• THE FESTIVAL •
“(…) she knows that it is necessary to go on as it is—without detaching the dreams on the screen from the
dreams on the streets, the singular from the collective, the imagination from the act.”
Kênia Freitas and Ingá Patriota
And here we are, amidst the joy of this 24th FestCurtasBH in which the Cine Humberto Mauro and other spaces of the Palácio das Artes are once again our main dwelling, welcoming the presence and coexistence resumed in all its exuberance. After two editions in which face-to-face encounters eluded us and online or hybrid ones imposed themselves in a context of unimaginable sanitary and political challenges, the warmth of the in-person gatherings reawakens us to the beauty and vitality of being together.
If in 2021 the philosopher Dénètem Touam Bona encouraged us to learn “practices of alliance and solidarity” with the liana, which “in its vertiginous course embodies the power to traverse and be fed by what it traverses (and vice versa)”, in 2022 we sought to remain impregnated with this vegetal sensibility to dedicate ourselves to the mutual affecting between cinema and dreams, to the potency of dreams—with eyes closed or open—to imagine and create worlds inside and outside the movie theater. Inviting Kênia Freitas and Ingá Patriota, two of the most fundamental partners in the recent editions of FestCurtasBH, soon came up as essential and gave rise to the beautiful section with eyes open, there is someone who dreams, with films, conversations and a set of texts that illuminate the discussion through different perspectives, but always closely engaged in the lived and active experience. Alberto Alvares, Sueli Maxakali, Isael Maxakali, Roberto Romero, Elizabeth Povinelli, Luara Dal Chiavon, Cadu Souza and Wellington Lenon (the last three, members of the Audiovisual Brigade Eduardo Coutinho, of the MST) bring inspired contributions that join two texts from the curators who invite us to participate in their generous and restless curatorial process. We also have the exquisite work of Emmanuel Lefrant, who, at our invitation, programmed the Soft Dreams section, highlighting the historically fertile relationships between dreams and avant-garde films. To conceive it, the French curator immersed himself in the archive of Light Cone, the main European distributor of experimental films, which is directed by Lefrant and celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. He also co-programmed, in partnership with Brazilian curator and researcher Lucas Murari, a program equally made up of films from the Light Cone collection, this time in dialogue with the recently released book Expanded Nature – Écologies du cinéma expérimental [Expanded Nature – Ecologies of experimental cinema], edited by the same distributor. And the dream expanded beyond the confines of the movie theater in the fascinating exhibition To Dream Images of Transformation, by artist Efe Godoy. With more than 140 works, the exhibition presents itself as a living body in motion, with several works being created and transformed throughout the exhibition period. In the Third Open Notebook published in this catalogue, we seek “once again in painting, writing and drawing ways to express some of the aspects dreamed of by the Festival: historical struggles, the transforming present, ancestry”. And the fifth edition of the Corpo Crítico [Critical Body] critique workshop is once again mentored by the duo Ingá Patriota and Fabio Rodrigues Filho, with a powerful and timely proposal entitled A brazier: “When a wall separates, a bridge unites”.
With several other developments and overflows that can be glimpsed throughout this publication, the 24th FestCurtasBH summons, freely borrowing the words from Kênia and Ingá, to “the act of collectively dreaming, with our eyes open, in a movie theater”.
Ana Siqueira, Matheus Antunes and Vitor Miranda
Head of FestCurtasBH