A Very Different Elvis & Madona Hit the Film Festival Screen

Interview by Brad Balfour

When the 8th Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil screened its 15 films in June, it wasn't the end of this traveling festival but only the beginning. As part of a growing trend this fest has become a huge promoter of Brazilian cinema worldwide. The fest moves to Vancouver in July (from the 15th to 18th
), then Miami in August 13th to 21st
, and on to London (Sept. 1st - 5th)
, Montevideo (Sept. 23th - 29th)
 Buenos Aires (Oct. 14th - 20th) Rome (Nov. 24th - 28th
) Madrid (Nov. 30th - Dec. 4th
) and finally, Barcelona (Dec 10th - 16th).

Among the films seen during the festival (and earlier at the Tribeca Film Fest) was Elvis and Madona -- an off-beat, low-budget, sort-of romantic comedy timely in a special way. In light of the recent GayPride celebrations and the-soon-to-be-released The Kids Are All Right, it also envisions an alternative family, Brazilian style. Enhanced by a serious social message as well, with a bit more drama and soap opera (it's a lot less Almodovar and a lot more tele-novella) Elvis and Madona is more than a broad domestic-borne rom-com.

Though promoted as a unique, fun comedy, Elvis & Madona offered some controversy for members of the gay and lesbian crowd and garnered some critical razzes as well.

Written and directed by straight director Marcelo Lafitte, the film lightheartedly posits an enduring romance between a transvestite-maybe-transsexual hairdresser and his young bi-sexual lover who get knocked up so they live together struggling to produce his drag show. If successful it end all their financial troubles and make for a functional family.

Set in the vibrant Copacabana district of Rio de Janiero, Elvis and Madona's unlikely love help them chase dreams, deal with the obstacles that arise along the way and fulfill Madona's plans for a spectacular drag show that redeems everyone.

At audience Q&As, the film prompted its share of contention and praise for unique sexual stance. And director was bothered that so many descriptions of the movie (even in Tribeca's program) described Madona as a drag performer. The director pointed out to audience and critics alike that in Brazil, they would call Madona a transvestite not drag queen though it's not sure he saw the distinction between transvestite and trannie.

Through the haze of terrible interpreter and a couple of prickly journalists, Lafitte tried to set the record during a small roundtable held in May.

[Marcelo & Igor (r)]
Q: So what prompted you to make this as your first feature film?

ML: This film had been [brewing] in me for a long time. I came out of doing documentaries; I even used to be the president of the Association of Documentary Filmmakers but I also did four shorts before Elvis & Madona. Though my name is so strongly associated with being a documentary filmmaker, for seven years I have been doing fiction films; I did the four fiction shorts because I thought it was important before I did this feature film because all the learning I acquired.

Q: But why this theme?

ML: I wrote the script for Elvis & Madona a long time ago, in 2001, when I did my first short film. That’s when it came to me. I had been to a show with a transvestite and there was this story about a transvestite that had left his hometown as a man and years later comes back and he’s a [drag queen]. His father had remarried and he falls in love with the daughter of his father's new wife and he’s madly in love. That’s how I [got the idea] for Elvis & Madona back then.

At first, my idea was to get a real transvestite/transsexual to do this, but then it was like where is the right one? I was searching and it was in the air but 10 days before the date when I had to have someone cast as Madona I was introduced to Igor [Cotrim] by a common friend and there you go.

Q: The chemistry between Elvis and Madona is the whole fabric of the film. Was the audition process was complicated?

ML: It was of no use to find the ideal Elvis or ideal Madona if there was no chemistry between them. At the end of the day, it had to be Elvis and Madona. They go together.

Q: So this has been a long process?

ML: It’s taken 10 years to make this movie. This is a movie of a lot of struggle and making dreams come true. And in a way, the film also talks about this: people trying to find and realize their dream.

Q: So who is this movie made for? Is it for heterosexuals to enjoy lifestyles of people they may not understand.

It's to reach for this social inclusion. And yes, there is this tendency in society to look at this issue and bring about the need for the social inclusion.

Q: Though many people feel they’re born a homosexual or a lesbian, It does not mean that they’re incapable of having sex with the opposite sex, and your comedy is about how that can happen. But in the eyes of some viewers, it could be seen as though you're saying, "Oh they just have to find the right opposite sex person to balance them out.

ML: My gay and lesbian friends in Brazil love the movie because they feel that it shows it as normal. The way it’s treated, the way it’s shown, it’s like everything is normal. Not only in Brazil, in Melbourne too, where the film has been seen, the gay and lesbian communities, and friends, they all liked it because they like how the normality, how the issue is approached. But in Sao Paulo, one lesbian came to say, “You are homophobic! Because at the end of the day what you’re saying is that a man can only be happy with a woman.”

Q: You were confronted by someone who is offended by the film, she’s making a serious critique. Without sloughing it off, how do you as an artist and filmmaker -- trying to do something serious in this movie -- reflect upon that kind of criticism?

ML: Maybe this person didn’t really get the idea of the film. Or maybe even she didn’t even get the idea of herself. If 99% of the people got it or enjoyed it and 1% was offended and hurt by it, there’s something being said right there.

The one thing that is the mission of this film, and my mission as an artist who created it, is that it’s bringing about the debate, the issue to be approached. My mission as an artist is not to create the truth, a truth that he doesn’t even have himself, but just being able to bring the issues up to the discussion table and have people face it.

Obviously Madona's tale is like a fable, that maybe in real life you’re not going to find a story like this, but maybe there will be a story like it. So it’s like a reference.

Take a Trip Down the Amazon and Elsewhere Through 2009's Premiere Brazil Film Festival At MoMA This July

by Brad Balfour

[left: Rio FF Director Ilda Santiago]
Brazil occupies a special place in the popular imagination. Whether it's because of the exotic music, the colorful and kinetic fashions, or the enduring mystique of its sexually charged inhabitants, there's a fascination with South America's largest country that has surpassed its global political or economic power.

Now that Brazil is achieving an economic parity with such countries as India and China as well as having its long standing cultural presence, it becomes more and more valuable to get a sense of the country through its cinema. Over the last few years that has become easier and easier as several of its directors such as Walter Salles or Fernando Meirelles have become internationally recognized figures with award-winning films.

So even if you can't make it to Brazil, or afford a deep DVD collection, there are several events being held this summer that can critically enhance your knowledge of Brazil, its culture, and cinema--with one in particular, The Museum of Modern Art's Premiere Brazil series, already underway.

For the seventh time, MoMA's film division presents its annual overview of contemporary Brazilian film. With the help of the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival Director Ilda Santiago, Premiere Brazil 2009 is organized by Film Department curator Jytte Jensen; this 19-day event introduces audiences to accomplished, original films from this unique country. Most of the films in Premiere Brazil will be introduced by their directors at the first screening. Running from July 16 through August 3, 2009, this year’s edition includes 19 features and three shorts.

Said Jensen about their efforts, "With this annual program we are interested in following filmmakers who continue to create works that bring Brazilian filmmaking to the international marketplace but also to create a forum for new original voices. We choose from the sidebar of the Rio International Film Festival named Premiere Brazil and also bring in films that are just finished, thus being able to present films which premiere here and then go on the Rio Festival later in the year."

"Our aim is the cover the various genres and trends in Brazil and show the diversity of filmmaking in this particular national cinema," added Jensen. "We do not, per se, look for a specific aesthetic but often a trend will emerge when we have selected the program--like this year's investigations in several of the films of how music and poetry has shaped what we have come to think of as the Brazilian spirit--and the pace and rhythm in the films being made."

As before, the fest includes documentaries of such striking quality that they sometimes overshadow the fiction features. Those docs include a few which address, as Jensen noted, the rich heritage of Brazilian music. Of the two world premieres among this year’s selection, Beyond Ipanema: Brazilian Waves in Global Music(2009), is a brilliant overview of the incursion of Brazilian music world wide by directors Guto Barra and Béco Dranoff. With dramatic archival footage and original interviews, this fast-paced doc tells in 89 minutes nearly all the history of Brazilian music since the 1940s.

Beyond that, the film describes how such music as samba, bosa nova and Tropicália became an international phenomena as well. By having such personalities as Brazilian legends Gilberto Gil, Bebel Gilberto, Os Mutantes, Milton Nascimento, and Caetano Veloso in the same film with contemporary music figures such as Devendra Banhart, David Byrne, M.I.A., and Thievery Corporation, it illustrates the link between the generations.

The other world premiere Moscou (Moscow)(2009), is directed by master documentarian Eduardo Coutinho--whose has seven other films being featured here as part of the first retrospective done for this series.

And to enhance the audio elements of the festival, this year’s exhibition is accompanied by a series of live Brazilian music performances in the Museum’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden on Thursday nights in July (it began July 2 and continues through July 30).

Among the other docs, there is one other, Morrinho—Deus sabe de tudo mas não é X9 (Morrinho: God Knows Everything But Is Not a Snitch)--it had its first screening on Monday but will have another on July 30th--that has the potential to be another Born Into Brothels. Enhanced with the sort of hopefulness found in Slumdog Millionaire,this real life fable tells the tale of a group of slum kids living in what's known as the favela, who were staying out of trouble by creating their own alternate world. They created an huge, small-scale model of Rio’s favelas, on the side of a hill calling it Morrinho. Made of re-crafted bricks and inhabited by dozens of Lego figures, they played in it as if reenacting war games between the police and the gangs.

When director Fábio Gavião got wind of this he started a long odyssey that included 600 hours of video and eight years of time as the kids got discovered by the international art world and traveled with their project to major art expos including the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. The filmmakers--Gaviao, co-director Markao Oliviera and producer Sergio Bloch not only discovered new talent but demonstrated the healing effect film can have a community of kids.

After having met Gavião and Bloch at a wonderful press lunch in one of New York's best Brazilian restaurants, Plataforma Churrascaria (on West 49th St. between 8th and 9th Aves.), the two outlined their experience with discovering these kids and their construction.

Explained Bloch, "A friend of ours, Rodrigo, who teaches environmental studies to the kids from favela told us about it. The kids--basically two brothers who started it and about six friends who help them-- were missing class alot. When he asked why they were missing class, the other kids said, 'Oh, because they are playing in the Morrinho.'

One day they attended class and he said he'd like to see this Morrinho. So they took him to see it and [he was amazed]. He says to them 'Look, when you want to play there let me know and I will [give you credit]. What you do there is what I teach here--how to deal with space... You have to put plants to hold the land steady and you've learned architecture--how to build and design.' He was so fascinated he called Fabio who called me. We arrived that first day and starting shooting--and we never left."

No wonder. The Morrinho is a masterpiece of construction rich in colors and little Lego figurines so that it is not just a static representation but a miniature city where the kids creat little dramas and act them out. For the production team, this was not only an opportunity to document a fascinating organically generated creation in the favela--a positive development made in wolrd fraught with violence and poverty--but it was a chance to concretely help the community or at least, one small part of it.

Gavião recalled, "We have a big problem in Brazil, especially with so many poor people living there with no education or jobs; that's why a lot of young people get involved with drug dealers and violence. This project was a big opportunity for the community to change their reality. It happened in a way [as a simple outlet for the kids], but we saw could be much more than that."

With that realization, they not only dug into making the documentary, but set up an organization to help the kids as they went from favela to television appearances, art shows through the world and becoming tour guides to their miniature world. Added Bloch, "Right there, we thought we'd do a documentary for a few months and that's would be it, but as we got involved with them, as we realized what was there, what it meant and that it could become something bigger.

"We saw that by doing the documentary, we're not only making it for us, but for them. We saw a chance to make an exchange, and for to be a part of a world they had never been a part of before."

Seeing a film like this--one that encompasses so much more than just a clever story--explains why such filmmaking is important and why it is important that, by experiencing a place as different as Brazil and its favelas are, we experience something compelling about ourselves and our world.

For an extended version of this story go to: filmfestivaltraveler.com.