Lacrimosa

A documentary about the 1979 workers strike.

São Paulo, May 1978. Three slates compete for the leadership of the Metalworkers' Union of São Paulo, the largest in Latin America, with 300,000 associate workers, and presided over by a platoon since the military coup of 1964. In the midst of the Union electoral campaign, the first workers' strikes that would change the country began. Braços Cruzados, Máquinas Paradas reveals, in an engaging narrative, the Brazilian trade union structure of fascist inspiration.

Documentary on the life and times of one of the most prominent Brazilian samba composers, Cartola (Angenor de Oliveira).

Rui arrives in a small town looking for his father, a prospector. Before that, he gets involved with Maria, who is facing problems in the family. Maria's stepfather is the head of a gang and will go to any lengths to prevent Rui from finding his father.

In 2002, the greatest prison in Latin America, Complex Carandiru, was demolished. A couple of months before its implosion, director Paulo Sacramento trained some inmates and together with his crew, they produced many hours of footage, showing daily life in prison.

Documentary about the strikes that took place in São Bernardo do Campo, in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, circa 1979/1980. That moment was of utmost importance, since it revealed a Union leader, Luís Inácio "Lula" da Silva, who would later become President of Brazil. It was also the moment when PT, the Workers' Party, became a relevant political force in Brazil.

The faces, the gestures and speech of beggars, madmen and revelers passing through the streets of São Paulo. The sounds and images are illustrated with Frantz Fanon extracts.

Deraldo, a popular poet from Northeast Brazil, arrives in the capital of São Paulo, making a living only from his poetry and pamphlets. All is well until he is mistaken for a multinational worker who killed the boss at a party where he received the title of symbolic worker.

Lambusca, a man from the State of Paraíba, Brazil, goes to São Paulo, looking for a job. But he ends up working for a group of fishy loan sharks, collecting money. In one of his visits, the debtor dies. The police then starts chasing him, believing he had murdered the man.

All the feature is given prestige to by the narration in Caetano Veloso's voice, that also signs one of the segments of the project. São Paulo is the largest city of the Southern Hemisphere, with an incessant dynamics of cultural mixtures, with immigrants of all the world and migrants of all parts of Brazil. The gathering of these peculiarities are seen through the 13 film directors's sensibilities and their segments.

The path of Paraguayan immigrants who drive to Asuncion and then arrive in São Paulo. They are rural workers, musicians, vendors and underemployed people. Two parallel worlds: the Guarani culture and the Brazilian adventure in São Paulo juxtaposed with Paraguayan songs and the Guarani language, spoken by the main characters.

Marcelo is a journalist. Carlos is a former car-thief. Renata is a woman torn apart by two relationships as diverse as her desires. Exu is the ever becoming.

The documentary’s starting point is the discovery and restoration of a rare and unknown photography reel reproduced from a mutoscope film, made in 1901 in London, about Santos Dumont (1873 – 1932). The work approaches historic and artistic aspects from the beginning of Cinema (pre cinema, variety film) and a cinema that appropriates archive material (found footage, recycled films), through interviews, documents, visual metaphors and the articulation of a poetic essay.