Telmo Maia Movies
- 2007
Documentarian Maria Ramos's sociocultural portrait Behave (a companion piece to her 2004 Justice) offers a stark, ascetic, and despairing cross section of the troubled Brazilian juvenile court system and detention centers. At the film's core -- its nerve center -- lies the sheer inefficiency of the system in question, laden with such an overwhelming number of cases that few can be processed effectively and even fewer accused individuals receive sentencing. Consequently, the courts are doing virtually nothing to address the young criminal element spreading virally over the Brazilian streets. To make her case, Ramos hones in on three specific judicial instances -- that of a young man accused of bicycle theft, two young women jointly accused of mugging a pedestrian, and a young man who responded to continual paternal abuse by committing patricide. Later in the film, with dispassionate intensity (letting the horror of the onscreen images speak for themselves), Ramos moves into visual documentation of Brazilian detention centers and jail cells, with wretched, disease-conducive living conditions that cry out for reform. The filmmaker faced an unusual challenge in shooting this film: a local law that forbade her from shooting accused youngsters in documentary mode. To work around it, Ramos devised the clever coup of filming the judge from behind the accused, and editing in actors who resembled the defendants when she wished to show the juveniles' reactions. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Luciana Fiala, Alessandro Jardim, (more)
- 1999
Marcos Bernstein, the co-writer of Central Station (1998), spins this gorgeously photographed, humanistic portrait of a family patriarch in the waning years of his life. Anthony Quinn plays Giuseppe, the aging head of a large family of Italians living in Curitiba, Brazil. While his great-grandchildren's lives drift in separate directions -- one great-grandson wrestles with nudging the family pasta business in a new direction as a great-granddaughter decides to take the plunge into acting -- Giuseppe is troubled when a relative makes a sudden visit from Italy. She looks exactly like his beloved wife, who died in an unexplained plane crash. One day, he summons his strength, rises from his wheelchair, and walks along the beach to reminisce about his past love. Oriundi was screened at the 1999 Vancouver Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Quinn, Paulo Betti, (more)
Based on a popular Brazilian novel by Jorge Amado, this lively drama slyly comments upon Brazilian society while telling a tale of reconciliation and subtle revenge had at the hands of the fast-living titular character, a woman who 26 years before was banished from her remote home village of Sant'Ana do Agreste for promiscuity. Cloaked in mystery, she returns home from Sao Paulo. The residents who welcome her know that she is recently widowed from a wealthy man and that she has been sending money to the family, but they know nothing else. The still fantastic looking Tieta is accompanied by her step-daughter Leonora. Still jealous, Tieta's wallflower sister Perptua, who is also a widow, secretly conspires with their father to learn the truth about the scandalous Tieta who is busy stirring up erotic trouble amongst the town's most pious hypocrites. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1986
- PG
This drama concerns the clash of two worlds in the person of a young boy. The small boy (Alessandro Rabelo) is the offspring of a missionary who died before the he was born, and a Native American who is later killed by white prospectors. Father O'Reilly (Charles Durning) comes to hear about the legend of the orphan born to a holy man and a "sorceress" and guesses the truth about his parentage. He manages to bring the young boy to a Catholic orphanage where the lad is confronted with "civilized" behavior and is quite shocked by it. Meanwhile, Father O'Reilly is having second thoughts as the boy indirectly teaches him something about the values of his "primitive" culture. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Durning, Alessandro Rabelo, (more)
