I like to read epigraphs, inscriptions that some authors adopt at the beginning of their books, normally borrowed from another work, as a citation. Sometimes I linger over them for a long time. When well chosen, epigraphs are never prosaic or inoffensive. In some way, they chastise the reader, or welcome them, as attentive hosts, preparing them for the story that lies ahead.
Some epigraphs raise, by themselves, good stories. One of them is in the book “Inferno”, by Dan Brown: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who have remained neutral in times of moral crisis”.
The author does not reveal the authorship of the sentence. Many claim that it is a quote from Dante Alighieri, a copy & paste of “The Divine Comedy”, although scholars of the Italian author swear up and down that this phrase does not appear in the trilogy. According to the American thinker São Google, the phrase was said by former President John F. Kennedy, who attributed it to Dante. Will it be true?
“The truth, the harsh truth”, quotes Stendhal, referring to Danton, in the first pages of “The Red and the Black”. “Until you reach the truth, you will not be able to correct it”, says José Saramago in the anteroom of “History of the Siege of Lisbon”. “However, if you don’t correct it, you won’t achieve it. However, don’t resign yourself.”
Of the more recent ones, my favorite is the epigraph that opens the book “K.”, by B. Kucinski: “Everything in this book is invention, but almost everything happened.”
I wandered through these epigraphical memories — and went to check the books on the shelf so as not to commit any injustice or misinformation — after watching the film “171”, by Rodrigo Siqueira, which opens in theaters next weekend, included in the program of the documentary festival It’s All True.
Rodrigo’s feature, incidentally, also won an epigraph, coined almost 2,000 years ago by an evangelist: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1)”. I pretended to be natural and moved on. Not before smiling: With that title, how can you debut at a festival called É Tudo Verdade? Where are the people from the Fake News CPI? Where is Alexandre de Moraes?
For those who don’t know, or pretend not to know, 171 is the number of the Penal Code article that typifies the crime of embezzlement. The wording is beautiful: “To obtain, for oneself or for another, an illicit advantage, to the detriment of others, inducing or keeping someone in error, through artifice, ruse, or any other fraudulent means”. Blow, cheat, imposture, chaô. In the plot, we see the director and his team enter a detention center. An actor narrates his story, from the stage to the first crimes. In a few moments, he appears on a set, recording a scene, directed by a filmmaker. We no longer know what is documentary and what is staging. Does the actor pretend to be a crook or does the crook pretend to be an actor? Who determines where one ends and the other begins? Wouldn’t actors and playwrights be mere swindlers who pay admission and fees?
Rodrigo Siqueira likes to test the boundaries between reality and fiction. In “Terra Deu, Terra Come”, stories, stories, legends, reminiscences, quirks and impositions of a dead man who is never seen are told. Spectators, we build the character from the reports. We learned that João Batista died at the age of 120, that he liked booze, that he buried at least one diamond around the house in fear that it would be taken from him. All true?
In another film, “Orestes”, Rodrigo proposes a psychodrama exercise and a simulated jury to touch two real and concrete wounds more deeply: state violence in the form of torture and disappearances in the years of lead and the lethality of a police force that , in a structural and systematic way, deliberately attacks black and poor young people from the periphery. Who is a police officer, who is the mother of a student executed by the PM and who is the mother of a student murdered by a young person from the periphery? What does it mean to cry out for justice? Justice for whom, and for what?
In June 2006, filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho recorded a series of interviews with 23 ordinary women in a theater in Rio de Janeiro. In the takes, they told about their lives, their relationships, their projects, their daily lives. In September, actresses went to the same stage and also recorded interviews, now playing the roles of those women. In the final montage of “Jogo de Cena”, confusion was purposely installed. Who is an actress and who is a commoner spontaneously narrating their own memories in that group? All true?
In “171”, there are six prisoner-actors, six characters looking for a release permit. Who were they and what did they do before arrest? Does the priest wrestle sumo? Does the farmer repair instruments?
In the images by João Atala, one of the great photographers of his generation, all in black and white and stitched together in Celso Vilalba’s inspired montage, we witness a game of scene similar to that proposed by Coutinho nearly two decades ago. It is to Eduardo Coutinho that Rodrigo dedicates the new film.
In recent days, much has been discussed about electoral fraud. Journalists from major newspapers, with their usual vocation for large-scale intrigue, pulled the strings of outraged moralists. The fiscal framework, if oiled according to the guidelines inscribed in a wide range of comments and editorials — with all the ceilings and constraints demanded by the Faria Lima gang — could justify the accusation of electoral fraud, they said, something that no one had attributed to the new government before those same newspapers did.
On the contrary, what had been commented on the eve of Lula’s 100th day in the Presidency was essentially the opposite: if he did not remove Correios and EBC from the list of privatizable companies, Lula would commit electoral fraud, pointed out some debaters and columnists. Even the president of the PT, Gleisi Hoffman, tried to frame the Minister of Mines and Energy, stating that he must appoint advisers to Petrobras who follow the government’s guidelines and are in accordance with what was promised in the campaign. “Electoral larceny cannot,” she said.
The hood of embezzlement would perhaps fit like a glove in sectors of the press that claim to promise a supposedly impartial, supposedly impartial journalism. As well as certain police officers and law enforcement officers who do not hesitate to jump to earn a change at the first opportunity for bribery, reincorporating, minutes later, the pose of incorruptible agent, defender of morals, bastion of justice and good man.
Have you ever noticed the Herculean ability that religious leaders have to commit serious sins and heinous crimes? And have you noticed how the big scandals involving drug trafficking and pornography tend to indicate the protagonism or complicity of those who often preach against turmoil and bad customs? And when a Twitter spokesperson says that the platform is concerned with democracy, with the democratic rule of law? What’s 171 out there…
“171” will have four screenings at É Tudo Verdade. First in Rio de Janeiro, this Friday (14th), at 8 pm, on NET Botafogo, and this Saturday (15th), at 6 pm, on NET Rio. Afterwards, he arrives in São Paulo for two other sessions. On Sunday (16th), at 7 pm, at Cinemateca Brasileira, and on Tuesday (18th), at 8:30 pm, at Cine Vitrine. Admission is free and tickets will be distributed one hour before. It will be?
#true #country