Curators: Eric Pauli, Maju Stumpf, Raphaela Serafim e Valentina Collares

How does art express itself beyond words? Despite representing the absence of sound, silence is a form of communication. Silence can be serene, agitated, fierce, curious, and patient. In their search for films that speak to the identity of Cine Esquema Novo, the curators were led to four works that, although different in content and genre, express the multiple faces of silence. Tudo Somos Imagem (2009) exposes an electric silence in the urban frenzy that highlights the power of visuality and triggers the pulsating body of the city. Alfinete (2011) subtracted from the first film’s colors, placing an impatient silence revealing the anguish in the protagonist’s apartment. While Tudo Somos Imagem is expansive, Alfinente is cloistered. Sob a Pele de Vênus (2014) focuses on the intimate silence of a woman who slowly grows beyond her own skin and loneliness. The lack of dialog raises questions in a disturbing and dreamlike setting. The dreamlike atmosphere then intensifies in Bruxa de Fábrica, a short film also made in 2014, which follows another lonely character who crosses a dark silence, a threshold between reality and daydreaming.

On the screens of Cine Esquema Novo, silence and solitude expressed through a plurality of languages walk together, outlining a slice of the first 10 years of CRAV productions. The temporal, thematic, and linguistic framework we chose for the course’s two-decade collection was precise and not at all arbitrary. We also approached a new problem: the storage of digital files. In cinema, the preservation of these resources is uncertain and insecure due to the constant development of new technologies — and in more than twenty years, the students themselves have followed the changes in the digital world in real time. While curating, we first encountered our course collection, a large and complex collection that was difficult to access, which made us aware of the importance of preservation. From the research, we found a certain urgency to appreciate those who came before us as a reminder that cinema does not and should not have an expiration date.