Associação Cultural Videobrasil

In the year of the Constituent Assembly, the festival is split between television videos and experimental works

 

With the end of the civil-military dictatorship and the first direct elections, since 1960, for governor being held in 1986, the year of 1987 was a remarkable year in Brazil’s political history. The governors elected in the previous year, almost all from PMDB (a party opposing the dictatorship), took office, while the federal legislators began the works of the National Constituent Assembly — which would result in the democratic Constitution of 1988. It felt like good winds were blowing. On the other hand, Brazil was still a socially and economically unstable country: galloping inflation; declaration of a moratorium; massive labor strikes; and the poverty, hunger and violence that seemed far from ending.

 

 

It is in this context that the 5th Festival Fotoptica Videobrasil* is held, between September 9 and 14, 1987 at the Museu da Imagem e do Som (MIS), featuring a series of works that reflected this political and social situation. For the most part, these were works of a documentary nature — even if some of them also leaned towards fiction and comedy — with increasingly direct flirtations with television languages. At this point, network TV and video were already influencing each other, despite an unbalanced power game. Another significant portion of the works submitted to the fifth Videobrasil, however, expanded on their artistic and experimental research, linked to the constant innovation of languages sought by filmmakers in the 1980s. These two “currents” represented the bulk of the 50 videos selected for the Competitive Show of the edition, out of the 223 entries. 

The result of the selection: dissatisfaction on both sides. For filmmakers closer to TV, who had gone pro and gained prominence in the market within a few years, there was too much room for “amateur pieces”. An article published by Folha de S.Paulo explained the controversy: “Marcelo Machado, 29, director of the production company Olhar Eletrônico, considers it disappointing that Videobrasil isn’t as focused on TV as it should be. 'The profile of the festival's productions became more amateurish, closer to a Super-8 festival', he argues.” In contrast, there were experimental artists like Rita Moreira, who declared it was an “absurd that works produced for TV would compete with experimental ones.” Who made the most noise in the edition was Tadeu Jungle, who after having his video artistic Caipira In—made with TVDO’s Roberto Sandoval and Walter Silveira—left out of the Competitive Exhibition, accused the festival of having become an “entrance exam for television.” For him, the jury had shown itself to be “incompetent to judge the works.”

In the same piece by Folha, the response from Solange Oliveira Farkas, founder and director of Videobrasil, was emphatic: “When the organization thinks of criteria aimed more at video art and experimental videos, the production companies criticize it by saying that the festival has closed itself off to amateurism. When the selection criteria approach productions whose objective is commercialization, experimental video producers complain by claiming that the festival wants to reproduce the establishment. A balance offends both sides.”

 

 

The debate would not end there, reverberating in years to come. Be that as it may, the list of ten winners that year contemplated both sides of the story. The artistic field emerged, for example, in the surprising Uakti, one of the most striking works by the Minas Gerais-based Eder Santos up to that moment. The video featured musicians from the instrumental group Uakti playing Ravel's Bolero on water drums, while interventions with images of fish and other graphics produced unexpected visual effects. Awarded with the Grand Prize in U-matic was also Heróis da decadên(s)ia, by Tadeu Jungle and TVDO, an experimental piece with the poets Waly Salomão, Roberto Piva and Walter Silveira, a statement by Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns and scenes with musicians and actors. In protest due to the controversy with the selection, Jungle didn’t go on stage to receive the trophy.

From the current closer to TV, prizes were awarded to O mundo no ar, by Olhar Eletrônico, a parody of a television news program that mixes real facts with fiction and features the reporter Ernesto Varela, created and interpreted by Marcelo Tas; and O Homem da mala, by TV Viva—the collective that left everyone in awe with Amigo Urso the previous year—in which an actor playing a street vendor campaigns on the streets of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Recife, for the candidate to the government of Pernambuco, Miguel Arraes.

Further from the “two currents,” other highlights of the edition were works that investigated harsh aspects of the country's social reality. Among them there were Stultifera Navis, by Clodoaldo Lino and Eduardo Medrado, a documentary about the Juliano Moreira Psychiatric Colony, in Rio de Janeiro, where Arthur Bispo do Rosário had lived, with testimonials from patients and interviews with philosophers and psychologists; Beijo na boca, by Jacira Melo, addressing prostitution in the area known as “Boca do Lixo,” in downtown São Paulo; and Pivete, by Geraldo Anhaia Mello and Lucila Meirelles, a poetic documentary short filmed at Febem, a juvenile detention center located in the Tatuapé neighborhood.   

Finally, music videos, as in the fourth Videobrasil, once again took center stage, launching the careers of young Brazilian musicians. Among them there were two works directed by Antevê, Roberto Berliner and Sandra Kogut: A novidade, by Paralamas do Sucesso, featured the band members interacting with passengers on the Rio–Paquetá ferry; and Kátia Flávia, a Godiva do Irajá, performed by Fausto Fawcett e os Robôs Efêmeros, depicted the nightlife and characters of Copacabana.

 

 

Videos from around the world and parallel exhibitions

In addition to the competition, which only featured domestic videos, the foreign works exhibition consolidated the internationalization of the event, instituted mainly in the previous year—and a point of no return in the history of Videobrasil. Films from France, Germany, England and the United States headlined the festival's International Exhibition, through partnerships with the Goethe Institute, the U.S. Consulate, the Franco-Brazilian Center for Technical and Scientific Documentation and the British Council. The videos by South Korea-born and US-based artist Nam June Paik, one of the forerunners of electronic art and video art in the 1960s, were one of the main attractions. 

But it was the American Ira Schneider who was the great foreign guest at the fifth Videobrasil. The artist, who was in Brazil for the event, had a parallel exhibition entirely dedicated to his innovative oeuvre produced between 1969 and 1987. The works included a record of the nine-monitor installation Wipe Cycle, presented at Creative Medium, in 1969, an exhibition featuring Schneider, Paik and other creators, considered one of the landmarks of video art; and Night Live TV, Schneider's show broadcast on a Manhattan cable channel. For a Folha de S.Paulo news piece published in the context of the festival entitled “The video art of the ‘pope’ Ira Schneider,” the filmmaker stated that he loved seeing works by Brazilians such as José Roberto Aguilar, Geraldo Anhaia Mello and Artur Matuck.

As it was customary, Videobrasil also followed up on the technological developments, that were advancing rapidly in the second half of the 1980s. The experimental work Teleshow by Dr. Sharp, for instance, connected Matuck to the New Yorker Willoughby Sharp through the Slow Scan TV device, an incipient transmission technology that made it possible to send static images overseas. While the American performer and writer transmitted his messages, a Slow Scan installed in the MIS decoded and transmitted them to the festival's audience, generating a kind of video installation on the electronic means of worldwide communication. The Multimídia exhibition, in turn, presented eight works by Ricardo Nauemberg—responsible for Rede Globo's vignettes and opening sequences—exemplifying the creative uses of 3D models, “videographs,” lasers and animation. Still on the path of technological evolution, Videobrasil held the Video Rallye, a workshop of “video techniques” with Luiz Algarra and Alberto Blumenschein.

It is also worth mentioning the parallel exhibition Pesquisa de linguagem em TV, which presented some notable examples of the insertion of video productions in television programming over the course of the decade. Featured there were shows like Mocidade Independente and Fábrica do Som, by TVDO, the series Armação Ilimitada, by Guel Arraes, and Negro Léo, by Luís Gleiser. As Thomaz Farkas, president of Fotoptica, pointed out in his introductory text to the fifth Videobrasil: “Five years ago, the festival was a bold, visionary adventure that showed a still incredulous audience the early works of talented young artists struggling with technical and equipment difficulties to impose an activity that, at the time, simply did not exist. Today these young videomakers are already immersed in their profession, having already conquered a job market inside and outside TV networks, they already have guaranteed prestige by the success with the public and critics.” And he concluded: “Five years ago we sowed a nascent activity, whose fate was uncertain. Today we reap these fruits, with the certainty that video, alongside all its electronic ramifications, will occupy an increasing space in our lives.” 

Indeed, video was no longer a novelty, and it was conquering its place in other exhibitions nationwide, such as the Jornada de Cinema da Bahia and the Festival de Vídeo Independente de Fortaleza. That same year, video art was given an exclusive sector at the 19th São Paulo Biennial, curated by Rafael França and featuring several directors who were already regulars at VB. Among them were Artur Matuck, Olhar Eletrônico, Rita Moreira, Tadeu Jungle and Walter Silveira. Finally, 1987 was also the first year in which Videobrasil toured Brazil, taking works to such states as Minas Gerais, Rio de Janerio, Paraná, Bahia, Rio Grande do Norte, Piauí, Pernambuco and Maranhão. This national circulation would also become a recurring practice of the festival.

 

By Marcos Grinspum Ferraz

*the title used to name the main exhibition organized by Videobrasil, now called Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, has undergone adjustments over the years. The changes were based on the organizers' perception of the features of each edition, especially in regards to its format; duration; frequency; partnerships with other companies and institutions; and the expansion of the artistic languages showcased. The main adjustments to the titles of the exhibitions were: inserting the name of the partner company Fotoptica between the 2nd (1984) and 8th (1990) editions; including the word “international” between the 8th and 17th (2011) editions, from the moment the event starts to receive foreign artists and works intensively; using the term “electronic art” between the 10th (1994) and 16th (2007) editions, when the organizers realize that referring only to video did not account for all the works presented; including the name of Sesc, the show's main partner in the last three decades, from the 16th edition onwards; and replacing “electronic art” with “contemporary art” between the 17th and 21st (2019) editions, as the focus expands to varied artistic languages. The most recent change took place in 2019, in the 21st edition, when the name “festival” was replaced with “biennial,” a term more appropriate to an event that was already being held biannually and with an exhibition duration of months, not weeks.

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Images: Videobrasil Historical Collection

1. Poster of the fith Videobrasil, by Kiko Farkas.

Gallery 1
1. “Uakti”, by Eder Santos.
2. “Heróis da decadên(s)ia”, by Tadeu Jungle and TVDO.
3. Sketch of the screens in the festival's exhibition space.
4. Screens in the exhibition space of the festival.
5. “Beijo na boca”, by Jacira Melo.
6. Rita Moreira, Walter Silveira and José Luiz Nogueira.
7. “Um filme na noite”, by Paulo César Soares.

Gallery 2
1. “Pivete”, by Geraldo Anhaia Mello and Lucila Meirelles
2. Eder Santos receiving the award.
3. “O mundo no ar”, by Olhar Eletrônico.
4. The workshop “Video Rallye”.
5. “Duvideo”, by Clóvis Aidar, Conecta Video, Olhar Eletrônico, Renato Barbieri and Videoimagem.
6. Jacira Melo receiving the award.
7. “Stultifera Navis”, by Clodoaldo Lino and Eduardo Medrado.