{"id":12299,"date":"2013-12-12T06:40:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T06:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12299"},"modified":"2013-12-12T06:40:52","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T06:40:52","slug":"oscar-entered-movie-hints-at-brazils-underlying-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12299","title":{"rendered":"Oscar-entered movie hints at Brazil’s underlying racism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
A poster advertising the movie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

by Peter Debruge<\/p>\n

Tucked among the 76 submissions competing for this year\u2019s\u00a0Oscar\u00a0foreign-language prize is a film quite unlike any that has previously represented Brazil, whose cinematic output has been more directly associated with flashy, slum-set pics like \u201cCity of God\u201d and the high-energy \u201cElite Squad\u201d series.<\/p>\n

Kleber Mendonca Filho\u2019s \u201cNeighboring Sounds,\u201d by contrast, unfolds almost entirely on a residential block in the city of Recife \u2014 the same street where the filmmaker lives. Taking place in a world that everyday Brazilians might recognize, \u201cSounds\u201d reveals the unspoken fear wealthier locals feel toward their neighbors, which drives them into private apartments high above the streets, and the ambiguous threat posed by the lower classes.
\nAccording to Mendonca (in Portuguese, \u201cfilho\u201d means \u201cson,\u201d similar to \u201cjunior\u201d), Brazilians live by a form of nonconfrontational racism \u2014 always present, but seldom acknowledged.<\/p>\n

What makes \u201cSounds\u201d so potent is the way it dares to examine these prejudices without identifying them outright, relying on audiences to recognize the phenomenon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually made it a point with the actors and my colleagues never to use the word \u2018racism\u2019 in the film, so we would be on the same realistic ground as Brazilian society, which doesn\u2019t see itself as racist but practices racism every day,\u201d explains Mendonca, who was heavily influenced by such American films as \u201cPoltergeist,\u201d \u201cE.T.\u201d and \u201cHalloween,\u201d in which fantastic things unfold within seemingly normal suburban environments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it would be interesting to make a film that takes place in kitchens and living rooms, but to shoot it with the feel of 1970s Panavision, knowing that would create this tension between what you see and the situations being depicted,\u201d explains Mendonca, who explored many of the same themes in previous short films. \u201cIf you watch all of them, you end up with \u2018Neighboring Sounds,\u2019 which is kind of embarrassing,\u201d the director says, though he has hardly exhausted all he has to say in his first narrative feature.<\/p>\n

In addition to two Brazil-based scripts he is developing, Mendonca stumbled across a project called \u201cThe Crew\u201d after meeting screenwriter Mark Peploe on a jury at Locarno.<\/p>\n

Highly impressed with \u201cNeighboring Sounds,\u201d Peploe (who penned Michelangelo Antonioni\u2019s \u201cThe Passenger\u201d and won an adapted screenplay Oscar for co-writing \u201cThe Last Emperor\u201d with Bernardo Bertolucci) asked Mendonca if he would consider reading a script Peploe himself had written. \u201cIt\u2019s adapted from something that Michelangelo and I worked on together for a number of years,\u201d Peploe related. – variety.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Peter Debruge Tucked among the 76 submissions competing for this year\u2019s\u00a0Oscar\u00a0foreign-language prize is a film quite unlike any that has previously represented Brazil, whose cinematic output has been more directly associated with flashy, slum-set pics like \u201cCity of God\u201d and the high-energy \u201cElite Squad\u201d series. Kleber Mendonca Filho\u2019s \u201cNeighboring Sounds,\u201d by contrast, unfolds almost … Continue reading “Oscar-entered movie hints at Brazil’s underlying racism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[422,3],"tags":[650,1139,7787,7786,7785,7788,4504],"class_list":["post-12299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-news","tag-brazil","tag-film","tag-kleber-mendonca-filho","tag-movie","tag-neighbouring-sounds","tag-oscar","tag-oscar-de-la-renta"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/neighbouring_sounds.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12299"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12302,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12299\/revisions\/12302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}