixture of decorated and improvised text, we discover a little manifesto to the Brazilian experimental cinema. Also called "Belair's last film," Chinese Viola reveals the first partnership between photographer Walter Carvalho and Bressane.

A silent film shot in New York in 1972, including scenes in Hélio Oiticica’s apartment. Last film made in exile by Bressane, it mimics the experimental concept of "quasi-cinema" by Hélio Oiticica. It consists of a fragmentary experience of freedom, in super-8 and 16mm, in a code out of time, out of the square, while recreating (with different cameras) the wild and sensitive look that Oiticica dedicated to cinema. Its definitive 71-minute restored version was completed in the early 2000s.

In Rio de Janeiro, after an altercation with his father and mother, a young man named Bebeto kills his family and goes to a movie theater, where he watches four weird vignettes.

Sentimental Education centers on the unique relationship between Áurea, a lonely 40 year old teacher, and a young man she has just met by chance – one of these encounters which mythology and literature are full of. A delicate soul who finds itself attracted to a beauty that seems to demand, disturb and move her. That shakes her up entirely. During the days following their first conversation, she will expose all her feelings through classes in which he will let himself be carried away. Until an unusual episode from the past is revealed and changes everything.

Bressane's second London film, shot in six days in his apartment. "I had seen the French avant-garde films of the 1920's and naturally the title cites Breton. But underneath it can also be read in many ways. It is a cinema that is invented on the spur of the moment, like you invent an instrument to play music and then abandon it. This film came out like an improvisation, a total risk. It is a deconstruction of meaning but not in the analytical, intellectual sense. I have always tried to lose myself with my films. There is no trace of American or French underground cinema. If anything, it is the idea of home movies, there were many ideas for digital films long before digital film existed. This film made itself, it was like a jazz improvisation. Amor Louco is a lost object, it doesn't speak any language, it has no signs, no letters, no captions. And in the scene where the cataract is cut with the razor blade, it was the adventure of the film itself that was put to the test".

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

A curious couple, whose existence takes place where art arises along a singular metaphysical desire. They search for it through repeated and varied representations, in a setting of light where hope and desperation blend together.

Three friends, Hilda, Matilda and Gaspar, meet in a rundown downtown apartment during a weekend to chat, drink and experience pleasure.