Brazilian Outlaw Cinema, pt. 1 — Petter Baiestorf
Back in July of 2020, Jack Bantry reached out and asked if I would be interested in writing an article for Splatterpunk (I had previously written about German splatter filmmaker Andreas Schnaas back in April, 2017 - issue #8, currently out of print). I jumped at this opportunity – the freedom to pick a topic and write what I want is always attractive, but even more exciting is the chance to turn new people on to amazing underground films. So I leaped without looking and dove in headfirst and bit off way more than I could chew and… (add your own cliché here) by deciding to tackle the underground filmmaking of an entire country, the very diverse land of Brazil, including a bit of the nation’s film history and some of the socio-political factors that have helped to inform the local cinema. And why not interview a handful of the directors currently involved in the scene, let them paint the picture in their own words?
Needless to say, this undertaking was a fool’s game, a book-sized job, not an “article in a zine”-sized job, so I scaled it back. Way back. “Faca o Splatterpunk Fora da Lei Novamente; or, Make Splatterpunk Outlaw Again,” appeared in Splatterpunk issue #10 and is available to order now (there’s a lot of great horror fiction and art and book reviews in there too, and c’mon, don’t be a jerk, support underground zines!!!) I was excited to share as much about amazing Brazilian filmmaking as I could fit in a small zine…
…but I had so much more. When I asked a few film directors a couple generic questions, just hoping for maybe a couple quotes I could add in, they more than delivered, giving me so much history, so much useful information, so many great recommendations. What follows is not the same article as published in Splatterpunk; this is a five-part series, kind of a behind the scenes/outtakes and deleted bits extravaganza. Enjoy!
Petter Baiestorf is a prolific filmmaker, a writer and musician, a renaissance man, a fucking living legend. He’s currently crowdfunding a new book, Manifesto Canibal, (2nd edition), a kind of “how to” guide to making DIY movies with zero budget originally publish in the early 2000s, but now updated and doubled in size. This is coming off the success of his book Canibal Filmes: Os Bastidores da Gorechanchada, which is essentially an oral history of his many years of filmmaking. And speaking of his films – this guy has made a ton of them! You want blood and gore? It’s in there. You want sex? It’s in there. You want controversy and transgressive anti-political art? It’s in there! He’s also been super helpful and friendly every time I’ve talked to him, directing me toward almost everything I’ve learned about Brazilian art. Check out his website, Canibuk, for his own words, links to watch/buy his movies, and lots of other great stuff.
Nervousmaker – Do you feel that Brazilian horror/genre films are heavily influenced by the social/political climate, and if so, in what way?
Petter Baiestorf – Yes, with absolute certainty, Brazilian horror cinema is, in essence, political. And that goes back to the beginning, back in the 1960s, when José Mojica Marins (Coffin Joe) started producing his films. In fact, it is important to emphasize that in Brazil the influence for horror/exploitation cinema is not only external influence.
In recent years, we have also seen the growth of the extreme right and evangelicals in Brazil, two groups linked to agribusiness and the militias, which are essentially against the arts, cinema, and books (ex: last week a law was passed here in the country that prohibits nudity and religious symbols in artistic installations). The film industry itself is practically extinct. So in the last few years, while we had been experiencing fantastic growth within the fantastic cinema genres, it has practically been undermined, giving hints that in the next decade there could only be leftover independent filmmakers who raise the money in a non-traditional way. (Which is) my case.
Nervousmaker – Is there a specific "Brazil" style when it comes to horror/genre films, something uniquely Brazilian about your films and those of your peers?
Petter Baiestorf – I don't know if I understand the question correctly, my English is a little bad (editor’s note: I feel like this is the best time to point out that all five filmmakers I talked with, all of whom speak Portuguese as their first language, responded in near-perfect English; I edited very little). Officially the horror genre had finally started to be accepted and was gaining ground in public policies, even if still timidly. But after the 2018 election, which elected an openly fascist government, it is quickly becoming "outlaw" again. I only produce films with private money. But I understand and defend the importance of these cultural notices. In Brazil, fantastic genres were never, or had, an aspect of movement. I believe it has always been done by enthusiasts of the same genre. When distributing these films, I find everything very precarious and amateur still, unfortunately. Genre cinema is treated with a lot of prejudice here in Brazil, mainly due to the influence of the two aesthetic schools that I mentioned earlier.
Nervousmaker – What/who are the most important and influential horror/genre films/filmmakers of Brazil?
Petter Baiestorf – Without a doubt, the most important and influential is the precursor of the genre in the country, José Mojica Marins. Including the fact that we have an experimental horror here, since his films were very experimental, like O Despertar da Besta (The Awakening of the Beast), one of the greatest classics in our cinema. His character, Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe), today is part of the popular imagination of the country, bigger than the filmmaker himself. After him we had Ivan Cardoso, who made films about mummies, vampires, and werewolves. Post-2008 there was an explosion of new filmmakers, such as Rodrigo Aragão (perhaps the most influential of this new generation), Dennison Ramalho (who has worked very close to the work of José Mojica Marins), Paulo Biscaia Filho, Gurcius Gewdner, Felipe M. Guerra, Joel Caetano, Fernando Rick, Kapel Furman, and Armando Fonseca, among others. Among the exclusively independent cinema (mainly SOV - [shot on video]), I had a little influence on the new generation, due to my wild cinema produced in the 90s and a book on how to produce movies without resources that I launched at the beginning of this century in partnership with my partner at the time, Cesar Souza. This book is called Canibal Manifesto and marked a time mainly known for its anti-system notes. I would also like to highlight the cinema produced in the region of São Paulo known as Boca do Lixo, which was not exactly horror, but which made a lot of cinema that drank from the source of horror and had an intense production, with films that had more than a million viewers and all made with private money, clashing with large box office Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s. I think that this cinema produced in Boca do Lixo deserves study and more dissemination outside Brazil, including DVD releases from distributors specializing in psychotronic cinema.
Nervousmaker – Who are some other current horror/genre filmmakers from Brazil we should keep an eye on?
Petter Baiestorf – There is a whole new generation emerging. A filmmaker who has done powerful things is Gabriela Amaral Almeida. She made a film called O Animal Cordial that was born classic. Guto Parente made a great feature called O Clube dos Canibais (The Cannibal Club), which I also recommend. Others I suggest a peek at are Morto Não Fala (The Nightshifter), by Dennison Ramalho, his first feature, and films by filmmakers such as Juliana Rojas, Marcos Dutra, Marcos DeBrito. They are all making good horror movies. Among the independent ones, I suggest Pomba Claudia, Raphael Araújo, Fabiano Soares, Cristian Verardi, Rubens Mello, Beatriz Saldanha, Magnum Borini, EB Toniolli, Lucas Sá, Jota Bosco, Cíntia Domit Bittar, Léo Miguel, Janderson Geison, Ricardo Corsetti, Matheus Marchetti, Carli Bortolanza, among countless others who have produced very special short films. In the last ten years, there have also been numerous makeup artists of great genius, such as Alice Austríaco, Alexandre Brunoro, Hérick João, and Fany Coelho, all with works of great visual impact and who have contributed significantly to the Brazilian low-budget cinema. Within a more wild and experimental cinema, I think that together with my cinema and the cinema of Gurcius Gewdner, Gadi Bergamota's shorts and projects are added today. In recent years, Brazilian horror cinema has suffered blows, but there are actually many more producers and enthusiasts today than there were two decades ago.
I use (the term) “splatterpunk” in some of my films sometimes (depending on where I am). As a good exploitation filmmaker, I keep using different names for films I make, in the idea of attracting new viewers, and I use the term sometimes because my cinema is quite wild and violently explicit, of course! I love the term for real (here in Brazil I created the term Gorechanchada, which also synthesizes my style of cinema, although it only makes sense here in Brazil). My new book is called Canibal Filmes – Os Bastidores de Gorechachanchada (Canibal Filmes – Behind the Scenes of the Gorechanchada).
