PRISCYLA BETTIM & RENATO COELHO + MONICA DELGADO & IVONNE SHEEN
10.30.2020 - 11.30.2020
The portraits of Priscyla Bettim & Renato Coelho: In between cities and interiorities
Curated by Ivonne Sheen and Mónica Delgado (Desistfilm)
The portrait can be approached expansively; it can be put in dialogue with temporal and spatial contexts, with environments in objective and subjective ways. It can take the shape of an ethnography that, depending on the intentions of the artists or filmmakers, could give new values to the realities that are being portrayed.
However, through experimentation, these human approaches have the potential of extracting poetic essences that don't resemble any social or scientific approach. The Brazilian experimental filmmaking duo Priscyla Bettim and Renato Coelho follow this logic and manage to extract, in some of their short films, the poetic essences of portraits. They turn characters into people by gleaning their interiorities, and observing their unique and sensitive memories in relation to their respective space and territory.
Making work from Cinediario, the production company they founded in 2013, both artists create grainy and stretched black and white images in Super 8mm. Taking inspiration for a particular group of people who inhabit Sao Paulo, these images are a contribution to the construction of the imaginary of a textural and rhythmic city. For this edition of corrient.es we selected three shorts. One is dedicated to Roberto Piva and the other to Claudio Willer. These two poets shared not only a rebellious, beatnik impulse, but also a friendship–they were allies, comrades, and fond of each other's work. Piva died in Sao Paulo in 2010, and Willer still lives there.
Both of their literary oeuvres depict the ease of being, the escapes from the cities, the predominance of intuition and of the senses and, above all, they reflect on lives in constant experimentation, inside and outside poetry. This relationship between life and experimentation is observed from the sensitive eyes of Bettim & Coelho, and is shown as a chaotic rhythm of bodies and voices in a powerful and vibrant city. The third short is, in comparison to other films by the Brazilian duo, a calmer poetic portrait of trans singer-songwriter and actress Verónica Valenttino.
VISÃO 2013 PARA ROBERTO PIVA | Super 8mm | São Paulo, Brazil | 2‘ | 2013
A subversive take on the urban symphonies of the past, with anti echoes to São Paulo, Symphony of a Metropolis (1929) by Adalberto Kemeny and Rudolpho Rex Lustig was inspired by Walter Ruttmann’s classic Berlin, Symphony of a City (1927). This short film by Bettim & Coelho pays tribute to Piva in relation to the Brazilian city. In the verses of his poem “Vision of São Paulo at night”, included in the book Paranoia (1963), Piva is immersed in the frenzy of the city, creating a relationship with it from the cliffs of madness. Crowds, chaos, and buildings that give substance to a decadent, fast, absorbing and chaotic daily life; a life where there is room for rebellion. The city is reflected through scratched and broken mirrors, a ritual that is repeated in various streets, invoking and paying tribute to the spirit of Piva, who spits in and feels the city from the sewers of poetry. Subjectivities that are iseen from a non-reflection of the place they inhabit. A phrase by Piva appears on a burning paper: “I only believe in an experimental poet with an experimental life”, because even those incendiary words have to be faced, reinvented. This action also grounds Roberto Piva’s absence, the words turn into smoke, and while apparently disappear, they are also integrated into the environment, they integrate into the spirits of the Brazilian filmmakers. A tribute to a poet who is missed, but also a visual and sonic epitome of explosions, nightlife and rock, which is also invoked through the self-portrait, the frantic exploration of the city and its lights.
A PROPÓSITO DE WILLER | Super 8mm | São Paulo, Brazil | 18’ | 2016
Sao Paulo looks different through the voice and poems of Claudio Willer, although coming from the same transgressive terrains that possessed Roberto Piva. In this short, Willer’s poetic images and his voice dress the streets, the skies, the avenues. Here is Willer, the great poet and living legend of the sixties generation, in front of the camera, letting us into his universe, which Priscyla Bettim & Renato Coelho approach as a poetic encounter, in which experimental cinema becomes a powerful catalyst for his poetry. From an erotic and personal approach, the filmmakers give substance to what Willer states...or perhaps it’s the reverse: it is the images that coexist freely with the sound field of words and music. Experiential wandering in the urban and natural landscape, as an eternal power of poetry, as a force that passes through space and time, like starlight. As if Willer's poems moved them like a vital impulse. With the uncertainty of the analog medium, the filmmakers approach the vitality of the poems as contingencies that trap them. This is an act of symbiosis, or a double poetic intention, where the bodies of the poet, the filmmakers and Sao Paulo expand and contract, like living matter. Willer's presence, his face and corporality, reunite us with the complexity of poetic subjectivity, like universes that dialogue with their environment in a subversive and transforming way.
SEM TÍTULO #2 (VERÓNICA) / Super 8mm / São Paulo, Brazil / 2' / 2020
In the same vein as Roberto Piva's poems, Verónica Valenttino emerges from the darkness of São Paulo’s night as a transgressive and sensual subversion. In this short film, the face of the São Paulo based singer-songwriter and trans actress, is accompanied by the melodies of a melancholic piano with deep intensities (composed by Arrigo Barnabé) and, in the bottom of the frame, some flashes of light from the city. In a high-contrast chiaroscuro, the main focus is on the face, the gesture; we see Veronica smoking while taking a break on a tremendously black night. A city break, an intimate moment, a languid rhythm that leads us to contemplate it as a calm beast, as tenaciously nocturnal. In just over two minutes we find a profile, the footprint of a city, a decision and a look. In this film, Priscyla Bettim & Renato Coelho share a unique way of portraying, in the manner of Andy Warhol's screen tests, to capture another modality of glamour and subversion, with the final gesture of Verónica imperious, diva, full of vital force
Priscyla Bettim is a filmmaker, researcher and teacher. She has directed more than ten short films, including “Visão 2013 para Roberto Piva” (2013) and “Book of Haikais” (2014), among others. Through her work she seeks to explore her interest in experimental analog cinema. Master and PhD student in Multimedia by the State University of Campinas - Unicamp. She is currently working on the post-production of her first feature film as a screenwriter and director, “A cidade dos abismos”, made in partnership with Renato Coelho.
Renato Coelho is a filmmaker and researcher. Ha has made several short films in Super 8mm, including “The cinema according to Luiz Rô” (2013), “Trem” (2015) and “A Propósito de Willer ”(2016, in partnership with Priscyla Betttim). He is a master’s and doctoral student in the Multimedia program by Unicamp. He is currently coordinator and professor of the undergraduate program in Cinema and Audiovisual at Anhembi Morumbi University (UAM-SP). He has authored “The cinema and the criticism of Jairo Ferreira” (2015) and “Luiz Rosemberg Filho - Encontros ”(2015). Co-director of Cinediário production company, through which he is working on finishing his first feature film as a director and producer, “A cidade dos abismos” (in partnership with Priscyla Bettim).
Ivonne Sheen is an audiovisual artist, film critic and teacher. Her work and writings mainly relate to experimental audiovisual expressions, such as poetic and political exercises. She writes for the online magazine Desistfilm. She co-directs "Taller Helios", through which she has taught workshops on experimental photographic techniques and artisan cinema in Peru. Ivonne Sheens short film “Con cierto Animal” (2018) has been screened internationally at various festivals and experimental film exhibitions.
Mónica Delgado is a film critic, communicator and researcher. Co-editor of the magazine Desistfilm. She is author of the book María Wiesse en Amauta: the origins of film criticism in the Peru. She holds a masters in Literature with a major in Cultural Studies. She has been director of the Cinema Club of the University of Sciences and Humanities in Lima. Columnist at Wayka.pe. Has been jury at various international festivals such as Valdivia, Olhar de Cinema, Curtas de Belo Horizonte, Ficunam, among others.
