Klaus Hart Brasilientexte

In this unequal world where the majority of those who were created ”in the divine likeness must survive condemned to inhumanity, we are surprised by the cinematographic eye of Walter Salles. He entered by the back door where the disowned, the anonymous, those who suffer life are to be found. His most recent film ”Linha de PasseÂ Â won the best actress award for Sandra Corveloni in Cannes this year.

Who is this actress? In which soap opera did she play? asks the public who are accustomed to the glitter of global castings. In ”Linha de Passe directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, Sandra plays the part of Cleuza, a poor woman from the periphery who struggles to save her four children from social exclusion.

One wonders what the future holds for someone who did not choose poverty nor had the luck to be selected by the biological lottery and born amongst the third of humanity that live above the poverty line. If in our country schooling figures only as a constitutional and virtual right, which other decent alternative, apart from football, is there for a child from the favela (shantytown)?

Waltinho, as he is known, has a degree in Economics from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and in Audiovisual Communication from the University of California and therefore could be a filmmaker who is indifferent to social problems. His father is a diplomat and banker and his family heads the Unibanco and the CBMM, the largest niobium company in the world. However, as Paulo Freire would say, he sees reality from the angle of the oppressed. He is a documentarist and his fictional focus is centred on the reverse side of life, as was Chaplin™s in his films of humour.

In ”Central do Brasil (Central Station, 1998), he describes the saga of a woman from the Northeast (Fernanda Montenegro) who, struggling for her own survival by writing letters for people who are illiterate, takes on the care of an orphaned boy (Vinicius de Oliveira). It is a work about solidarity, where ties are usually stronger between those who have nothing else to offer but merely to be themselves. The film won 55 international awards.

In ”Abril Despedaçado (Behind the Sun – 2001), Salles returns to the arid Northeast to portray the political culture founded on the spiral of violence in the conflict between desire and authority, dreams and power.

In ”Diários de Motocicleta (Motorcycle Diaries “ 2004) he brings to the screen the exuberant Andean landscape of Latin America in contrast with the precarious survival of peoples who have been exploited for centuries and amongst whom Hansen™s disease appears to be “ more than a disease “ a social scourge. This reality and not exactly the lessons of an academic Marxism moulded the ethical commitment and the libertarian utopia of the young Ernesto who was later known as Che Guevara.

In art, talent consists in associating form and content. This is a characteristic of Walter Salles™ film making. His fictional work is based on reality without however giving in to didacticism or falling into proselytism. He does not try to denounce the wounds of a system which is founded on the primacy of capital and not on human dignity, nor exalt the precocious heroism of the young Che. His lens unveil reality, tear away the veil, confuse our prejudices and make poetry emerge out of suffering, courage out of hopelessness, tenderness out of non-love.

Picasso™s ”Guernica resounds more highly than all the written works against Nazi fascism. Kafka™s ”Metamorphosis and Raduan Nassar™s ”Archaic Harvest make the art of metaphor somewhat unreachable by the treaties in psychology dedicated to analysing authoritarianism.

As to content, art never supersedes life. Life always surprises. With this evidence, the risk is that the artist may find refuge in the illusory island of language, whether literary or cinematographic, which satisfies him. The most creative and original human characteristic “ language “ is always a hermeneutical echo. We speak about something. It translates a gesture, an object, an idea, a dream.

In a culture divided by social inequality, in spite of the universal consumption of televised entertainment, there is always a difference and a divergence between points of view. Points of view which start from a point “ be it the front door or the back door. It is in this difference that art bursts forth and transfigures our eyes, feelings, emotions and values when we face reality. The choice inevitably is the result of the artist™s moral and ethical position. This is the merit of Walter Salles.

On 30th May 2008 in Tarragona, Spain, Frei Betto received the Ones Mediterrâneo prize awarded for his dedication to the preservation of the environment and the culture of solidarity.