{"id":19405,"date":"2014-11-29T01:48:22","date_gmt":"2014-11-29T04:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=19405"},"modified":"2015-12-19T16:31:44","modified_gmt":"2015-12-19T19:31:44","slug":"circuito-cinegrada-black-cinema-showcased-celebrated-as-black-awareness-month-comes-to-an-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=19405","title":{"rendered":"Circuito Cinegrada: Black Cinema Showcased & Celebrated as Black Awareness Month Comes to an End"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Black protagonism in cinema is being promoted across Rio de Janeiro in November, in honor of Brazil’s\u00a0Black Awareness Month<\/a>. The film festival\u00a0Circuito Cinegrada<\/a>\u00a0is a project run by\u00a0CRUA – Coletivo Criativo da Rua (Creative Street Collective)<\/a>, an organization that uses art as a tool of cultural resistance in marginalized communities.<\/p>\n

Black Cinema<\/b><\/h3>\n

The festival began earlier this month and ends today,\u00a0November 29. It celebrates Black Awareness Month with 17 film exhibitions in 15 locations across Rio and sister city Niter\u00f3i by showing films that have exclusively black protagonists and producers.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t see black cinema,\u201d explained Rafael Ferreira, a CRUA group member. \u201cNow you have films like\u00a012 Years a Slave<\/em>\u00a0but that is an American film that has a language different than that of a black Brazilian film. You don\u2019t see them in the theaters. Black films have a hard time making it to the screens.\u201d<\/p>\n

CRUA was formed last year by a group of young students in\u00a0Complexo da Mar\u00e9<\/a>. CRUA embraces and promotes several art forms including theater and music. The film club was initially a project aimed to focus on Brazilian cinema, but it turned into an effort to give local and international black filmmakers a platform to showcase and spread their work in Rio, Ferreira\u00a0said. The CRUA headquarters are located in the\u00a0Hotel da Loucura<\/a>\u00a0in Engenho de Dentro, where they host film screenings every week.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf Our Color\u201d at Penha<\/b><\/h3>\n

Last Saturday November 22, Circuito Cinegrada was brought to\u00a0Penha<\/a>, in the\u00a0North Zone<\/a>\u00a0of Rio, to screen a set of short films produced by local filmmakers. The screening was also part of a\u00a0larger ongoing Black Awareness Month community event, \u201cDa Cor Da Gente<\/a>\u201d\u00a0(Of Our Color).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jorge Adolfo Freire e Silva, organizer of the Penha event, said the goal is to provide quality programming to celebrate Black Awareness Month and to present the community with resources to discuss\u00a0Afro-Brazilian culture<\/a>, specifically by introducing the many existing organizations like CRUA that already tackle such issues to the community. The event occurred as a result of several partnerships with\u00a0Foto Clube Alem\u00e3o<\/a>\u00a0(Complexo do Alem\u00e3o Photo Club) and the rap group\u00a0Mal\u00edcia Urbana Crew<\/a>, among others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe partner is independent and brings their own crowd,\u201d Freire e Silva said. \u201cWith CRUA, they created their event, they called on their audience, they let people know–\u2018We\u2019re going to be at Penha.’ We just provided the space, they have autonomy in production.\u201d<\/p>\n

Film Screenings and Debates<\/b><\/h3>\n

The films screened on Saturday at Penha stimulated lively debates on issues of religion, politics, and culture.<\/p>\n

The first film screened was\u00a0\u00d3na<\/em>, a 5-minute fiction film that follows\u00a0a young poet through the community\u00a0known as Little Africa in the\u00a0Port region<\/a>\u00a0of downtown Rio. The youth walks barefoot through the neighborhood at night and often stops to perform good deeds. All the while, the film cuts to a scene where the same young poet prepares an offering for\u00a0Ex\u00fa<\/a>, a messenger spirit in the Afro-Brazilian religion of\u00a0Candombl\u00e9<\/a>. The message asks for the freeing of his people, who continue to suffer from racism. The film highlights prejudices associated with black aesthetics and culture.<\/p>\n

The discussion that followed centered on the common perception of “black” as negative, and how the film presented the opposite of that. The producers explained that even during the making of the short film, the scene of the offering attracted some skeptical looks\u00a0from community residents, which certifies\u00a0the\u00a0common stigma surrounding Afro-Brazilian religions.<\/p>\n

CRUA also screened\u00a0Sub\u00farbio e o Centro (The Suburb and the City Center)<\/em>, a documentary produced by\u00a0Canal Molambo<\/a>. The documentary explored how the communities in the suburbs were culturally influenced by the city\u2019s downtown Port region, known as\u00a0Little Africa<\/a>. The documentary focuses on Festa da Penha, a historic festival that combined Portuguese Catholic tradition with African culture that lost popularity by the end of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Tuninho \u201cTropical\u201d Almeida<\/a>, a musician and advocate for the re-establishment of the Festa da Penha, was featured in the film and attended the screening. He discussed the parallels between the former prohibition of samba and capoeira and the present prejudice surrounding funk and rap music, two popular musical tools of protest. He also encouraged youth to mobilize against government efforts\u00a0designed to forget the history of the city<\/a>, such as that of the Festa da Penha. The identity of the city is not only what it currently is, Almeida said, but also what it used to be.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The screening concluded with the documentary\u00a0Can\u00e7\u00f5es de Liberdade (Songs of Freedom)<\/em>, produced by David Aynan. The five-minute film featured an interview with Seu Djalma, a leader in the\u00a0quilombo<\/a>\u00a0community of Bananeira in Ilha de Mar\u00e9, Bahia. Djalma discusses, through music, the issues faced by the community residents and their battle to gain ownership of land and preserve their island.<\/p>\n

CRUA will conclude their Black Awareness Month film festival today with a\u00a0mega-event art showcase on November 29 at the Hotel da Loucura<\/a>. There will be\u00a0workshops, film screenings, theater performances, music and other activities. Organizers hope the event will \u00a0bring the absence of black representation in the social and artistic spheres to light, and encourage discussions about solutions to increase\u00a0representation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Black protagonism in cinema is being promoted across Rio de Janeiro in November, in honor of Brazil’s\u00a0Black Awareness Month. The film festival\u00a0Circuito Cinegrada\u00a0is a project run by\u00a0CRUA – Coletivo Criativo da […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":19456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1333,1268,1329],"tags":[662,396,1041,1500,756,221,602,577,37,193,148,124,123],"writer":[1453],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-event-reports","8":"category-favelaculture","9":"category-by-international-observers","10":"tag-afro-brazilian-culture","11":"tag-art","12":"tag-black-awareness-month","13":"tag-candomble","14":"tag-community-organizing","15":"tag-favela-culture","16":"tag-film","17":"tag-inclusion","18":"tag-north-zone","19":"tag-penha","20":"tag-port-region","21":"tag-race","22":"tag-religion","23":"writer-elma-gonzalez"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19405"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=19405"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=19405"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=19405"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=19405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}