Based in São Paulo, Brazil, Heitor Augusto works as an independent programmer, film critic, lecturer and translator. He programed Black Brazilian Cinema: Episodes of a Fragmented History, a retrospective hosted at Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival and focused on short films spanning the period from 1973 to 2017. The retrospective was also accompanied by a 374-page catalogue, the most comprehensive effort yet to investigate the presence of Black directors. He has also programmed for other festivals, retrospectives and film clubs. He’s the head programmer for NICHO 54, an institute, of which he is a co-founder, working for the promotion of film education to Black Brazilians, as well as pushing for racial equity in the industry. Through this his work has helped to uncover systemic invisibilities perpetuated by traditional approaches to film history, providing healing to historically shattered subjectivities, as well as being an integral part of forging his own identity. Since 2015 Augusto has been mapping the presence of Black Brazilians in film history and such material will constitute an innovative research to be published in 2021. In constant exchange with the African Diaspora, his current curatorial research focuses on experimental films and queer cinema directed by Black filmmakers, with a special interest in bridging Brazilian with American expressions. In American film, his main object as a researcher is Blaxploitation cinema, with which he’s engaged from a formal, aesthetics, historical, racial and political perspective.
Black brazilian filmakers and short films a panoramic view
Film programmer, critic and researcher Heitor Augusto takes readers on a non-linear journey through 21 short films directed by Black Brazilian filmmakers over the last 50 years.
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In 1974, Sérgio Ricardo’s A Noite do Espantalho, shot entirely in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, was shown at the New York Film Festival. It was not until forty five years later, when Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s Bacurau came to the New York Film Festival in 2019, that Ricardo returned to New York City, this time through song.
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This past September, the staff of Limite had the opportunity to conduct an interview with the Workers of the Cinemateca Brasileira (Trabalhadores da Cinemateca Brasileira) , the collective representing the archivists and staff of Brazil’s largest film archive, who have been fighting for nearly an entire year for the survival of this vital institution.
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The following interview took place with archivist Hernani Heffner on July 4th, 2020. Heffner has been working at Rio de Janeiro’s historic Cinemateca do MAM since 1996 and is one of Brazil’s most important film archivists.
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