Opinion – Normalitas: The Brazil of the streets arrives in Spain with “Olho da Rua”, by Jonathas de Andrade

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–Fascist system, our time is coming!

On the movie screen, a man screams. Editing is intentional, always is. Screaming like the scream of a man in a public square, surrounded by crowds of faces.

From his black t-shirt, the necessary stamp of raised fist emerges, a reference to the day of the struggle of the homeless population.

He, like the bystanders, is homeless. In this film, they are all protagonists.

The documentary/video installation “Olho da Rua”, by Alagoas artist Jonathas de Andrade, with a soundtrack by Homero Basílio, lands in Madrid after passing through the Venice Biennale at a lunatically necessary moment. It is necessary to talk about Brazel in this old European-mundane continent, it is necessary to expand Brazel.

The 25-minute film is an illustrious part of the International Festival of Performing Arts (IDEM, its Spanish acronym). It will be on display at Casa Encendida, a cultural center in the same chic surroundings as the Reina Sofia and Prado Museums, until October 30th.

See, see. Augusto Boal and his Teatro do Oprimido take a deep breath in the work, which breaks down walls between staging and life.

In this case, life on the streets of Recife, my beloved and broken Recife, where I was born and barely grew up.

Filmed in two days at Praça do Hipódromo, the cast is made up of a hundred people living on the streets, gathered from Andrade’s contact with public shelters and NGOs that support the population in a situation of socioeconomic vulnerability.

Socioeconomic: euphemism for poverty, exclusion, fucked up, in the eye-of-the-street. And no, none of that.

Andrade is Brazil’s representative at this year’s Venice Biennale and honored by the Pinacoteca in São Paulo with a retrospective of his work (on display until 02/28/2023).

In an interview, he told the Spanish newspaper El Confidencial:

“The Bolsonaro government is an enemy of human rights, and its policies translate into a large number of people living on the streets, without access to health care, people who were not supported during the pandemic because the government did not work to bring them vaccines or give support”.

“I wanted to make a film with them, with these people who live in a situation of giant invisibility in the logic of the city, designed for those who have a home, work, access to education or health care,” he said.

“And the idea of ​​the film was to think of a camera that was very close to them and make invisibility transmute into brightness and possibility.”

“Olho da Rua” is divided into eight acts. In each one, exercises of looking, interpreting and releasing: facing the camera directly, admiring yourself in the mirror, saying what you have to say, what you want, what comes out. The street as a stage, the street as a house, individual and collective.

“I thought that hunger would be the guiding thread of everything, but when I started talking to them and approached the social workers, I realized that hunger was not the axis, but the rupture of a social pact that is related to a colonial Brazil, a country that has not managed to create policies of reparation and integration within the capitalist dynamic and that allows the State to protect only the ruling elites”, he adds.

***

If Neymar can ask his followers to vote for Bolsillonaro, I, who am nobody but I am me, can say: no. My heart can no longer / Live like this, torn apart —

This Sunday, here in Barcelona, ​​I will vote. Vote, don’t leave. Whatever. Let’s dance to the beat of this trendy demodé horrorizê unequalite. Bye, bye bye.

“Olho da Rua”, by Jonathas de Andrade

daily view
La Casa Encendida – Torreon 2
10 am – 9.30 pm
Free of charge

Until October 30, 2022

(Follow my profile on Instagram)

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