Oh, if every cinema had Moving Screens!
The peripheral collective makes cinema the tool of resistance, struggle and hope.
Credit: Disclosure
By: Renato Silva / Lupa do Bem – Favela em Pauta
Just imagine: someone who doesn’t have the structure of a company, even a support or resources, but still thinks about a project with the desire to democratize cinema, audiovisual production, in the outskirts of Pará, in the north of Brazil. Some people might think it’s a dream, but not for the creators of Telas em Movimento, the project responsible for the 1st Film Festival of the Periphery of the Amazon.
The collective is carried out by Negritar Filmes e Produções in partnership with several audiovisual and cultural production companies. Among them are film clubs and supporters, who together directly influence the popularization of the seventh art and especially access to this audiovisual production for those who historically have not accessed the necessary means to build narratives from their perspectives.
Moving towards the fourth edition of the festival, Telas em Movimento debuted in 2019, stimulating a new dynamic of creation, perception and reception of the seventh art in the outskirts of Pará. And according to organizers, it has already benefited the entire audiovisual chain, including its agents and receivers in various peripheral regions and islands of the state’s capital.
The actress, journalist and social entrepreneur, Joyce Cursino, one of the co-creators of the collective, recalls that after coming into contact with local film production, realizing how access to resources was restricted to an excluding group, that of white men, decided to look for alternatives and create Telas em Movimento. “And then, based on these experiences, I decided to create this festival. With the help and also from this experience with these other people who already make resistance cinema, through film clubs, and independent projects in the periphery. So, we came together in this process, in a big umbrella, to echo these voices and these narratives from the perspective of those who live them, who compose them, who are the people from the periphery”, says Joyce.
Movies for all genders!
Telas em Movimento follows a script to break social standards, which are also established within the audiovisual market. The collective, which was born with inclusion at the helm, is also an organization formed by black people and in its last edition, the 3rd Film Festival of the Periphery of the Amazon had for the first time an honoree: Leona Vingativa, who is considered the first YouTuber in the country and a pioneer in audiovisual production on the outskirts of the capital of Pará.
Therefore, the creation and conduction of the collective are conducted from three pillars, as pointed out by co-creator Joyce Cursino: art, education and politics, and bringing Leona as an honoree of the festival is also to guide this policy, of visibility of these artists. trans and this population that is so marginalized. “The festival has this role of making people assume, using the tools they have, the direction of their stories. Build narratives through audiovisual. And the LGBTQIA+ population is included in this process”, adds Cursino.
The director, researcher and master in cinema Uriel Pinho considers it’s important to highlight the advance, through the mobilizations for public policies carried out in the past, so that LGBTQIA+ bodies and agendas could be present in these spaces of cultural production, and points to the guarantee of a future. “I think it’s fundamental to question cisheteronormativity, showing that someone like Leona is a precursor, an artistic and political reference, for example. This opens up several possibilities to analyze her work, make visible who came before and guarantee the place of others who will come”, comments Pinho.
Looking to the future, the researcher considers that the situation of inequality will not end if it is not exposed and points out the necessary steps for society to continue advancing. “Peripheral, non-white and LGBTQIA+ populations have even more unequal access to work in the audiovisual sector within Pará itself. I think that considering this is fundamental for us to collectively build new policies, new works and new circuits”, he concludes.
Screens of the future
Despite having the festival’s biggest moment of the season, the collective works throughout the year with various micro-actions, such as during the pandemic with actions to combat the effects of the coronavirus and other complementary activities.
One of these actions was the Telas da Esperança initiative, a show with four animations performed by children from riverside communities, quilombolas and the outskirts of Belém do Pará, during isolation in 2020, in workshops that lasted 1 month.
As in the initiative with the children, the collective remains fully operational and in September and October it will have a new training cycle until the next festival, which is scheduled for September. The theme will be “Strengthening Identities in the Amazon”.
There will be several agents representing their territories to talk about the identity process. They will be indigenous people, riverside people, and people from the periphery bringing this identity perspective of the region.
Moving Screens Services – Project to democratize access to the seventh art🎬
Website: www.telas-emmovimento.org (temporarily offline)
