[DL] DEEP FEATURE – GABRAZ SANNA

pictured: Gabraz Sanna photographed in Berlin (photo: Kenton Turk/DL)

[DL] DEEP FEATURE

NOT FOR THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM

Offbeat Brazilian filmmaker Gabraz Sanna on audience provocation, obsessive geometry, travelling with a legendary wildman, the “vira-lata” complex—and surviving Bolsonaro

by Kenton Turk | Directors Lounge Magazine | June 2025 (interview date: 19/02/2025)

SENHOR SANNA IS BEING GOOD TO ME. After talking yesterday amid the din of diners very close (and seemingly oblivious) to the howls and cheers of the red carpet madness going on only a few metres away, he accepts my spontaneous request to squeeze in more film talk today, between screenings and other planned filmfest chats, meeting me in a far quieter setting that will keep him near to Potsdamer Platz. Here, he’ll be in proximity to live up to others’ demands on his time, if he’s fleet. I’m only planning on asking a few short questions, none of which I’ve thought out in advance. I like spontaneity, and I suspect he does, too.

He’s sharp, this guy. But he’s also easy to warm up to. He has a voice that embraces every word like it’s a lover in need of his attention. I suspect he can rise to righteous anger, but also that it’s a steep climb to get him there. DL, specifically the Urban Research offshoot helmed by Klaus W. Eisenlohr, presenting him in a special screening a day after this talk, already had its first dance with him seven years ago, showcasing the man and a fistful of his short films—ranging from staccato stabs to slow-moving marvels—in 2018. I met him then, but didn’t have much of a chance to go for any nitty-gritty. An oversight to be rectified today.

KT/DL: Gabriel Sanna. Is that the name I should use? Or better to use Gabraz?

GS: Gabraz Sanna.

Gabraz, I’m sorry. First, a question about the name that I just muddled. Does it mean something special?

Well, I think there’s a community in Africa called the Gabras—a tribe, a group of people [Gabra tribe of northeast Kenya–Ed.], but it’s not about that. I found out that after. I‘ve had this nickname ever since I was ten years old, from school—everybody calls me Gabraz, even my mother. My original name is Gabriel. I used my real name as my artistic name. Then one day, I was at festival in Brazil, and my film was being shown—and I never watch my films in the cinema, I rarely do this. I was outside for a drink waiting for the Q&A. Then I met a friend at the bar. I said, “How come you’re not in there? My film is being shown.” And he said “No, it’s not your film; it’s Gabriel Sanna.” So, from this day on, I decided to to use my nickname.

It’s a good choice—obviously much more identifiable. You said just now that you never or you rarely go to see your films in a cinema. Why not?

When they’re feature films, I get kind of anxious about the audience reaction, so I just prefer to relax, sit outside. Also because I’m the editor, so when I make a film, I usually watch it, like, 200 times before it’s ready. So when it’s done, I’m tired of watching it. And if I watch too much in the screening space, I might be wanting to change it, and I don’t want to change them after they’re released. So I prefer not to watch them. But yesterday, I did, here at the Berlinale. I was very curious about the reaction ‘cause it’s probably the most experimental, radical film I’ve ever made. So yesterday was an exception. But usually I prefer just to be outside, relax, and have a drink before getting to the Q&A.

It’s okay—this isn’t a Q&A; this is an interview. [Laughs.] About the audience—have you ever had an unexpected or unwelcome audience reaction? Like booing or things like that?

No. But in Brazil, we don’t have that many festivals with this more radical cinematic language, so sometimes when you go to a more commercial festival, the response is not… it’s not like the film is finding its real audience. In the old days, I used to send my films to festivals all over Brazil and the world. Nowadays, I choose better which festival has the audience I know is more interested in the kind of films I make—non-commercial, non-industrial films. They’re very auteur films ‘cause I pretty much do everything on them. I always photograph and edit my films. Sometimes I even do the sound. People are more used to those big films with hundreds of people in the crew. I prefer this other option. In Brazil we now have five or six festivals that I find pretty interesting, and that’s where I prefer to be. But I also like to provoke. I’m not saying I want to show a film to an audience that’s used other kinds of films. I’ve had films on TV, and very good responses to them, like this Maria Bethânia short film that’s being shown on Friday here at the Z-Bar. [DL screening–Ed.] I had a very good response from the audience. It was on TV for years and years, and the audience was always asking to watch it again. They showed it, like, 20 times a year; it was very successful in that point. I have a film about the Brazilian writer Manoel de Barros which was on TV as well [Ruína., 2014–Ed.], and had a good response. It was the first film I made, almost 20 years ago. But in the past years I’ve been making more radical films, I think, and I’m more into the sort of audience that is more connected to the cinephilia style—difficult, less commercial films. We have an audience for that. But I probably know pretty much all of them. In Rio, it’s always the same people I meet in the cinema, every week, every time I go. I’d say the same 500 people are always at the same events. So that’s… that’s the audience for my films I think. I’m not making a film for the whole of Brazil to stop and talk about. We have like a film at the Oscars now, and I haven’t even watched it. [Ainda Estou Aqui , Eng: I’m Still Here, later winner at the 97th Academy Awards–Ed.]

A film at the Oscars…

In Brazil, there’s a filmmaker who’s actually a bank owner, but he’s leftist. [Walter Salles–Ed.] His father was a bank owner, and he’s a billionaire. He makes big films with his own money, and now he’s nominated for the Oscar.

What we call a “limousine liberal.”

The film is about the dictatorship in Brazil, and people kind of like it. My parents went to watch it and liked it. Everybody’s watched it… except for me. [Laughs.]

Well, you’re busy…

It’s funny, ‘cause now this banker has become the representative of the progressive side of Brazil, because it’s a divided country right now. You have half of the people that are into politics and discussing ideas, and the other half is extreme right—and they hate us, they hate the filmmakers, they hate the films. Bolsonaro said that the artists are public enemies. He said that.

Artists in general?

Yeah, because he thinks art should be only the classical thing and not the contemporary stuff…

Which could be critical of him of course…

I don’t think he has any idea of what art is. He’s a military guy. But let’s say half of the country follows him, and the other half is following this banker, this billionaire they think… they put the guy up as a symbol of political film. But it’s a very straight way of making cinema. I think no new ideas. I’ve seen the trailers, and it’s more classical stuff. It’s probably well done. It has a message, but it’s not really the kind of film I’m into. But the audience is pretty much into this kind of film… the big crowds, you know…

So, the mainstream.

Yeah. I’m really cool with sticking to the underground scene. That’s what I’m interested in… not only in cinema, but also in music, in literature—something else, something pretty different from what’s become popular.

A good fit for Directors Lounge. You mentioned wanting to provoke…

Yeah, I like sometimes when I have bad reactions to films. I feel comfortable with that. Sometimes I get a kind of a… vergüenza, como se diz… when you don’t feel comfortable… when someone compliments you a lot, and says, “Oh, I loved your film, blah blah!” I guess a little shy. When someone comes to say bad things about my films, I get, like, “What?! Let’s discuss it!” And that’s… kind of good. This conflict, I like it. Like yesterday, I had a question at the Q&A, and she was trying to say I was making fun of the characters—and I wasn’t. That was… a pretty stupid thing to say, actually, ‘cause the film was making no joke about it.

She wanted to put you on the hot seat.

Yeah, yeah.

And it worked, maybe! [Laughs.]

For me, it’s okay, ’cause I like the conflict.

This is our second time doing something with you at Directors Lounge. How many times have you been to Berlin?

It’s the third time I’ve come here for the Berlinale. The first time was with a short film called Ruína, this one I said that was on TV. It’s with a singer called Maria Bethânia reading a poem from a poet called Manoel de Barros; they’re both very respected for their careers. Manoel has already passed away. When I made the film, he was 90 years old. It was 2006, 19 years ago. After he died, he became an icon of Brazilian poetry. And it’s Maria Bethânia reading one of his poems, and some things began to not work the way she wants—a dog barks, then a helicopters is flying overhead, so we have to stop all the time, and she’s getting kind of uncomfortable. The film is about this. This was 2016. And the other time was in 2018, when I came with Tantão. [Carlos Antonio “Tantão” Mattos–Ed.] That’s when you and I first met. I came to show a film called Eu sou o Rio, or I am the River, or Ich bin der… Fluss?

Ich bin der Fluss.

It was a very wild experience, and we made a film here at that time. Tantão is a very iconic underground artist from Rio. We‘ve been close friends since the first day we met—the very first. I was already a fan of his band, but with no images of the musicians on the cover of the album, I didn’t know he was in it. I started talking about them, and he said, “I am Tantão! I’m the guy from Black Future!” It was at a Jello Biafra concert in Rio. And from that day on we became close friends, and Anne Santos and I made this film with him. We started 2015-16, and it was released here in ‘18. We filmed him for two years. It was a very… radical experience to come with Tantão—such a different, peculiar person. I don’t think the Germans understood him, or most of them. The film had a strange reaction from the audience… but I remember there was an impact. And in this film, you can see that—the reactions from the audience, watching his performance… you can see it’s very like a parallel world… even in Brazil, he’s pretty much not understood. I remember once… he was playing at a square in Rio, a very popular place. There was a woman there selling beer, an old woman, and she said, “Whoa—that’s radical! Who is this guy? That’s incredible!” But most people just don’t understand what he’s doing, ‘cause he screams during the songs, and it’s pretty heavy and radical so… it was a wild experience being here. We were expelled from bars and clubs; we had the police in our apartment because he was freaking out. This time, I’m here with a film more in the mood of meditation, of reflection on Brazilian history—completely different from the other ones I’ve done. There are maybe one or two short films I made that have a straight dialogue to this one—more meditative, more introspective films. There’s no human physical presence in pretty much all of the film. It’s more spaces and landscapes and sounds. More… sensorial?

“I don’t consider myself an insane person. Even my surname ‘Sanna’ means sane. But I’ve always been fascinated with insane people.”

KT/DL: About Tantão—having met him myself, he’s certainly someone you don’t forget too easily. You say you’re very close. Is it difficult to have a real friendship with someone like that who is obviously not following any kind of rules?

GS: Well, I don’t consider myself an insane person. Even my surname “Sanna” means sane.

Does it?

But I’ve always been fascinated with insane people; I’ve always had this kind of friends, and Tantão was the top of it. [Laughs.] But now I’m more… I’m having a calmer life. I used to be into the kind of life that he lived. I was a companion to him most of the time. I had an intense relationship with drugs back then; it was cool for me to live that. Now, I’m in another phase of my life. I’ve got a small kid. My life is soft, it’s… we say “tranquillo” in Portuguese.

You’ve settled down.

I’ve settled down. Exactly. But about having a friendship with Tantão… when he’s sober, he’s a very smart, wise, intelligent guy. You laugh all the time ‘cause he’s always saying ingenious things when he’s sober. Then, after three days without sleeping, he becomes a little… I would say annoying sometimes, a little aggressive. But when he’s sober, he’s the nicest guy on Earth.

So how often is he sober?

Once a week! [Laughs.] Three days of madness, then three days of sleep, then he’s the nicest person in the world.

Speaking of chaos… you arrive in Berlin to subway and bus strikes, and construction sites are all over. Yesterday, where we were going for dinner, the whole building—14 floors—was cleared because of a fire or bomb alarm, or who knows what. How does this compare to back home in Rio?

Well, I think for me it’s proof that capitalism is collapsing. I was really impressed with the situation here. I knew there was an election; I was expecting the country to be living in a fervent moment. I expected that. For example, when I got off the plane in Frankfurt, I was treated like shit by the policeman, you know, like a rat. “What are you doing here?! What are you doing here?!” And he took my bag, and threw it. “Go there! Take it!”

In the airport?

In the airport in Frankfurt. And I was never treated like that in Berlin. I was always treated very well by pretty much everyone.

Berlin is a very different mentality from Frankfurt.

Yeah, I can see that. And you know, the strikes and the Arsenal [noted art film venue and preservation society in Berlin–Ed.] is moving—because they have no money for the rent.

Is that why?

That’s what I was told.

Wow.

So… I’m pretty used to that in Brazil. Culture is always the first thing to cut in the budget if you have economic problems, so we are always having to do something else for work. Unfortunately, I cannot only be in cinema 100% of the time. I have to do other stuff, maybe for television. Not as a director—as an editor; that’s what I make a living off, for the past 15 years, ever since I moved to Rio. Before, I was more a photographer, but I prefer editing—I think it’s more time to think. It’s not the cinema set, where everything is always rushing, and you sometimes have problems with the way the director conducts everything.

When cuts are made—this can have an ironic effect. Underground arts can flourish when they’re not being funded. People get much more creative about where they do things, how they do things. In Berlin in the 90s, when everything was really in upheaval, that’s when the arts really flourished. People just took empty spaces, they did crazy things. No one was saying, “If you want funding, you have to do it this way.” Everyone just did their own thing.

Yeah.

And with time, that’s become normalized. In Detroit now, maybe, it’s a similar situation to Berlin back then. So maybe that could end up boomeranging as positive. What do you think?

Yeah, for me as an artist, I like to work the limits. If I have to do a film and I don’t have the lens or the camera I wanted—but I have this other one, I have to adapt the language, the structure of the film to what we’ve got, to the human material we’ve got, to the technician, the equipment. For example, I had a camera where I didn’t like the way it shot—I didn’t like the colours when I shot at night. So I made five or six black and white films with it. And for me, it was a school of photography. Jean-Louis Comolli [French writer, editor, and film director, 1941 – 2022–Ed.] once said that the reality is in colours, but the real things are black and white—you see the contrast, you see the limit, the relation between the people and the objects and the spaces, the landscapes. So for me, this thing of having a limit of budget, of equipment, was always something that forced me to… be creative, to know how to deal with it and make something out of it.

 

Sonho de Sara Brazil 2014, 8 minutes

 

HERE IT’S CLEAR that one limit Sanna doesn’t embrace as much is the ban on smoking where we are sitting. He disappears into the intense sunlight married to sharp February Berlin chill to work on a cigarette before returning with eyes as round and focused as those of a small animal watching you from a distance, maybe concealed behind a tree. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed… or haired.

KT/DL: So… yesterday… Diary of the Absurd, is it? Or…

GS: Letters from Absurd. It’s the name of the Tantão song from the 80s. It’s a… plagiarism. But it’s a song I love. That’s why he’s in the thank-you section of the film. In the 80s, he wasn’t the singer; he was the keyboard player, and the composer of the songs, the songwriter.

I can’t imagine him…

Tantão has played violin from his childhood, violin and piano. And then he played keyboards in this band. There was a singer called Satanéso, which comes from Satan. [Laughs.] They were post-punk, and they had this song called “Letters from Absurd”—“Cartas do Absurdo.” And the last thing that I put in this film was the title. I was thinking of hundreds of titles. Then I remembered the song and I said, why not? I didn’t ask them; I just put the name on. And it’s also interesting ‘cause there was a film made about Black Future recently with old footage. You see young Tantão, talking eloquently. For me, it was very touching to watch. But the name of the film was “Eu sou o Rio”—“I am the River,” just like mine, the name of their hit song. And in my film, Tantão chose the name.

So, they had a hit? A radio hit?

[Pauses.] Underground hit. This record, at the time, they had 5,000 copies. There’s a rumour that the art director from the label company was fired after the record because he invested lots of energy in it, and it flopped.

So, “What the hell are you doing?!”

But now, there are 5,000 copies, and it’s worth fortune on the Internet. So, it’s a cult.

“People are into phones and TV series all the time—lots of information. I go to a lot of experimental music gigs where you can just sit on the floor and listen. And I think, why can’t a film give you this sensation? Why does it have to give you information all the time?”

 

KT/DL: In the film yesterday, there’s a long sequence that… don’t misunderstand me, but that has a monotonous quality to it, right? Actually, the word that occurred to me while watching it was “hypnotic.” I looked around me and saw that some people had… dozed off. How do you feel about that kind of reaction to your film?

GS: That was what I was curious about; if someone was going to stay to the end, or if someone was going to get too bored, or start booing or something… because I heard the “Unh, unh,” some mumbling around the room. I didn’t get nervous about it, because that was the intention. When I made the film, I wasn’t sure if someone was gonna show it in a cinema setting, because I think it could be a gallery film as well. But that was intentional. I think we are too sped up right now. People are into phones and TV series all the time—lots of information and not so much time for relaxing. I go to a lot of experimental music gigs—small venues, where you can just sit on the floor and listen to music, and sometimes I feel… I close my eyes and I’m there, and I’m almost meditating and sleeping, and I… love it. And I think, why can’t a film give you this sensation? Why does it have to give you information all the time? In my film, all the information is in the first half, and the second half is a long, monotonous sequence. Not silence, because you have the music, the ambience, the soundscape… but there’s no text, there’s no information. I wanted to see how long people could stay concentrated on it.

And reactions post-screening?

I had some ten messages from yesterday to today about the film, some comments on how people felt, and it was truly positive. So I wasn’t really worried. I knew someone would stand up and go out. I didn’t know how many people would do that, but for me, it’s totally cool with this film. If no one watched, no one showed it, it would’ve been okay for me. I showed it to a friend called Marcelo Ikeda, a very important film critic in Brazil, and he wrote a wonderful text about it. It’s on the Berlinale page. He always sees things in films that even the person who made it doesn’t realize. He said something about confronting the point of view of a colonizer. It’s long, because when these people came from Portugal to Brazil they travelled on the sea for months, just seeing the horizon line. And that’s the kind of sensation I wanted to give with this scene.

That’s exactly what I got from that.

It’s supposed to be longer. It’s only… 28 minutes, I think, and I had shot it for, like, two hours. I don’t use the two hours because right before it starts, right before the sun was out of the clouds, I didn’t like the contrast. But for me it was okay, and it was sort of a challenge for me to make a film like that. And as I told you before, as an editor, I usually watch my films a hundred times before it’s done, 200 times. But with this film, I only watched the whole film twice, I think, because at home, I couldn’t concentrate on that scene for more than five, ten minutes; I was just listening to the sound. I worked much more on the sound than on the image to this film. I know it’s a tough experience for some people. What was the expression you used?

Hypnotic.

Hypnotic, yeah. I wanted it to feel like that, because you start to see small details, like the clouds changing and maybe the light changing a little, and if you look, it’s a long, long, long sequence shot where, in quotation marks, you can say “nothing” is happening, but lots of things are happening, if you pay attention. Look at the first seconds, and the last second of the shot—it’s a totally different image, because you come from the middle of the river with the forest alongside you, and then you’re entering a town, Belém, which is a very important harbour on the Amazon. It’s completely different, the image you get. So there’s a transformation from the beginning to the end. But as you said yesterday, for a long time, it looks like the city is not approaching—it’s always pretty far. And I had this sensation too when I was watching it yesterday. So for me, it was a pleasure to watch it in the screening room. I didn’t really feel nervous about it.

You know that the Director’s Lounge platform revolves around non-standardized films. Not to say they’re better or worse, but because a certain cinematic aesthetic has been more or less dictated to us: that films have a certain length, and they tell a story; they have a beginning, middle and end—which is fine for one form, but there are so many ways that you can explore film that don’t really get exposed.

I think cinema has always been really related to literature, to the dramatic arts. I’m really into literature. If there’s a book and a film about the book, I usually go with the book. I prefer when cinema approaches painting and music, because for me, it’s a lot about the rhythm and the way you fill it in this sensorial way, and also the frames, the images you’re watching. So, in most of my recent films—I’m talking about 12 years ago to now—I put a big value on the long sequences. When I’m an editor on other people’s films, I always have arguments with them, because they want to cut, cut, cut, and I’m saying, “No, leave it; it works this way. Just let the camera sometimes get lost and sometimes find itself again.” It’s much more interesting when you see those movements than just picking the best parts and editing them together with lots of cuts. In this film, I think it’s where I took this the furthest. I was pretty radical about this initial idea.

As a comparison… there’s something here every year called Karneval der Kulturen. There’s a big parade with a lot of floats and people dancing. But it’s also very, very loud. Sometimes, the sound systems aren’t very good. One year, I just felt, this is getting to be too much for me. A friend wanted to recommend something, but didn’t tell me what it was. So we went there. It was in a church. It had no seats, and they had put out mats to lie down on, and the lights were all turned off. And we waited, in silence, with these other people. It was the most sensational thing that I’d experienced for a long time—because it is so seldom that we cut out the noise and the idea that “more is more.” Sitting in the dark with people—no one speaking, waiting for something—made me feel like we were all in a world war, waiting for a bomb to fall.

Ah…

There was an energy there that was silent. Now here’s the comparison to your film: the singers came, stood high up on balconies with only a candle each, and sang—it was Gregorian chant. And… I fell asleep! But it was a positive experience. It wasn’t that I was bored; it just had put me into some other world. Now I’m thinking about some of the reaction to your film, this hypnotic effect. Maybe some would think, “I show my film and people fall asleep—that’s not good.” But that’s if you’re talking about a standard film. So I saw that as not being negative. I thought, people are being lulled into a sense of… floating somewhere.

For me, particularly in this film… I don’t know if you’ve heard of ayahuasca, a traditional drink. Indigenous drink this. It’s hallucenogenic. I wanted this film to be sort of an ayahuasca trip. I’m not really into ayahuasca, but I love mushrooms. And when I first started to edit this film, I ate some mushrooms, and I had this sensation with the images of the film, because not only this last image, but I think the whole film is… very visual. I have only seven shots in it—in Brazil, we call it “plano,” a static camera with an image going on. Sometimes I make a film and when I watch it later, when it’s already released, I say, “Oh, maybe if I cut these ten seconds. or maybe if I cut this one shot here….” This film—I had no doubts about it. I watched it on screen, and it’s exactly the way I wanted it. I’m in control of the final cut; I’m totally secure about it.

One of things I thought was that it harks back to the original Warhol films. Not the Paul Morrissey films…

Oh yeah!

… so the very early ones, like Empire or Blowjob or whatever—the ones that themselves were supposed to hark back to the original Thomas Edison films, which were basically observing something without saying anything about it, without a narrative. Do you see that as a legitimate connection?

I don’t know about Thomas Edison, but Andy Warhol is very important to me. I really like his work, his film work especially. His whole work, but his film work is something that really spoke to me when I saw it. There’s also a film by Chantal Akerman that I love that is leaving… I think it’s New York, but it’s the opposite direction. [News from Home, 1976, sequence filmed on the ferry leaving Manhattan for Staten Island–Ed.] She goes out of the harbour into the sea, into the bay, and you see… the city is changing. This film is something that really touched me. And some of James Benning’s  stuff as well, which are pretty long. He has a film for example, it’s called Easy Rider, where he goes to the locations of Easy Rider and creates a film just filming it empty and… in quotation marks… “nothing” is happening. I like this sort of thing. It’s not the kind of films I like to watch at home, maybe. Sometimes I also like speedy stuff. But if I get in a cinema, I can watch that for ten hours. Maybe just go outside two times for the toilet, and to have something to eat, and go back and stay there, watching, watching, watching, watching. I’m really fascinated by images and by these details of the image, of the things that move slowly, the things that change slowly.

It’s a discussion I’ve had with a few people who’ve disagreed with me on certain films, saying they’re too slow-paced. Now, sometimes that doesn’t suit the narrative, if there is one, but certainly also in narrative films, like Picnic at Hanging Rock, for example, or very famously 2001: A Space Odyssey, you have slowly expanding sequences that aren’t moving the story forward, but they’re moving… something else forward. What would you say is being moved forward in a slowly developed sequence, like in your film?

I’m trying to remember 2001… because I watched it on New Year’s Eve in 2001. They showed it in the cinema. It was 25 years ago, so that I can’t quite remember the film.

Well, it has a lot of slow sequences…

But there’s someone that’s very important to me that I didn’t mention. It’s Ozu, the Japanese filmmaker. [Yasujirō Ozu–Ed.] I really love the way that he films details—he makes long shots, and things are moving… slowly. People especially, because his films are always very focused on people. And I’ve always loved it; ever since the first time I watched it, it really impressed me. And it’s curious, you said about Andy Warhol… last month, I was showing a film in Brazil that you’ve never seen; it wasn’t shown here. It’s a film I made: 80 minutes long film with three shots. [Aqui Jaz o Teu Esquema, 2022–Ed.] You have a prologue of seven minutes, an epilogue of five minutes, and in the middle it’s a 65-minute shot with the camera static and one crazy, insane guy [laughs], an artist called Felappi, an artist from Rio, my friend, too. [Felappi Montparnasse–Ed.] You’re inside his apartment, but you can see the window. The film begins in the afternoon and ends in the evening. And there was a very important filmmaker that was in the audience, Neville d’Almeida. He’s from the 60s. He’s not a young guy, but he’s a filmmaker I love. And at the end of the screening, he came to me, really touched, and hugged me, and said, “This reminds me of two filmmakers: Andy Warhol and Fellini.” Andy Warhol because of the film at… Times Square?

Empire State Building.

Empire State, yeah. I’ve never been to New York, so I forget the names. [Laughs.] And Fellini, because he said, “Cinema is psychoanalysis.” I never knew this quote from Fellini, but he said that. I was really touched, because for me, Andy Warhol is a reference, and Fellini, of course, I respect him a lot, though he’s not exactly an influence on me. So it was nice to hear another filmmaker comparing me to Andy Warhol. I think the film he made with the Velvet Underground is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It was wonderful.

“When I make a film, the only person I’m worried if that person’s gonna like it is myself. Some of my films became popular. But if it doesn’t happen, it’s not like I’m gonna lose one minute of sleep.”

KT/DL: I was thinking about a quote of Andy Warhol’s: “I like boring things”—which seems provocative, but you can see the point underneath it, you know?

GS: Me too! I’m the kind of guy… sometimes, I’m pretty full of energy, but some days… I love marijuana, man; I love to be tranquillo, calmed down, slow, so I like this slow cinema, Abbas Kiarostami [Iranian filmmaker, 1940-2016–Ed.], Ozu—this really fascinates me. I think the place in the world where I feel most comfortable is a cinema room. Sometimes, I notice a film is about to end and I’m like, “Oh, I could be here for another two hours; it doesn’t have to end now!”

You’re like me; I’m usually the last person to leave the room… even after everything’s finished.

I like to be there for hours, contemplating the images. Also, I love nature. I love to be in a silent place, contemplating a mountain or a river. It’s something that I love to do… love. I can be in silence for hours, just looking at the landscape.

In Letters from Absurd, that whole final sequence reminded me very much of approaching the end of life situation. We always think it’s out there somewhere. We’re coming towards it, but it’s never going to come. It doesn’t seem to get any closer—until it does…

Yeah…

… and then you’re there. Do you find that kind of feedback from observers relevant to what you do? Observations that you might say are not at all what you were intending?

When I make a film… I’ve made more than 20 films, I think. Four features; some other, like, 50-minute films like this one, and I make lots of short films. And when I make a film, the only person I’m worried if that person’s gonna like it is myself. I never think of the audience when I’m making a film. It’s not that I don’t care about the audience—of course I do, of course I love people, I love to talk to people. But it’s not like I make it to pleasure someone especially. Of course, some people are very important to me, their opinion, what they have to say. But some of my films became popular, like the films with Tantão, for example, ‘cause Tantão is a very exotic character, and people are into this kind of thing—seeing a person who’s different from everything they’ve seen. The first time I showed this film, it was crowded room in Rio, and it was one of the best screenings of my life, ‘cause people were clapping for, like, minutes after the film. Everybody was laughing, everybody was so happy to see the film—but most of them were Tantão’s friends. Then, when I showed the film in other cities to people that never heard of Tantão… the reactions were different. People were impressed, people were… for example last week, the film that’s going to be shown here, Diários de uma Paisagem (Landscape Diaries), the film we made here with Tantão, was shown in Sao Paolo, and I couldn’t attend. And I got a response from a friend of mine that was there, and he said people were talking about the film for two hours in the bar, after the film. For me, that’s really important; I really like it when it happens, of course. But if it doesn’t happen, it’s not like I’m gonna lose one minute of sleep.

 

Diários de uma Paisagem Brazil / Germany 2022, 55 minutes

 

ANOTHER CIGARETTE. I don’t smoke, so I stay inside. It’s Sanna who should be spending more time under the “Himmel über Berlin” anyway. Where we are sitting, this café, is primarily blue, a colour that makes me feel like the walls have been peeled back to reveal a 360-degree sky. My thoughts drift a little, and he returns. He sits in a loose but confident manner, ready to let me peel more off his exterior. He dives straight into something I mentioned when we met the day before: how DL made a conscious shift towards exploring the people behind the films rather than the films alone.

GS: This thing you said about the process, behind the scenes, getting to know the thoughts of the person—it’s very important to me in my work. I’ve made a lot of films with artists—writers and painters and musicians, especially musicians in the last decade. They were all either friends of mine that I really admire or people that I admired that I became friends with because of that admiration, and I’m really into the process of their making art, what they think when they’re making it, how they do it. So… it’s really a very natural conversation for me, because I like to talk about my process, too. When I go to Q&A’s, I don’t like too much when people expect me to explain—”How do you see this image? I prefer when they ask me “How did you do it?” or “What was the behind the scene while we were doing it?”—because… I’m very practical. I tried to study philosophy, but then I went to cinema because it was more practical. Philosophy was too much about theorizing about things. I prefer to know things in practice—how did they happen, how do these things work, what was it like to be with Tantão in Berlin, the things we experienced. For me, they’re very representative of the way I think of cinema, of the way I think of art, of the way I think of life. So I like this sort of behind-the-scenes conversation.

KT/DL: In Letters from Absurd, you had these very broad vistas— what I would call expansive shots. At the same time, you did it in a 4×3 aspect ratio. Any particular reason behind that?

That—well, that’s because the lens I used was the only lens I had with me at that time. It was a fish-eye lens, and I didn’t like the distortion of the image, so I had to work a lot on that. I think I’m a better editor than photographer. As an editor, I’m always trying to to improve the images I can make with photography. As a photographer, while I’m shooting the film, I’m always thinking of how I’m gonna solve these technical issues in the editing. I’m really into mathematics, because I was always a good math student. I’m really into geometry, which position each object to each person’s gonna have in the scene. For example, when I go to the cinema, I can’t sit at the side of the room. I have to sit in the middle—I have to sit right in the middle of the screen to watch things from the front, so… you know… all these details are very important to me. And in this case, because I didn’t like the distortions of the image, I shot it in 16:9, but then changed it to 4:3, because I prefer the composition.

“I’m not really a spiritualized person; I never worked on that. But I think maybe my religion is making films. Each film has a particular soul.”

 

KT/DL: What I’ve noticed in some of your films is a style I would call almost voyeuristic, a “fly on the wall” perspective. Very unobtrusive. A lot of filmmakers try to force their compositional intentions on their subject. To what degree is it important to you, if at all, that you pull away from imposing your aesthetic on your films?

GS: I think all the films I’ve made, especially the ones about other artists—I’ve always tried to make a film that would be like a translation. I have a degree in translation… we call it “trans-create” in Portuguese. When I made the film about Manoel de Barros, the poet, I was thinking, what would a film by Manoel de Barros be like? What rhythm, what composition? That’s why I like de Barros; he’s a laid-back poet. He lived in the countryside; his poetry is all about nature. It’s very… existentialist as well. And the film is more laid back in that sense. When I made a film with Tantão, for example, it was more chaotic, and I wanted this chaos to be also in the image, because I think it’s part of his personality.

Very much so!

So, I’m in that phase. I’m not really a spiritualized person; I never worked on that. But I think maybe my religion is making films. I think the films… they have their own spirits. Each film has a particular soul and a way of approach that is peculiar to each film, to each artist I’m relating to, or each place, to each group of people I’m relating to. And of course, I’m always changing. The film I made 19 years ago and another film I made this year—I’m a different person than I was at 23. But there’s some part that’s still in me. Sometimes I think I’m the same boy, the same weird boy that in school, nobody understood my jokes or anything. [Laughs.] But now I’m a 43-year-old with 22 years of cinema, and my films have changed. I’ve had two phases in my career. I made lots of films from 2003 to 2009, then for three years I didn’t make… anything. Then I came back to making films. I think you can see two phases. They’re pretty different.

Why did you stop making films?

[Pauses.] Drug problems. [Laughs.]

Okay, next. You talked about a personal love of writing. What’s the bridge—if there’s any bridge at all—between writing and filmmaking?

Well, it’s different process, but I quit writing because of one thing. Most of the films I made, I still like a lot. Some I love; some others, I like; some… I don’t show to anyone anymore—the first one, the very first one. But I truly like my films. I believe in them. I wrote a lot on the Internet. I had a blog, I got some good feedback from writers I really admire. But when I wrote something for myself, in less three days I thought, “Oh, this is crap; I’m gonna throw it away.” And it made me suffer, because I thought I was exposing myself too much. I was talking about things I’d lived through, with a particular way of seeing things and relating to the world. When I make films, maybe that’s the “fly on the wall” that you mentioned, I try to be invisible sometimes, just relating and letting the character feel comfortable. That’s why I always work with small crews—the biggest crew I had in my films is three people on the set, plus the character or characters. And sometimes, I work on my own—I even make the sound. When I was with Annie [filmmaker Anne Santos–Ed.], we were a couple, so it was very natural for us to be in the same room and connected to the same things. But now, I’ve been making films on my own, and I think I try to make the person more comfortable—or maybe annoy them also, provoke—but in a way that they feel comfortable to show what I want or expect them to show. And they always surprise me. I never wrote a script, except for one or two times. For the rest of the films, I had a script in my head I followed but… the reality is always different from what we imagined. But there’s always something in the final cut that is related to this first image I had in my head when I began making it. So… I forgot the question! [Laughs.]

It doesn’t matter; as long as I get the answer! One of the more recent developments in your life is that you have a son, who’s now four years old. What does he think of your films?

He’s been to some screenings. He loves watching films. I take him to the cinema all the time—not only for children’s movies. I take him to see… not sexual or violent films, but some films made for adults, and he watches my films. He wanted to be here badly because he made the soundtrack to this film with me. He played keyboards, and I recorded him one hour, then edited the better parts to be in the film.

Kind of a Wunderkind.

He’s really into it. Actually, he’s not into being filmed. When I turn on the camera, he wants to go to the back of the camera. But I really want to make a film with him. I don’t know, as an actor or as a co-director, I asked him, “What do you want to make a film about?” and he said, “About tractors.”

Tractors?

He wants to make a film about tractors. So I think that’s my next project. He’s getting more conscious about things. He’s four, and he’s turning five in a few months, and I think my next project is to make a film with my son. I love it, because the day he was born, Bolsonaro was in charge, Brazilian cinema was dead, I was depressed about my condition. And the first time I looked at him, I thought, I hope you’re never into cinema; I hope you do something else in your life, because I suffer a lot making films in Brazil! [Laughs.] But now things have changed; we’re in a political moment. I always take him to art exhibitions, to concerts… he’s my best friend; I take him everywhere I go.

What is the biggest difference, going from being a non-father to a father?

Whoa—that’s a big change. Everything changed. My way to relate to life changed a lot. The way I think of the future. I was sort of a nihilistic kind of guy before. And my son’s called Nilo! When he was born, he took me to more of a Zen personality, because I have to cope with many things that I wouldn’t cope with if I wasn’t a father. For example, school—his mother is not my wife, so we have very different opinions on things, on how things should be done. So I’m always having to arrange with her and with the world and with his friends, the families of his friends at school, and other stuff. But also, I’m relating to Rio de Janeiro in another way. I was very much a night person before he was born. I always liked to sleep late and wake up late. Now, I’m relating to Rio in another way. I’m going to parks, I’m going to waterfalls. You have all that in Rio; big parks, the rainforest park, and I go there a lot. Every week I take him to the waterfalls—the beach is too crowded; I prefer the waterfalls, the forests. It’s another way to relate to the world and to the city and to life as a whole. It’s the most important thing that I’ve ever lived, the most intense thing. [Pauses.] I’m almost crying as I talk about that.

“In Brazil, we have this vira-lata complex. It’s like a dog that’s born in the streets, that has no pedigree. In Brazil, if you do something in Europe, for example, then it’s, “Oh, this guy’s important; he’s in Europe!”

KT/DL: Here’s a question you might have to think about a little bit. Imagine people leaving one of your films, and they have one word in their minds…

GS: Leaving?

Going away—leaving the screening room or the cinema or whatever…

At the end or in the middle?

[Laughs.] Touché! Okay, let’s say hypothetically at the end. After the end, okay? And they have one word that’s floating in their minds after seeing a film of yours. What word would like them to have? A single word.

[Thinks a moment.] “Friendship.” Friendship, because some of the most important friends I’ve made were because of films. Either films I saw and I wanted to become friends with the person that made it, or the other way around, when someone likes my film and comes to me and talks. Some of the best friends I’ve had were through these two situations. So for me, art is about relations, the exchanges between people. It doesn’t have to be a massive crowd; it can be one person. There’s a filmmaker from Brazil I admire a lot called Cao Guimarães. He’s a successful guy in the experimental scene. He said that one of the most successful screenings he had in his life was in Argentina, when he entered the room and there was only one person to watch the film. And that was one of the most successful, because—he got married to that person. He didn’t know the person. And he got married to that person, and they had a son.

It can’t get better than that!

So I think it’s about encounters, you know. It’s about friendship, about love, about the connection between people.

When I was in a band, the second gig we played in Toronto, two guys came up to us and said that they thought we were great and asked if we had a following. Despite all the other things that happened—we had a video showing on TV, radio interviews, got offered a record deal—that really stuck in my mind. That made me feel so good.

When I came here seven years ago and we showed the films in the Z-Bar—I don’t remember… there were only, maybe ten people there. And you said something about the first Velvet Underground concert…

Yeah!

I never forgot it. And I remember I also Maria Gabriela Llansol, a Portuguese writer who’s already passed away. I made a film about her [Redemoinho-Poema, 2008–Ed.] right after the Manoel de Barros film. [Lingua de Brincar, 2006–Ed.] We made a film with her in Portugal and Belgium—she lived in Belgium for 30 years, exiled by Salazar. [António de Oliveira Salazar, effectively dictator of Portugal, 1932-1968–Ed.] She was a writer for many of decades, but with no public. And she always said it’s not about… a crowd. The thing is, if you reach one person and then another person there, you start a community among these people. And then at the end of her life—she was never very popular, but she actually had a community. I’d say, at the time I was studying at Literature at university in Brazil, there was a group, 20 to 30 people—they were completely obsessed by her work. And this group—there was a real connection between those people. Especially at that time—she was already ill; she’d had cancer for a long time. And people would make… we call it vaquinha, which is “little cow”—when lots of people give a little money, and then people go there to take care of you.

I see, what we call a “kitty”—like early crowdfunding, in a way, or GoFundMe.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. There was so much love involved in this community. Dozens of people—like, 30 in Brazil plus another 20 in Portugal; that was her crowd. But her crowd was totally involved with her books, you know. Manoel de Barros has also influenced me a lot on that. I directed this film with my aunt [Lucia Castello Branco–Ed.], who was my teacher at university also. She’s a writer and she teaches Literature. She was friends with Manoel de Barros. She was the first person to write a book about him, in the 80s. He was already 60 to 70 years old. He lived far away from us—a thousand kilometres away—so he wrote a letter to her, and she answered. They had a correspondence relationship for ten years, till the day she went there to meet him. And in the film, her daughter, my cousin [Julia Branco–Ed.], goes there bringing the letter from her to him. That’s the starting point of the film. My cousin was 17 years old; back then she was starting out as an actress.

“I had Playmobil, those small toys, and my biggest fun was to play they were the Beatles. My dream in childhood was to be either a musician or footballer. And as you can see, I’m a frustrated filmmaker….”

KT/DL: How did you meet de Barros?

GS: Manoel—the first time I met him, he was in Belo Horizonte to receive a prize, a very important literature prize in Brazil. [Prêmio Nacional de Literatura do Ministério da Cultura–Ed.] And from there on, he became… not a best seller, but a very popular poet—very, very, very popular. Everybody connected to literature in Brazil knows him. When I filmed him some years later, he said to us that for more than 50 years, he was writing the books just for himself. He had pocket publications that he paid for from his own money for himself, and he didn’t have a real public. He wasn’t in Rio or San Paulo; he went away, he lived in a farm far away from cities in the west of Brazil, which is still rainforest—Pantanal, which is grassland with not many people. He was there, living his life. He didn’t care much about the reception of his books till the day he got a really important prize and he became recognized. Now he’s one of the most important poets in Brazilian history. So… this influenced me a lot. Not that I’m saying I’m going to be the most important, but it’s like… take your time. The first time I came to Berlin, things were hard. Sometimes I made a film, and it wasn’t shown anywhere. Okay, at that time, I think I had some self-confidence problems, like, “Oh, am I good at this, am I doing the right thing?” But I kept doing, kept doing, kept doing. Then in the last ten years, I think I found my space in Brazilian cinema. The Berlinale helped me a lot, with more people interested in what I’m doing. Because in Brazil, we have this… we call this the vira-lata complex. Vira-lata is an expression. It’s like a dog that’s born in the streets, that has no pedigree.

Like a cur or a mongrel, maybe.

Yeah. There’s this complex. Because in Brazil, if you do something that is respected, like in Europe, for example, then it’s, “Oh, this guy’s important, because he’s in Europe, releasing a film!” Things that happen in Brazil… people don’t respect a lot, you know.

The “prophet in his own land” complex. The flips side is impostor syndrome: Am I really good enough? At the same time, if you don’t second-guess yourself, don’t have any self-doubts, then you’re over-confident…

Arrogant.

As you say, arrogant—you can say, “I don’t need to do anything better because I’m already too good.”

Or perfect.

It reminds me about someone in Toronto named Crad Kilodney. [1948 – 2014–Ed.] There’s now a Wikipedia page on him. He was an author who wrote crazy-titled books. We all knew him, because he was on the street corner, and he’d have his little books that he printed up himself. Over time, they became important enough that he’d become a recognized writer. But he never had any so-called “real” publications. Just that crazy guy with the crazy books on the corner that everyone knows. In a way, it’s more important, because you impress people one by one. Better ten people come to a show who you mean something to than a thousand who forget you the next day. Which brings me in a roundabout way to a question I have to throw in as my last. I ask everybody this: the Beatles, which one are you? John, Paul, George or Ringo?

I’m… not any of them.

You know what I mean—hypothetically.

I love George, John… in this order: George and John, Ringo, Paul—and I love Paul. I love all of them.

But which would you be?

I’d love to be John, but I think I’m more George. [Laughs.]

Okay…

Or Ringo! Sometimes Ringo!

George is mine, for sure. The quiet Beatle who has maybe more to say that people are allowing him to say. That’s my kind of groove. But I ask everybody.

The Beatles are very important to me, because my father is a musician, and we listened to them at home. I remember in the beginning, I was not into the music he listened to. I’m talking about eight years old or something. I liked some Brazilian pop/rock bands at the time. Then one day, there was the 1990 World Cup—I love football—and there was a TV show about the history of the World Cup, and the opening song was “Yesterday.” When my father caught me singing “Yesterday” at home, he asked, “Oh, do you like it? And I said, “Yeah, it’s good.” At the time, my father only listened to jazz music and other stuff. Then he bought all the Beatles records, because his records were broken, and started giving them to me. And for three years of my life, I was fanatical about the Beatles. I had Playmobil, those small toys, and my biggest fun was to play they were the Beatles. I was creating stories with the Beatles, and I watched the films… so the Beatles are very important to me.

1990, when Germany won.

Yeah, yeah.

I’ll never forget that.

I was nine years old back then. And I was a good footballer! My dream in childhood was to be either a musician or footballer. And as you can see I’m a frustrated filmmaker…. [Laughs.]

Well, you know, if the filmmaking stops one day…

Well, I make music to my films, and I still intend to make some film about football someday, ‘cause it’s something that’s important in my life. I go to games every week. I love Flamengo. [Clube de Regatas do Flamengo–Ed.] I take my son to the games. I take my son to play football at the park like every week. We go to more than ten games every year.

Just think: if things had gone differently, you might have been talking now about being a frustrated footballer who really wants to make films! I thank you for the time and even more for the answers. And keep making films.

 

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