Arrigo Barnabe Movies
A docudrama about the economic and social disparity between Brazil's upper and lower classes, Chronically Unfeasible was filmed over a five-year period as a fictionalized documentary. Director Sergio Bianchi trains his camera on ineffective union organizers, street children who fight over their toys, police engaging in random acts of brutality, and a black maid who is humiliated by the bourgeois family whom she has known almost all her life. Central to the film are scenes that take place at a restaurant, where a snotty middle-class couple picks at their food, a manager tries to make something of her life, and a young waiter is fired for sleeping with his boss. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- 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)
- 1987
São Paolo is a city with many faces. For tourists, it is still a glamorous hotspot, and it boasts a thriving downtown with many skyscrapers. The favelas on its outskirts play host to hordes of displaced peasants from the countryside. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the city has its criminal underside which comes to life at night. Through flashbacks, the story of Shirley and Anjo, two ordinary denizens of the underworld, are told by a man sitting at the bar in a nightclub. Neither of them is loyal, trustworthy, clean or brave, but there is an unspoiled quality about them that inspires hope even when they are betraying each other. They are victims of two closely allied forces: a corrupt, heroin-addicted police chief, and a "Japo," a Brazilian/Japanese gang lord who rules the roost in the section of town where his people live. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carla Camurati, Arrigo Barnabe, (more)
- 1987
Brazilian teenager Vera (Ana Beatriz Nogueria) is released from the orphanage where she has spent most of her life. Her brutal experiences while a ward of the State have caused her to adopt masculine dress and mannerisms--a successful effort to wield power over her fellow orphans. On the outside, Vera finds shelter and a job through the auspices of a benevolent professor (Raul Cortez). While still in male garb, Vera develops a chaste relationship with a female coworker (Aida Leiner). Unable to consummate the relationship, Vera undergoes a great deal of inner torment, at one point considering a sex change. The end of this provocative but non-sensational film finds Vera coming to grips with her femininity, even though her future happiness is still up in the air. 18-year-old Ana Beatriz Nogueria won a Berlin Film Festival best actress award for her astonishingly mature performance in Vera. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ana Beatriz Nogueira, Raul Cortez, (more)
- 1986
This densely-packed and odd docudrama refers back to Orson Welles' 1942 visit to Brazil to make a movie called "It's All True." Using newsreel footage from that period, re-enactments of his visit, and excerpts from his movies and radio shows, director Rogerio Sganzerla seems to imply that politics intervened in Welles' project, cutting it short. At the same time, Welles is not always painted in a complementary light, whether intentionally or not. Before the final curtain comes down, it is revealed that Paramount Studios found several hundred reels belonging to Welles' Brazilian stay. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Arrigo Barnabe, Grande Otelo, (more)
- 1983
In this slightly academic film, Janete (Nice Marinelli) has escaped the reformatory where she was forced into lesbian relationships to survive, and she sleeps her way from one truck driver to the next until she arrives at her destination -- a circus that offers her work and where she begins a love affair. This brief fling at happiness ends abruptly when she is raped by a local police chief who then contrives to arrest her so as to force her into sex once again. Janete then faces the dilemma of remaining with her lover and being sexually abused by the police official, or leaving and abandoning the one relationship that meant something to her. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
