Associação Cultural Videobrasil

VÍDEO-OLHO

Soviet cinema invented the “cine-eye.” We are introducing the “Video-Eye.” Much larger and, luckily, much more accessible, with a chance of escaping the Orwellian eye, because it offers freedom of choice.

According to estimates, we should have over 1 million videocassetes in use. Much more than movie projectors – 8 mm, 16 mm or 35 mm. They are, after all, simpler, easier and can be in everyone’s home.

Even though it is still reserved to a privileged class, we can already forecast that videocassete players will be at schools, clubs, unions, much earlier than imagined.

This is not simply another new or additional market. We believe this is a unique, galloping, devastating cultural fact.

Its users will be able to choose: the variety of genres – is still restricted, but is available to whoever is able to express themselves through it.

Video clubs, like film societies, will show tapes of a different nature and audiences will have access to a variety of genres, if they so desire – research videos; video art; documentaries; dance; music; sports; hobbies; and whatever else gets invented. In addition to imported material, we are seeing the emergence of our own material, with equivalent quality. And consequently we are seeing a huge, very voracious audience that wants to see, listen and feel. To have fun and to learn. Well, all it takes is to knock and enter.

ANTENA LIVRE

And so we arrive at the III VIDEOBRASIL. It seems that in the year of the foundation of the New Republic, we will see the growth of the movement that is proposing modifications to the Brazilian telecommunications system. Some of the proposals society is outlining for the industry have been registered in myriad public manifestations, seminars, congresses, not to mention the bills drafted by National Congress. They all point towards changes that will favor the access of the population and its organizations to the means of communication. VIDEOBRASIL is striving to centralize the political desires of industry operators, and collaborating to pave the way for those who produce, but cannot find the means to publicize their work. This function of the Festival became evident from the start: at the opening of the first edition of VIDEOBRASIL, journalist Goulart de Andrade offered time on TV Gazeta to the production company Olhar Eletrônico. Other groups have begun occupying small spaces at TV channels, but we are still far from fully exercising the right to communication and information. A case in point is the fact that in these three years, we still have not managed to get the Festival on air, despite its proven importance and representativeness. Society, however, develops its own defenses. Today, the existence of pro-community radio and TV movements is palpable. Some opt for piracy, in a gesture of radical transgression, but most strive to find legal alternatives. One example are the TVs that have emerged in inland cities, equipped with portable cameras and recorders, which are used for recording and playing back aspects of local living, of the memories of cities, and later made public on TV sets in bars, public squares, party offices and unions. Considering this scenario and counting on the consensus of several video and film production companies, we are taking advantage of the III VIDEOBRASIL to propose the discussion of these issues at a political level. We believe audiovisual creators, who are still outliers to the major networks, deserve their own channel of expression.

This Festival should develop a concrete proposal to underpin a request for a UHF channel for the community. An access space. A free antenna.

UM FESTIVAL DE TERCEIRA GERAÇÃO

Unlike Super 8, which had no time to mature technologically or intellectually, video is growing and appearing as prematurely as computers did before.

The only risk posed by this sensitive technology, at the service of culture and information, is that the toy will be kept by creators, and the instrument, by the monopolies.

Over time, every expression of the creative values of societies has become canonized through its own narcissuses. A mirror without whose reflection the artistic product would not be nor stay. At times through matter, at others through the medium.

What would be made of Phidias without marble or of Giotto without a good wall? Or even of Napoleon without an army?

The modern narcissus, expanded amidst all of the stimuli that have ever instigated men, is television. Whereas cinema has fed nearly an entire century of fictional characters, video works on man by representing its own role. Festival VIDEOBRASIL, the 3^rd generation of MIS-FOTOPTICA, ushers in this new dialogue between young people and the eternal Dr Faustus near the end of the century, in the International Year of Youth. Only this time we don’t want to sell our souls to the devil. Since we have the mirror, then let it be the reflection of men, and not only of the hand that wields the camera.