Brazil is famous because its beaches, its music, its soccer; however, anyone would say Brazil is famous because its movies.
We never had a tradition of film industry, although from time to time a Brazilian film become a big hit in the country; to cite, it recently happened with City of God and Elite Squad.
During much time I wondered why those movies made success, while the destiny of the most part of the contemporary Brazilians movies it is to be screened a couple of times on film festivals and then become a precious asset in the drawer of the filmmaker.
What is present in those absolutely popular movies that is lacking in the movies of my friends and in my own smal experiments.
Money, of course, it is the first reason, we do not have an industry down here.
To fund a movie, a producer has to endeavour through a tortuous and bureaucratic path through public funding oportunities, asides make a lot of politics and had a good bit of luck.
Despite this fact, I still kept thinking that we lack of something more.
I did not do any scientific research to base this idea and I was guided by my intuition to rationalize this: Brazilians movies, specially movies made by young filmmakers, lack of narrative structure, of technique and qualified staff.
The fact that we do not have a film industry here led our filmmakers to treat a movie rather as a piece of art then a product to be sold.
Brazilian filmmakers wat to do great films, want to make great success; but they do not know how to do that, because we are not used to that.
City of God and Elite Squad were succesful because during the time they were made its directors and screenwriters took into consideration basics pillars of storytelling.
Storytellers are present in the human history since its beginning.
The social role of a filmmaker is not much different of a bard, both come to this world to entertain, thrill and make think.
A screenwriter is just a craftsman and like any craft in the world, screenwriting can be learnt.
July 2013
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