RIO DE JANEIRO — In Brazil, where the majority of the population are of African origin, persons of color are traditionally under-represented on above-the-line TV and film production. This, however, is gradually changing.
For the past years, POC talents, as well as residents from the impoverished urban areas, LGBTQ and indigenous people, have gained ground in the still white-male dominated production sector.
The diversity drive resisted four years of an extreme-right government and ironically benefited indirectly from it, in the view of director and screenwriter Janaina Oliveira, vice-president of local Association of Black Audiovisual Professionals (APAN).
As the Bolsonaro administration (2019-2022) withheld coin from government incentives, said 42-year-old Oliveira, indie producers resorted to commissions from the large international streaming companies.
“Netflix, Amazon and the other streaming companies have adopted policies that stimulate diversity in their productions, especially after the Black Lives Matter movement, and they enforced them in Brazil. George Floyd had an impact here,” said Oliveira.
“We have always being the majority on below-the-line positions, in lightening, catering, driving. But now we see Blacks in writers’ rooms, and directing and producing.”
Both Oliveira and 38-year-old Juliana Vicente, the African-Brazilian owner of indie production company Preta Portê, do not see the streaming corporations as “the nice guys” but responding to pressure from social movements and, most of all, seeking profit.
“It is not about ideology, including people or stimulating diversity. It is about money,” said Vicente, whose company has already made over 40 TV productions and films and who is now one the directors of mainstream TV Globo’s upcoming telenovela “Terra e Paixao.”
With YouTube and social media, she said, POC and residents of poor urban centers began to see on the (small) screen content about themselves and made by them. And they liked it.
She mentions the case of music producer Konrad Dantas, known as KondZilla. He launched in 2012 his YouTube channel, which features mostly clips of funk/urban music from the impoverished neighborhoods of Sao Paulo. The KondZilla Channel reached 10 million subscribers in 2017 and now has 66.5 million.
Netflix saw the potential and commissioned “Sintonia,” a series co-created and directed by KondZilla, which was released in Aug. 2019. Set in a poor neighborhood in Sao Paulo and in the universe of funk, drug dealing and fundamentalist religion, the series was an instant hit. “Sintonia” is the most watched Brazilian series in the world of Netflix, which will launch its fourth season this year.
“I see a strong presence of Black people and residents from poor areas in productions related to music, such as clips. This seems to be the entrance door for them into production. But on the sets in general, there are not so many Black directors and specially no Black cinematographers,” said 34-year-old KondZilla.
Luciana Bezerra, a Black actress, screenwriter and director, belongs to the generation formed at theater group Nos do Morro, which also includes actor and director Luciano Vidigal and screenwriter and director Gustavo Melo.
In Nos do Morro, founded in 1986, many youngsters from Vidigal, an impoverished hillside community in Rio, got acquainted with playwriters such as Luiz Paulo Correa e Castro and had access to what Bezerra considers the most valuable asset: Knowledge.
“Poor people are deprived of knowledge in this country,” said 48-year-old Bezerra.
Film school graduates of federal university UFF, including now established TV Globo telenovela creator and film director Rosane Svartman, began in 1990s to teach classes and organize workshops in Nos do Morro, tells Bezerra. They were eventually joined by filmmaker Katia Lund and legendary camera operator Dib Lutfi.
Then, at the turn of the century, director Fernando Meirelles approached Nos do Morro in his casting effort for “City of God,” the 2002-released feature, considered one of Brazil’s most important films ever. Bezerra worked on the pic’s preproduction, first searching for amateur young actors in Rio’s poor communities, then passing on her knowledge to them in acting workshops.
Bezerra, which has directed, written and stared dozens of TV shows and films, has recently helmed along with Melo “A festa de Leo,” a feature set in Vidigal and produced by Coqueirao Pictures that is now in post-production.
“Public policies and incentive money are fundamental to stimulate diversity. In the past four years, we were held back. But I’m confident about the future,” she said.
Graciela Guarani, who is a director, screenwriter and cinematographer, is a Native Brazilian of the Guarani Kaiowa people. She grew up in Jaguapiru, the 20,000-people village of the Guarani Kaiowa in an indigenous people reservation in Mato Grosso do Sul state.
In her childhood, she liked to draw and paint. As a youngster, she attended workshops of photography, screenwriting and doc and video making organized in her village run by a non-profit organization.
The 37-year-old Guarani now lives with her husband Alexandre Pankararu, in the Pankararu native people reservation in Pernambuco, in the Northeastern region of Brazil. In Pernambuco, she funded her initial productions with state incentives targeting indigenous people, women and debut directors.
Her breakthrough was feature-length doc “My Blood is Red,” which she co-directed with Thiago Dezan and Marcelo Vogelaar. The 2019 production of U.K.-based Needs Must Film, which received several prizes at international fests, features teenage poet and rapper Wera in the search for his identity amidst violence against Native Brazilians.
Guarani’s first “huge” production is “Invisible City,” a Brazilian fantasy streaming television series created by Carlos Saldanha, the director of animation feature hits, such as “Ice Age: The Meltdown,” “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” “Rio,” “Rio 2,” and “Ferdinand”. She was the assistant director of several episodes of the second season, set in the Amazon rainforest, which opened in Netflix in March. She also directed the last episode of the second season, which is still to be streamed.
Additionally, Guarani is part of the writers’ room and one of the directors of “Historias Impossiveis,” a TV Globo series starring three young Native Brazilians.
“There is a lot of talk now in Brazil about diversity. We are advancing, but still timidly. In a writers’ room, I’m always the only Native Brazilian person,” said Guarani.
Oliveira, Vicente, KondZilla, Bezerra and Guarani were speakers at Rio2C, Latin America’s largest creativity and innovation event, which took place over April 11-16.