Escola de Comunicações e Artes, Universidade de São Paulo

In the midst of a breathtaking landscape of mountains and lakes in China lies a hidden Taoist temple dedicated to Xiwangmu, a deity capable of granting immortality to those who achieve complete harmony with nature.

"Do what you want because everything will be legal".

Reconstitution, through photos, films and texts, of the arrival in Brazil of the poet Cendrars, in 1924. Tributes received, visits throughout the country and the desire to make a "100 percent Brazilian film". Testimonials from figures who lived with the intensity of the core of modernist artists: Tarcila do Amaral, Oswald de Andrade, Mário de Andrade and Di Cavalcanti. Scenes from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, São Martinho Farm and the 1924 Revolution. Scenes from the movie LES HEURES CHAUDES DE MONTPARNASSE. Reference to Aleijadinho and Febrônio Indio do Brasil.

In the late seventies, a group of Brazilian documentary filmmakers traveled to the ABC region in the suburbs of São Paulo with the purpose of recording a wave of worker strikes taking place in response to the negligence of the increasingly powerful and abusive automotive industry. Documenting striking women metal workers, Olga Futemma and Renato Tapajós’ Trabalhadoras Metalúrgicas is a particularly vigorous work among the films produced during this moment in São Paulo worker history. Scenes filmed during the first Congress of Metallurgical Women of São Bernardo and Diadema in 1978 are intercut with images documenting the appalling working conditions against which the women featured in the congress were striking.

An uncompromised from a young group of people.

On the back staircases of a residential building, girls smoke hidden from their parents. They take off their clothes to prevent being denounced by the smell of smoke. Cora is 30 years old. She lives in the same building as the girls, and is stuck in an unhappy marriage. The woman catches the girls smoking. From then on, she begins her path towards freedom.

This documentary takes us on a ride through Marginal Tietê, an important avenue in São Paulo, Brazil, then recently opened to the public. The places it crosses and the people living nearby force the viewer to think about the core of this big city.

'The Private from Odessa' is a portrait of Boris Schnaiderman, Brazil's most important translator and essayist on Russian literature and culture. Using different cinematic approaches, the film depicts Boris as he reflects on his personal experiences —his childhood in the 1920's Odessa, his experience as a Brazilian soldier during World War Two— and on his still evolving work as a translator and essayist.

The short film depicts the life of a boy who is constantly sexually abused by his father. Leonardo Miggiorin brilliantly plays the role of this boy, who belongs to a poor and unstructured family.

Juliano is a young artist who lives a happy life with his boyfriend, Nuno, a 65-year-old man, until his relationship is shaken by the discovery that his partner has a degenerative disease.

A man goes through his options when dealing with an unknown person. Based on "Grande Edgar", by Luís Fernando Veríssimo.

On the way back from the swimming practice, Janaina is violently approached by the police. Safe back home, she differently faces her relationship with her father Julio, who’s a policeman.

Solano is often plagued by nightmares in which, during the Middle Ages, he is pursued by the hunter Faro, who intends to kill him. On discovering, in an antiquarian, a tapestry that represents a hunt and that reminds him of his dream, he tries to buy it, but the owner refuses to sell it.

Young engineer, Cristóvão meet Joana, a image technician. Together, they walk through their spaces, trying to share experiences and testing limits. But despair round, silent.

The soccer stadium Arena Corinthians was constructed in São Paulo’s Itaquera district, approximating the club structures to the biggest stronghold of its fans. Through filming the official tour at the arena and interviewing Corinthians soccer team supporters that live on its margins, the film shows the dubious relation that takes place between them.

Mixing new images to existing São Paulo movies takes, the documentary presents the city from the perspective of five main attributes: transformation, anonymity, crowd, precariousness and dimension.

Buying a book in 3 shots, buying a book in 9 shots. Or: a man finds the right book.