Reborn on the Web

The Internet is giving Brazilian filmmakers a new lease on life. Sites showing Brazil's quality movies made in the last 100 years are springing up all over. And the world seems to be responding in kind by flocking (almost) to these new sites.

Marcos Manhães Marins

Anybody who has access to a WEB browser (software which locates WEB pages according to an electronic address (URL) or some keywords) may find, from anywhere in the world, many sites related to the cinema of Brazil. Using search tools like Altavista and Yahoo, you have just to enter "brazil" and "cinema" to get a list of sites dealing with the subject.

The most complete and busiest site on the lists is Cinemabrazil whose Internet address is http://www.cinemabrasil.org.br. From this homepage, as these sites are frequently called, you can access a plethora of other sites which are spreading Brazilian culture abroad. Cinemabrazil has been on line at the Ibase/Alternex server since September '95 and it pitched its homepage on the WEB on October 18, 1995.

Just a few months after the international cinema community had made its presentation at the WEB Cafe, Brazilian Cinema caught up with the movement. The pioneer in this movement was the non-profit Internet Movie Data Base from Cardiff, UK http://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/movies. The first commercial WEB site was Hollywood On Line http://www.hollywood.com which existed in text-only since 1993, but didn't debut on the World Wide Web until early 1995.

Does all of this matter? It seems it does. When USA Today online started a poll for Internet users to vote on their choices of Oscar 96 nominees, many Brazilian sites included a link to the vote page, and the result was that Brazilian O Qu4trilho, nominated for best foreign picture received 7,470 votes, much more than the favorite for Best Picture Apollo 13 which got 4,638 nods. Almost as many votes as the favorite best actors Anthony Hopkins (4,523) and Susan Sarandon (4,642) together! It was like a fever after the campaign was started by an E-mail message from Sérgio Charlab, a sort of guru for many Brazilian net users.

It was just an innocent poll but a national USA newspaper survey always moves public opinion, which, in turn, might move Oscar voters' opinion, and perhaps, awards destiny. It was worth a try. Independently of any result it was very gratifying to find out the strength of Brazilians united on line.

In September 1995, Internet World (IW) magazine, in its premiere Brazilian edition, published an A to Z guide with about 200 Brazilian homepages. By then, Brazil was just starting to discover the WEB. In February '96, the same guide had already grown to 1,500 Brazilian sites. Since the number increases around 20% a month, and some homepage owners don't submit their URL to be listed, one had better estimate another thousand homepages not listed yet, which will produce a figure of 2,500 Brazilian homepages in April 1996.

At just the Ibase/Alternex server (the first WEB server in Brazil) there are 150 sites. And this is just one among 100 webservers, a number which also increases each month. Today Brazil has a potential Internet market of 14 million people who have telephone lines. There are already 4 million computers installed. Too few for a population of 160 million people, but more than enough not to be ignored. In the broadcast market, with just 30 million TV sets, more than 90% of the population is covered.

The Internet turns out to be the right place for recovering the Brazilian movie industry, which in the '80s was producing about 100 films a year. The thousands of today will become millions tomorrow, all looking at photos and clips of Brazilian motion pictures, getting to know its needs, its projects, its promising future.

Take the Cinemabrazil site, for example. It was created to announce a documentary on Brazilian media mogul Assis Chateaubriand, a cultural movie project, and at same time to bring together all the cultural movie projects that were also raising funds by publicly selling shares at the Stock Exchange. From that humble beginning that site became the most complete database for Brazilian movies, now listing 400 titles selected from the 3,000 quality long films that the Brazilian industry has created so far.

Brazilian movies are barely known abroad. The Internet Movie Data Base, for example, the most complete one, with 50,000 titles, in February '96 had around 100 Brazilian titles registered, including shorts and TV programs. And the listings are full of smaller and bigger mistakes. CineMania 95, the CD-ROM, listed only 15 Brazilian movies and had just 7 filmmakers' biographies.

Vagner Ferreira de Almeida, one of the partners at Fibra Cine Video, the company behind Cinemabrazil, says: "We are giving absolute priority to get the most on these 400 available long movies. Then, as a second step, the catalog will include the short movies and TV programs, but always within the criteria of selecting the ones that were highlights, either for high ticket revenue or for rave reviews by critics. We hear now and then that Brazilian movies are too erotic, but this is not the whole story. There are true masterpieces in our Cinematheques, hundreds of movies which received prizes in International Film Festivals or were a box office hit. For the time being, we are strictly concerned about listing our best cultural products. A virtual distributor is also part of our plans, but we will need sponsors in order to guarantee free service to visitors." A very interesting page in the Cinemabrazil site is the Comprehensive Summary of Laws for Filming in Brazil. Two other places deserving a visit are the First Catalog of Brazilian Movies and the Catalog of Films still raising funds, in which you can get all the basic information in case you wish to invest in a Brazilian movie. Photos, clips and a virtual tour can be found there. That site was presented to the Ministry of Culture in January '96 to receive authorization to offer income tax discounts to investors who keep any business in Brazil, such as Hollywood's film distributors and multinational companies.

Leilany Fernandes, filmmaker and president of the Brazilian Movie Industry Workers' Union (STIC), is entirely in favor of such an initiative: "I believe we don't have to wait to see either the Ministry of Culture or RioFilme, for example, getting their own site in the Internet. It's time to realize that private initiatives like Cinemabrazil are much more efficient and authentic than a bigger and official scheme. Government has to give support to this spontaneous movement. This is the State's role."

Carol Peiffer, an American who visited Brazil about ten years ago, wrote to Cinemabrazil: "I love cows, I write about them in a quarterly newsletter. Cinema for me is just entertainment, but I love Brazilian writer Jorge Amado and I would like you to find videotapes with Brazilian movies based on his novels. The Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands tape has already got here." The site provided some clues on how to get the tapes for Jubiabá, Capitães de Areia, Tenda dos Milagres, Gabriela, all movies based on Amado's novels and informed her that Tieta (with actress Sônia Braga) is just being finished. Peiffer decided to invest in the movie specially presented by the site and then ended up being investor number one on the Individual Sponsor's Page.

Cinemabrazil is presently working hard to include in its WEB pages more clips from successful Brazilian movies and from interviews with renowned Brazilian filmmakers, such as Nélson Pereira dos Santos, Carlos Diegues, Arnaldo Jabor, among many alive, and those from archives (Gláuber Rocha - Cannes Golden Palm 1968, Alberto Cavalcanti, Humberto Mauro, among many). It also wants to add more clips with actors and actresses easily recognized abroad as Sônia Braga for Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands and The Kiss of the Spider Woman, not to mention Milagro by Robert Redford and Fernanda Torres (Cannes' Golden Palm - 1988), among others.

In 1996 the Cinema of Brazil will change the Brazil of the Cinema. Since 1962 Brazil had not been nominated for an Oscar award. At that time, the movie O Pagador de Promessas (The Given Word) directed by Anselmo Duarte, did not get the Academy statuette, but it took home the Golden Palm from Cannes.

This year, out of the 100 cultural movie projects waiting for investors, at least 10 or 20 will succeed in raising funds, and the world will get to know that Brazil is not just a couple of beautiful beaches surrounded by violence. Brazil will show its traditions, its great personalities, those who have built this country. It will show its popular culture, its art and its goods, so that cultural and commercial interchange can be increased for all countries and all of them can benefit from it.

The official stuff

Festival de Brasília -- Site of the traditional film festival promoted by the government of the Distrito Federal, the country's capital. The place shows Brazilian movies in competition in 1995. Their address: http://www.gdf.gov.br/festival/cinema.html

Festival Internacional de Curtas de São Paulo -- It showcases a short film festival promoted by the state of São Paulo. The address: http://www.puc-rio.br/mis

Riocult -- Place of cultural fair in Rio de Janeiro and for Rio's and Ministry of Culture's events. Address: http://www.eline.com.br/riocult/expositores/expositores.html

Some ministries also keep cultural WEB pages in their sites:

Finance Ministry -- http://www.fazenda.gov.br/cultura/html/space/others/arte.htm

Ministry of Foreign Relations -- Itamaraty - London Embassy:

http://www.demon.co.uk/Itamaraty/bsw.html

All over the Net

AlterNETive -- A site created by Leandro Indrusiak, a music student at Universidade de Santa Maria (state of Rio Grande do Sul), showing all kinds of alternative culture, poetry, music, theater, cinema, etc. Address: http://www.ufsm.br/alternet/cine.html

Tati's page -- Tatiana, a graphic designer presents here design projects, cinema, etc. Address: http://www.lncc.br/~Tatiana

Brazilians living abroad are also helping connect Brazilian cinema to the rest of the world. There are dozens of sites like these two below, who list the others:

Indiana University, Bloomington, USA -- Address: http://www.indiana.edu/~baiu

University of Wales, Cardiff, Great-Britain -- Address: http://www.cf.ac.uk/uwcc/suon/brazil/braz-soc.html