Filmmaker tries to jump-start Brazil’s movie industry
Fernando Meirelles, director of the Oscar-winning (best supporting actress) movie The Constant Gardner, is to launch a new series of movies out of Brazil, and Focus Features has taken the bait:
The 2005 film “The Constant Gardner” won acclaim at film festivals and an Oscar for best supporting actress Rachel Weisz. Now the film’s Brazilian director is harnessing his fame to jump-start his country’s struggling movie industry.
Fernando Meirelles has signed a three-year deal with Universal Pictures and its Focus Features unit to bring Brazilian-made films, in English as well as Portuguese, to the studio.
I never really thought The Constant Gardner deserved anything close to an Oscar. Like Crash, it was filled with self-importance and subscribed to yet another artsy cliche: Set a movie in Africa, include lots of footage of poverty along with grainy African images, and then don’t bother with a compelling plot.
What I find interesting is that having a dictatorship actually helped its movie industry, which didn’t go downhill until after the dictatorship collapsed:
Brazilian cinema got its start in 1930 and reached its apex during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, when the government created the state-run giant Embrafilme to promote Brazilian culture as part of a national development project called “Big Brazil.” After the films were produced they were turned over to the government for censorship.
Related posts: Movie sales at theaters are on the rise while DVD sales are down
