Τhe Pharos Trust is presenting the Third Brazilian Film Festival, organized in the context of the Brazilian Culture Month,
with the screening of six films around the theme of  «Women in Brazilian Society».

The films will be projected throughout the month of October - All screenings start at 8:00pm - All films are in Portuguese with English subtitles.
 

MONDAY OCTOBER 2  

A Pessoa e Para o que Nasce/ Born to be Blind 

Roberto Berliner, Brazil, 2005, 85΄, (Documentary)

www.borntobeblind.com

Three blind sisters, linked by an extraordinary twist of fate, spend their lives singing and playing ganzá for spare change on the streets and in the marketsof poverty 

stricken northeast Brazil.This documentary follows the daily chores of these women and how they survive on their own. Their captivating story, though not without humor, 

depicts a complex tale of love and death, anguish and art. The story accompanies the unexpected turn in their lives as a result of the film; the power of cinema which 

transforms them into celebrities. Both the director and the subjects of the film face the ties that bind them, revealing the risks and seductions of the documentarian’s work.

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 4

Um Ceu Estrelas/ A Starry Sky
Tata Amaral, Brazil, 1996, 70΄
Paulo Vespúcio Garcia, Leona Cavalli, Lígia Cortez, Néa Simões, Norival Rizzo, Rosa Petrim

Dalva is packing her suitcase to leave for Miami in search of a better life. She is abandoning her nagging mother, a passionate but chauvinistic ex-boyfriend, and a life in the doldrums. Victor, the boyfriend in question, arrives unexspectedly and forces his way in, spoiling Dalva's attempt to leave secretly. He desperately tries to persuade Dalva to take him back, and after a song and a dance she starts to give in. Still harbouring affections for him, Dalva listens to him with a mix of patience and suspicion.

Victor is a man living on the edge, out of work and looking for ways to survive: it's clear he had it easy living with Dalva. When her mother arrives and sees Victor, she orders him out of the apartment, but he lashes back and locks her in the bathroom. What started as a desperate act of reconciliation rapidly deteriorates into a kidnapping, and then to murder, rape and other acts of sickening violence as Victor strives to reassert his authority and keep Dalva in his life. As the police close in, however, Dalva strikes back.

MONDAY OCTOBER 9
 

Carreiras
Domingos de Oliveira, Brazil, 2005, 72΄
Paulo Carvalho, Domingos de Oliveira,Jorge Jerônimo Dos Santos, Fábio Floretina, Priscilla Rozenbaum 

Whilst snorting grams of cocaine, the attractive and well educated 40 year old Ana Laura,
television anchor woman faces her "long night of madness” trying to break away from the “system”. 
Her anguish is provoked at having lost her status within her television station, now being passed over by younger women. As day breaks, a surprise awaits her, making her think 
back to the previous chain of events.

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 11

Garotas do ABC/ Girls from ABC
Carlos Reichenbach, Brazil, 2005, 130΄
Michelle Valle, Vanessa Alves, Natália Lorda, Lucielle di Camargo, Vanessa Goulart,
Fernanda Carvalho Leite, Marcia de Oliveira, Viviane Porto, Lina Agifu, Kelly di Bertolli, Ana Cecília, Mariana Loureiro, Antonio Pitanga, Rocco Pitanga, Ângela Correa

Aurélia, a young black woman who works at a factory and lives in a working-class neighborhood in São Paulo, is seeing Fábio Tavares, who gets involved with a racist neo-nazi group. Originally conceived as a 6 films, each separately covering the lives of each of the factory's workers. Due to the overwhelming difficulty of making films in Brazil, director 'Carlos Reichembach' was obligated to shoot only one picture.
 

MONDAY OCTOBER 16

Dia de Festa/ House- warming party
Toni Venturi & Pablo Georgieff, Brazil, 2006, 77’, (Documentary)

Four women with similar pasts live in a country marked by great social disparities. They have in common a poor and hard working childhood in the fields.
They all married, had children and were abandoned by their husbands. They also left the countryside and moved to the big city in search of a better life.
After living in the streets of São Paulo, they encountered a social/political movement which gave them a strong reason to live. Today these women are the leaders of the MSTC Movement of the Homeless of the Centre of São Paulo, Brazil. A touching film that follows the day by day of seven simultaneous mass occupations of empty buildings seen trough the eyes of these tough, vibrant and sensitive women.
 

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 18

Filhas do Vento/ Daughters of the Wind
Joel Zito, Brazil, 2005, 85΄
Thalma de Freitas, Maria Ceica, Tais Araujo

This is a film about love salvation between sisters, mothers and daughters.  The film gathers the largest black cast in the history of Brazilian cinema and is set in a small town where the ghosts of slavery and racism underline the characters’ dramas in a subtle and powerful way.