Killed the Family and Went to the Movies

The landscape of a renovated modern Brazilian cinema (known as Cinema Novo), had its court of renowned saints: Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Ruy Guerra, Joaquim Pedro Andrade, Carlos Diegues, Leon Hirzman and others. A rich court indeed, it had already manifested in the 60s the high profile artistic offer of the tropicalismo country. However, little is widespread of what followed this star-studded generation, toward the end of the decade and in a climate of brutal repression – an emblematic style of filmmaking that, homogenous to what was happening in North America, came to be known as “udigrudi” or “Cinema Marginal.” This radical context produced films, which were as noteworthy as they were hard to come by: O bandido da luz vermelha (Rogério Sganzerla, 1968), O anjo nasceu and Matou a familia e foi ao cinema (Júlio Bressane, 1969), Bang-bang (Andrea Tonacci, 1971) and A margem (Ozualdo Candeias, 1967).

With a career that keeps to margins and borders, Júlio Bressane is one of those great renovators of Brazilian film. Far from the parameters of the cinema d’auteur embodied by his Cinema Novo cohorts, Bressane’s films arise from the most absolute freedom, breaking from the chains of narrative, both classic and modern, to land squarely in the field of experimentation. If in newer examples of filmmaking we can observe – with a certain clarity – the influence of Bertholt Brecht’s theater, along with its distancing techniques that provide a critical tool to face the post-68 political discourse, Bressane’s cinema, without breaking from this position, employs the paths of Antonin Artaud’s theater of cruelty with greater commitment, locating itself in an experimental field that has the body as its center of gravity. It is an organic style of filmmaking that owns up to the reality of the filming, to reflect on its own representative qualities. But like Goddard, Bressane also constantly coaxes himself along new lines of exploration, establishing multiple connections with the polymorphous world of the arts and culture.

His career began as assistant director for Walter Lima, Jr. in 1965. In ’67, he premiered his first film, FACE TO FACE, selected at the Brasilia Film Fest. In 1969, he simultaneously took on the realization of his next two pictures, THE ANGEL WAS BORN and KILLED THE FAMILY AND WENT TO THE MOVIES, a couple of titles that positioned him as one of the most creative directors of his time. Together with Rogério Sganzerla, he founded Belair Filmes in 1970, a production house devoted to low-budget projects, which, over its short run, allowed them to shoot six features in as many months. After a time in exile in London, Júlio returned to Brazil, and engaged in making a continuous string of works in various formats, always characterized by a cheap craftsman’s approach to filmmaking – even when working in 35mm – indifferent of the demands of the consumer market. His cinema, to this day, as attested by his latest productions, including DAYS OF NIETZSCHE IN TURIN and CLEOPATRA, presents one of the most daring and attractive expressions of cinematographic art. —FICValdivia