The selection includes 145 works, divided into six exhibitions, with five world premieres, workshops, seminar, and debates in an admission-free program that occupies six spaces in Porto Alegre
The festival is held with resources from Complementary Law No. 195/2022, Paulo Gustavo Law, and presented by the Ministry of Culture. Funding from Iecine, Pro-Cultura, and the Culture Department of the State of Rio Grande do Sul.
Porto Alegre, February 7, 2025 – The 15th Cine Esquema Novo – Brazilian Audiovisual Art will take place from February 14 to 23, including six exhibitions, 145 works, five of which are international premieres, seminar, workshop, debates and artist Luiz Roque as guest artist. The entire program is free and will be held in different cultural venues of Porto Alegre, such as Cinemateca Capitólio, Goethe-Institut, Cinemateca Paulo Amorim, MACRS – Galeria Sotero Cosme, Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana, and Casa Baka.
The works are divided into six exhibitions: Brazil Competitive Exhibition, Outros Esquemas, Audiovisual on Course, Accessible Exhibition, Collection Exhibition, and Guest Artist – Luiz Roque. A total of 49 works were selected for the main exhibition out of 675 applicants. The curatorial team – Dirnei Prates, Kamyla Belli, Jaqueline Beltrame and Ramiro Azevedo – evaluated and selected more than 282 hours of material.
The program will open on February 14, at the Cinemateca Capitólio with the screening of Clube Amarelo by Luiz Roque, guest artist for this edition. The film was developed during the artist’s residency at the Fundación Ama Amoedo (Uruguay) and will have its national premiere during the event.
Following the success of 2021, the festival keeps its Artist’s Notebook proposal for the Brazil Competitive Exhibition. Several content pieces will be created with the participants and available in a digital environment for each artist. “The Artist’s Notebook is a place that brings together artistic references, interviews, information, images, playlists, and invites the public to have a greater understanding of each artist’s universe,” say Jaqueline Beltrame and Ramiro Azevedo, organizers of CEN, which celebrates 22 years in 2025.
The program has 16 projects by duos or groups, 24 female directors, 33 male directors, and trans and non-binary artists. Themes such as memory and history, queer identity, exploration of nature, territoriality, family ties, trans protagonism, empowerment of Black people, political and territorial occupations, new memories of the Indigenous and Black presence in the Brazilian imaginary, human rights, mental health, among others, guide the titles selected from 17 Brazilian states, and eight productions created by Brazilians living abroad (or in international co-production).
The Brazil Competitive Exhibition brings five world premieres in its program, in addition to a national premiere: Afluente (Frederico Benevides), Buraco Negro (Rafael Spínola), Ensaios para o Fim (André Severo), O Lugar por Onde a Água Corre (Camila Leichter; co-author Mauro Espíndola), and Joie Musculaire by Jonathan de Andrade, who also shows Columbófilos, a national premiere.
Black Hole, by Rafael Spinola, marks its debut on the festival circuit in the CEN program. Frederico Benevides, who in 2021 participated with Performatividades do Segundo Plano (Frederico Benevides and Yuri Firmeza) and in 2018 with 26 Postais Contam a História de uma Amizade de 30 anos, shows the premiere of Afluente. This investigation draws from two collections: one comprising 16,000 photographs captured by the São Francisco Hydroelectric Company during the construction of the initial hydroelectric dams from the 1940s to the 1960s, and the other belonging to producer Isaac Rozemeberg, who recorded the São Francisco River between 1940-1980. Afluente aims to discuss the transformation of the river, a complex entity with thousands of layers, from a perspective that prioritizes its understanding as a source of resources, particularly electricity.
Jonathas de Andrade, who occupied the Brazilian Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale and was part of the CEN program with The Fish in 2018, presents the premiere of La Joie Musculaire. Columbófilos was included in the exhibition Sobrevoo, which was the culmination of an artistic residency in Porto (Portugal) in 2023. In addition, it was exhibited at the Vila do Conde International Film Festival in Portugal. Ensaios para o Fim is an unprecedented video installation by artist Andre Severo, which brings together television monitors of different sizes, models, and formats with short looped passages of scenes of atomic bomb explosions in the Second World War or in tests during the Cold War. For the screening at Cine Esquema Novo, the installation was adapted for movie theaters, featuring a 60-minute film collage that will be projected on the large screen, creating an atmosphere of contrast between chaos and beauty, in addition to the televisions placed in the room.
Camila Leichter and Marcela Ilha Bordin, who were the winners of the 2018 Cine Esquema Novo Grand Prize with The House and Dead Princess of Jacuí, have returned to the festival with two new films: O Lugar por Onde a Água Corre (Camila Leichter; co-authored by Mauro Espíndola) and Sertão, América (Marcela Ilha Bordin). O Lugar por Onde a Áqua Corre is an experimental film shot during the 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul, which brings together collaborative research, archival production, and audiovisual essays about Arroio Serraria, presenting a poetic trajectory of a body of water, its banks, beings, materialities, phenomena, and imaginaries. “The 2024 flood transformed the film process. Our contact with the stream affected us greatly, but this year was extreme. We have had a flood file since 2014, but things have changed since 2023,” say the directors. Sertão, América is a record in the sertão region of Piauí, where cave drawings challenge the current theory of American peopling.
The list also includes O Milagre de Helvetia and Roma Talismano, by Guerreiro do Divino Amor, who participated in the last Venice Biennale, was awarded the 2019 Pipa Prize and is participating in the festival for the fourth time. In 2019 he presented Supercomplexo Metropolitano Expandido and A Cristalização de Brasília; in 2021, O Mundo Mineral. In the sixth chapter of his SuperFictional World Atlas, O Milagre de Helvetia explores Switzerland as an allegorical construct of beauty, wealth, and perfection. This chapter was exhibited at the 2024 Venice Biennale and the Geneva Center for Contemporary Art. Roma Talismano, the seventh chapter of the World Superfictional Atlas, explores the city of Rome as a moral and aesthetic talisman of the West. The work was produced as an installation for the Swiss pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and a film version was created for the Bangkok Biennale.
Dona Beatriz Ñsîmba Vita, by Catapreta, is loosely inspired by the story of Congolese heroine Kimpa Vita. The film has been shown at 30 national and international festivals, including the Sundance 2024 Festival, the 60th Chicago International Film Festival, and the 25th Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival (BAFICI), where it was awarded Best Latin American Short Film. In addition, the film has received awards at the 56th Brasília Festival of Brazilian Cinema, the III AFRONTE – Festival of Sexual, Racial and Gender Diversity Cinema, the 31st Vitória Film Festival, the 14th Animage International Film Festival, the 34th Cine Ceará, and the 26th FestCurtasBH. The director has previously engaged in the CEN 2008 edition with O Céu no Andar de Baixo.
Victor Di Marco and Marcio Picoli participated in the 2021 edition with O que Pode um Corpo?, in the Outros Esquemas Exhibition. In 2025, the duo presents Zagêro, a short film investigating the limits of sublime, humor, and exaggeration to approach disability and rights. Mixing music, poetry, and dance, the work exalts the power and subversion of bodies with disabilities. “By exposing the invisible DEF story and prophesying that we are much more than an acronym, the project has people with disabilities in all directions,” reveal the filmmakers. Zagêro has participated in a number of festivals, including the SP International Short Film Festival (CURTA KINOFORUM), the RJ International Festival (Curta Cinema), and the Gramado Film Festival.
Animais Noturnos, by Indigo Braga and Paulo Abrao, recounts the tale of Mutante, a 100 meters tall transvestite living in Rio de Janeiro. In contrast to a kaiju, which is characterized by a pursuit of destruction and retribution, Mutante exemplifies a more harmonious relationship with her environment. The short film posits the existence of trans individuals as a magical and post-human phenomenon, situating its protagonism within the urban landscape of Rio de Janeiro, particularly in the city center. The duo asserts that the work’s objective is to encourage reflections on the experiences and representations of LGBTQIAPN bodies within the urban landscape, extending beyond the confines of their nocturnal existence.
The Brazil Competitive Exhibition features projects from artists who already took part in other festival editions. Mar de Dentro, by Lia Leticia, tells the story of Sérgio Lino dos Santos, a former inmate from Fernando de Noronha. The work traverses various colonial legacies, ranging from the Vargas and 1964 dictatorships in Brazil to the present era. It aims to establish a poetic and political record of the history of what has been obscured but persists and endures in contemporary times. Lia has previously participated in the 2021 and 2019 editions with the productions Per Capita and Thinya.
For CEN director and curator Jaqueline Beltrame, the selection presents a characteristic of the festival’s curatorial process, which is repeated throughout the editions: “We seek new works and artists while following the production of artists who have participated in CEN’s different editions,” said Beltrame. “It is very interesting for curators and the public to follow their journeys through the festival. Thus, CEN helps connect artists and audiences.”
Aquele que Viu o Abismo, by Gregorio Gananian and Negro Leo, is a science fiction noir, winner of the Best Film Award at the Olhos Livres Exhibition at the 27th Tiradentes Film Festival. As Gananian explains, the film’s genesis occurred during an artistic residency in China in 2019, when the characters and performances were first developed, followed by the creation of the script. The Last Waltz, the second short film of the Poemas Cinematográficos project by Fabio Rogerio and Jean-Claude Bernardet, is also part of the selection.
O Cavalo de Pedro, by Daniel Nolasco, is a mockumentary about the myths related to the horse that Brazil’s emperor Dom Pedro I rode on Brazil’s Independence Day in 1822. The image of this horse was immortalized in the 1888 painting Independence or Death by artist Pedro Américo. In the oil painting on canvas, Dom Pedro is on the banks of the Ipiranga, surrounded by his army, with his sword raised and declaring the independence of Brazil. In the center of the canvas, Dom Pedro is mounted on a brindle chestnut horse that was part of the royal cavalry. It is said that Dom Pedro liked the horse so much that he gave it a position as a civil servant in the Brazilian Empire. Taking Paulo Setúbal’s novel as a guide, As Maluquices do Imperador, the movie proposes a queer reading of Brazil’s independence and Dom Pedro I. This is Nolasco’s third participation in the festival, which was part of the program with Sr. Raposo (2018) and Vento Seco (2021).
Oração, by Haroldo Saboia, is a film-song: two musicians and a dancer elaborate on the relationship between Afro-Brazilian diasporic memory and popular songs, especially samba. The performance is characterized by a fragmented montage, musical improvisations, and dramatic propositions, accompanied by texts and speeches by poets such as Edimilson de Almeida Pereira, Aimé Cesáire, Lucille Clifton, Gilberto Gil, Zé Keti, and Nelson do Cavaquinho.
Para Lota, by Bruno Safadi and Ricardo Pretti, is a pandemic movie. It was filmed in 2020, at night, in a completely deserted city. The work presents a 7-kilometer traveling shot at 120 frames per second, filmed from the interior of a vehicle moving at 15 kilometers per hour. This results in a 1-hour and 25-minute shot from one end of Flamengo Park to the other. Flamengo Park, the second largest urban park in the world, is regarded as a jewel of Brazilian landscaping and architecture. The composition of the sound is derived from a series of fourteen letters composed by Lota de Macedo Soares, addressed to the then-mayor of Rio de Janeiro, the prominent politician Carlos Lacerda. Safadi and Pretti met at Cine Esquema Novo in 2008.
Urban Solutions, a co-production between Brazil and Germany by Pátio Vazio and Cine Copains, was filmed entirely in the city of Porto Alegre in 16mm color and finished at LaborBerlin. The film was selected for the international competition at the Rotterdam Festival and premiered at Cinéma du Réel, where it was awarded the Best Short Film in the International Competition. This distinction was granted under the direction of Arne Hector, Luciana Mazeto, Minze Tummescheit, and Vinicius Lopes. The cast includes Ivo Alexandre Junior, Sandra Dani, Heinz Limaverde, Ivo Medeiros, Alvaro RosaCosta, Leo Maciel, Martin Clausen, and Zé de Paiva. A doorman observes the images from security cameras in a residential building while reflecting on his profession and relationship with his employers.
At the end of the event, the Brazil Competitive Exhibition will award the 15th Cine Esquema Novo Grand Prize and 5 Special Jury Prizes, with a trophy created by Luiz Roque, especially for the festival, in addition to prizes in services from Locall (R$10,000 in the rental of lighting equipment and machinery at Locall RS) and Media Mundus (R$3,000 in content processing such as a packer with transcoding, metadata and responsive thumbnails for partner streaming platforms: Claro Tv+ or Prime Video). The Official Jury may award up to 5 prizes, at will, from among all the works in competition and is formed by the filmmaker, screenwriter, critic and art historian Giordano Gio, the educator, critic, programmer and film researcher Juliana Costa and the art critic, director, curator and professor Juliano Gomes. The sessions are followed by debates in partnership with ACCIRS – Associação dos Críticos de Cinema do RS.
Luiz Roque is the Guest Artist of this edition
Luiz Roque, one of the most prominent names in contemporary Brazilian art, is the guest artist of the 15th Cine Esquema Novo – Brazilian Audiovisual Art. In tribute to his artistic journey, the event’s program includes a solo exhibition featuring his audiovisual works, which will be screened at Cinemateca Capitólio, Cinemateca Paulo Amorim, MACRS, and Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana (Radamés Gnatalli Room). This selection, curated by Jaqueline Beltrame and Kamyla Belli, offers a unique opportunity for an immersive experience in Roque’s plural universe, inviting the audience to explore his work’s provocative and sensory aspects.
With his ability to create iconic and thought-provoking imagery as tools for reflection, his films connect expanded cinema with social issues, offering a profound approach to urgent themes. At a time of questions around identity, urban space, and representation at the center of cultural debates, Roque’s work presents a critical and sensitive perspective beyond aesthetics.
The Guest Artist Exhibition – Luiz Roque at CEN includes seven works, one premiering in Brazil. Clube Amarelo (2024) was developed during his artist residency at Fundación Ama Amoedo (Uruguay) and will have its national debut at the event. The film blends colorful and black-and-white scenes to explore pleasure, nature, and the body’s physical and emotional transformations in search of new meanings. This work enriches the artist’s well-established career and, alongside the selection, connects and proposes intersections between cinema, visual art, and critical thought.
Roque has been part of CEN’s history since its first edition. He designed the festival’s trophy, which is still awarded today to the winners of the Brazil Competitive Exhibition. Luiz Roque was born in Cachoeira do Sul (RS) and resides in São Paulo. His recent solo shows have been held at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2024); PROA21, Buenos Aires (2022); Visual Arts Center, Austin (2021); Pivô, São Paulo (2020); CAC Passarelle, Brest (2020); Screens Series, New Museum, New York (2019); Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (MAC), Niterói (2018). Additionally, Roque has taken part in group exhibitions at the 12th Gothenburg Biennale (2023), the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), the 32nd São Paulo Biennale (2016) and in institutions such as PORTIKUS, MASP, MoMa-Ps1, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art and Kunsthalle Vienna.
Outros Esquemas presents 8 works exploring artistic processes
Another well-established program is the Outros Esquemas Exhibition, which became part of CEN’s lineup in 2019 to expand the space for expression in Brazilian audiovisual art. As a non-competitive section, this selection features eight films from five Brazilian states, all sharing a common thread: they explore the artistic process, creative journeys, and trajectories of significant Brazilian artists. These works explore key moments in the nation’s artistic memory, the behind-the-scenes exhibitions, musical compositions, theatrical productions, and actions that have strengthened and continue to strengthen cultural movements throughout the country. The selection includes the following titles: Arruma um Pessoal pra Gente Botar uma Macumba num Disco (Chico Serra), Arte da Diplomacia (Zeca Brito), Batimento (Anderson Astor), Boom Shankar – O Filme Perdido do Guará (Sérgio Gag), Brasiliana: O Musical Negro que Apresentou o Brasil ao Mundo (Joel Zito Araujo), Hélio Melo (Leticia Rheingantz), Mborairapé (Roney Freitas), and Um Corpo Só (Cacá Nazario).
Collections from three institutions and the festival are part of four exhibitions
In this edition, CEN resumes and expands an experience of comparing aesthetics, poetics, and ideas that began in 2022 with a side-by-side presentation of works from the festival’s collection with audiovisual works from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rio Grande do Sul (MACRS), in an exhibition at the Sotero Cosme Gallery (Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana). In 2025, this conversation between art creations that explore the power of visuality will also include other institutions whose collections include video art, artists’ films, and records of performances: in addition to CEN and MACRS, the Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul (MARGS) and Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos (FVCB) will participate in the Collection Exhibition.
On February 22 and 23, Cinemateca Capitólio will show four programs with audiovisual works from these institutions. Each collection will have its own session with works specially curated by Jaqueline Beltrame and Roger Lerina. “It will be a precious opportunity for the audience to learn about works by local, national, and foreign, historical and contemporary artists that are rarely shown. The result of such a heterogeneous and rich repository of images — from different formal and narrative, aesthetic and technical perspectives, as well as from various backgrounds and periods — is a plural, kaleidoscopic, and restless Collection Exhibition, which bears witness to a powerful artistic corpus yet to be unveiled,” say the curators.
Accessibility and university productions also featured in the program
The audience will also have the opportunity to watch six films from the Competitive Exhibition and Outros Esquemas Exhibition in accessible screenings at Cinemateca Capitólio, followed by discussions with Libras interpretation. On February 16 at 7:00 PM, Um Corpo Só (Cacá Nazario) will be screened with Libras, Audio Description, and LSE. On February 17, the following films will be shown: O Sonho de Anu (Vanessa Kypá) – Libras; E nada mais disse (Julia Menna Barreto) – Libras; Mar de Dentro (Lia Letícia) – Libras; A Edição do Nordeste (Pedro Fiuza) – Libras; Zagêro (Victor di Marco and Márcio Picoli) – with Libras, Audio Description, and LSE.
Additionally, the third edition of the Audiovisual On Course Exhibition will take place, curated by 19 students from Animation, Visual Arts, Art History, and Audiovisual Production programs across six institutions in Rio Grande do Sul: Unisinos, PUCRS, UFRGS, Uniritter, UFPel, and UFSM. The exhibition features 45 works selected by students who participated in a curation workshop led by CEN organizers and curators Jaqueline Beltrame and Ramiro Azevedo, along with curator Leonardo Bonfim. The screenings will take place on Thursday and Friday, February 20 and 21, at 2:30 PM, in Sala Eduardo Hirtz at Cinemateca Paulo Amorim.
Câmera Causa Workshop – Audiovisual Production for Socially Vulnerable Groups is held by filmmaker Gustavo Spolidoro. This is the fourth edition of the project in the Festival’s program. Throughout the previous editions, Câmera Causa produced 31 short films. This workshop focuses on the audiovisual empowerment of people who belong to or work with social projects, vulnerable groups, public schools, teacher training, and collectives. It offers a reflection and practice of audiovisual production using their own mobile phones. Created in 2018, the activity aims to enable these groups to produce their own audiovisual content and use it to promote their work, reality, and causes. The productions will be screened as part of the CEN 2025 program, in a session on February 19 at 14:30 in Sala Eduardo Hirtz – Cinemateca Paulo Amorim.
Thinking the Image Seminar takes place for the third time at the festival, with debates at the Goethe-Institut Porto Alegre
The Thinking the Image Seminar reaches its third edition at the 15th Cine Esquema Novo — Brazilian Audiovisual Art. Curated by Gabriela Almeida, the activity aims to debate aesthetic experiences, images, and the geopolitics of attention. It shifts the discussion from apocalyptic discourses on the ethical, aesthetic, and biopolitical impacts of the platformization of various spheres of life to the search for some lines of flight that may allow a productive clash in thought and dissent with and against the attention economy. The seminar proposes four axes of debate with guests who will make short interventions to provoke a collective conversation with the audience: “Attention and Distraction” (Gabriela Almeida and Juliano Gomes), “Visibility for what?” (Ana Letícia Schweig and Juliana Costa), “Is identification the only way?” (Fernanda Nascimento and Leonardo Bonfim), and “Discomfort, comfort and pleasure” (Ana Moura and Lennon Macedo). The seminar will take place on February 17 and 18, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM and 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM, at the Goethe-Institut Porto Alegre auditorium. Registration is free and can be done here. The event will include Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) interpretation and offer a certificate of participation at the end. A total of 80 spots are available.
Cine Esquema Novo is an ACENDI – Associação Cine Esquema Novo de Desenvolvimento da Imagem initiative. This project is funded by resources from Complementary Law No. 195/2022, Paulo Gustavo Law, and presented by the Ministry of Culture. Funded by Iecine, Pró-Cultura, and the Department of Culture of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, with support from Cinemateca Capitólio, Goethe Institut Porto Alegre, Cinemateca Paulo Amorim, Galeria Sotero Cosme, MACRS, Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana, and Casa Baka. For more information, please visit www.cineesquemanovo.org | www.facebook.com/cineesquemanovocen | @cine_esquema_novo