Film showcase at Cinusp addresses impotence and existential emptiness in singular narratives

The free screenings of Faces do Abismo can provoke discomfort and even dissatisfaction with the inconclusive fate of the works

By Fabio Rubira

Playing at the Cinema da USP (Cinusp) until August 27, the Faces do Abismo exhibition features films, for example, in which the characters are confronted with problems that cannot be solved. There is also “existential emptiness, in a world where escape is useless or impossible”. So all that remains is to “face violence, terror and a world without resolved stories, with an emptied expression”.

The curators also define the abyss, in this sense, as “a narrative limit that the directors establish for the stories that will be told”. All with recurring interpretations in which the countenances are “empty, distant and desolate”.

In  “A Aventura“, Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni uses silences, laconic dialogues, long shots and an inconclusive ending to create a new approach, considered extremely radical, to narrative construction in cinema.

“Alemanha, Ano Zero“, by Roberto Rossellini, follows a young boy wandering the streets of Berlin, completely destroyed after the Second World War. At home, family life is marked by his father’s illness and the decline of his brothers.

In “Nostalgia“, by Andrei Tarkovski’s, a Russian poet travels to Italy to research the work of a composer from his homeland. Homesickness and childhood memories add to his anguish.

In “São Paulo Sociedade Anônima“, from 1965, a worker in the automobile industry personalizes the agony of the metropolis, amid the repetition and frenetic pace of the machines.

 The dates and times of the screenings, as well as the full program, can be found here.

Aired on the 08/10 edition of the Cultura na USP program on Rádio USP.

Service

The screenings of Faces do Abismo are free and open to the general public.

The screenings take place from Monday to Friday, at 4pm and 7pm, in the new room at the Centro Cultural Camargo Guarnieri, on USP’s Butantã campus, on the west side of the city. And on Saturdays and Sundays, at 4pm and 6pm, at the Centro Maria Antonia, in Vila Buarque, in the central region of the capital.

The Complete daily schedule can be found at www.usp.br/cinusp.

Translated by: Lara Yoshime Shizuko Fukushima