Collegium Papers 2010

an already lean cinematography has survived. Our number of remaining silent feature films today revolve around 15, having more short films and newsreels. The Pordenone exhibition states it clearly: one feature film and three short films of thirty minutes.

Looking back at the Pordenone programs from the last ten years, it has a clear majority of American and European films. In some years there were some Asian films, especially from Japan – for example, in 2010 we had a special programme on the Shochiku directors – but it’s rare to have films from countries with less “tradition” (using this word because of the lack of any other to summarize this idea of a country that is not so usual on the agenda of film festivals and overall screenings worldwide). It is not a critical appointment, as it is obvious that the main films and most prolific productions come from Europe and America. I would not expect to find such a diverse programming, as I imagine there is a difficulty in accessing satellite cinematographic productions combined with the scarce materials available for viewing and curatorship work within festivals; especially considering, as said before, silent films. I don’t think I could find any film from South America – if there really was, it probably was an unusual screening, with few matches along all the years of Pordenone Film Festival.

Once again, it is not to blame, but to think about and to highlight the important issue in relation to this, already repeated to exhaustion in these few lines: have a Brazilian silent film screened at a foreign festival – more than that, screened in a foreign country. More than only an “intellectual” presence, it is a physical one. We all know how it works: the film is programmed and the production must go after the prints wherever they are. In this case, it was a partnership with Cinemateca Brasileira, located in São Paulo. So, the 35mm copies had to actually travel: cross the Atlantic Ocean on a 10 hour plane trip to reach Pordenone. They were taken out of their packages so they could be ready for exhibition on the scheduled dates, where they were placed into the projector so could be viewed by the spectators during their given running time. There is a concrete presence of a Brazilian item within any others; a 35mm copy made in Brazil, in “our” laboratory, with our technicians; and, of course, before 13