The 18th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil will include special sessions of Eder Santos’ second film, Blue Desert. The film is a sci-fi piece shot in Brasília and in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and contains references to modernism and contemporary art.
The feature film takes place in an arid, dehumanized future, as a man is tormented by intuitions and recurring dreams of symbols and a desert. As he sets out looking for answers to his misgivings, he receives revelations, meets his soulmate and tries to reach the place of transcendence described in the film’s title. The cast features Odilon Esteves, Maria Luiza Mendonça, Ângelo Antônio and Chico Diaz. The cinematography for Blue Desert was entrusted to Pedro Farkas (A Ostra e o Vento, Um Copo de Cólera, Inocência, Os Desafinados and A Marvada Carne) and Stefan Ciupek, a digital postproduction specialist who has worked on the international productions 127 Hours, Antichrist and the Oscar-winning Who wants to be a millionaire? The soundtrack was provided by Fernanda Takai (Pato Fu) and the sets were designed by 11 cutting-edge fine artists, including Adriana Varejão, Carlito Carvalhosa, Nydia Negromonte, Rita Meyers, and Eder Santos himself.
Eder Santos was born in Belo Horizonte, where he lives and works. A prominent artist in the history of Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, Santos boasts a dense body of work in installation and video, having participated and won prizes in several Southern Panoramas editions. His first feature film, Enredando as Pessoas (1995), garnered prizes at film festivals in Havana, Cuba and Switzerland in 2006. He featured in the show Exit, at London’s Chisenhale Gallery (2000). His solo show Suspensão e Fluidez was featured at the ARCO in Madrid (Spain, 2009), and in Roteiro Amarrado, at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro (2010), both curated by Solange Farkas. His videos are a part of the collections of institutions such as the MoMA in New York and Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris, and are distributed internationally by Electronic Arts Intermix (New York) and London Electronic Arts.
The screening of Blue Desert in São Paulo signifies a dynamic which this edition has covered and reflected. Featured in 17 of the 18 Festival editions thus far, Eder Santos boasts a production marked by video and installation works – and therefore an identification with the visual arts field –, but flirts inevitably with cinema – as do the 22 artists featured in the video program of this year’s Southern Panoramas competitive show. This is why the pieces will be shown in the dark room at CineSesc rather than at the Sesc Pompeia venue.