Cao Guimarães

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On the tranquil island of Paquetá, in Guanabara Bay, northwest of the city of Rio de Janeiro, someone is relaxing on the shore beside the rocks. Intimate telephone conversations contrast against news reports about the war in Ukraine, which is taking place simultaneously on a different plane.

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A film that has waiting as its theme, registering it in its most varied manifestations. The waiting in a queue, the mystical waiting, the waiting for an actor to go on stage, the anguishing waiting for sleep, the waiting for hormonal effects in a gender identity adjustment. The time of waiting is confused with the time of life itself, in a world in which we are unlearning how to wait.

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Juvenal is a metro driver from Belo Horizonte. Margô, a station controller. Both live in a state of complete solitude – each in a particular way. Juvenal refuses to be alone and strolls through the streets of this metropolis taking comfort by mingling with the anonimous crowd. Margo seeks relief in the virtual world of social networks where she struggles to establish long lasting relations with real persons.

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Elvira Loreley Alma de Dragón accompanies the life of a Fortune Teller from Uruguay. The contrasts of a milenar labor that deals with the destiny of people, inserted into a contemporary society, in a hurry to obtain answers to everything.

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Otto is a film that accompanies the process of pregnancy of my wife and the birth of my son. Instinctive and visceral as a gesture. Intimate and confident as a filmed diary. A celebration to life, a film of love.

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Freely inspired by the work Catatau, by Paulo Leminski, the plot begins with the historical hypothesis imagined by the poet from Curitiba: “What if René Descartes had come to Brazil with Maurício de Nassau?” The film materializes this hypothesis and joins the father of modern philosophy in his journey through the tropics. Under the effect of hallucinatory herbs, he investigates questions revolving around geometry and optics in the face of an absolutely strange world. Known for his famous sentence “I think, therefore I am”, Descartes faces his doubt towards phenomena reason doesn’t explain. René, Renatus, Re born.

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Join the enchanting journey as a city awakens, its components harmonizing in a grand symphony of self-expression, where every brick, tree, and whisper shapes its own destiny.

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The Tenant follows the trajectory of a soap bubble as it floats through the empty rooms of a house under renovation. The bubble never bursts as it drifts from one room to the next in a permanent state of suspension.

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The air emitted from the chests of multiform voices in the flea markets is not the same air that shakes the multicolored awnings that protect the owners of those same voices from the sun and the rain. Two different weights configure the fragile life balance of the streets in Mexico City.

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Three lonely drifters follow different paths on the roads of northeastern Minas Gerais, Brazil. A film about the connections between walking and thinking, in which the ever-changing nature of things turns life into a place of mere passing.

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Out of the names of twenty cities from Minas Gerais, Brazil, the impulse towards the visual record of the things and lives that are found there. Images that do not intend to represent places, but rather to capture the following of a time specific for certain situations of coexistence between landscapes and people.

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After the Brazilian carnival, in the melancholy aftermath of Ash Wednesday, the ants begin their own profane, multicolored feast to the rhythm of matchbox samba.

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Two kids fighting outside the window

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People who didn’t know each other, simultaneously exchanged houses for 24-hours. Each one brought a portable video camera and had total freedom to film whatever they wanted in the home of this stranger during this period. Each participant tried to elaborate a 'mental image' of the "other" while along with their personal objects and their homely universe. At the end of the experience, each one gave a personal report on how theyimagined the “other”. "Two way street" is a project that deals with the reality of the urban individual who lives alone. It is an attempt to disorganize a little bit these realities. Using a video camera the participants insert their personality (through sight perspective) into the personality of someone else that is absent. Solitudes confound themselves at some point in the flow of looking at and being looked at, of absent presence and present absence, and of identification and differentiation.

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The film gradually reveals the apparently isolated existence of Dominguinhos, a 72-year-old hermit who lives inside a cave that juts off from a rock mountain. The film is composed of long silences in which the hermit executes his daily chores, such as cooking and cleaning, and of images that transcend his territory. Towards the end we discover that silence is commonplace in the hermit’s life, the normal state in which time passes. Speech is the state of exception.

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3’00” | DV | Colour | 2003 | Brazil Screening Format: DV Filming Format: Super 8 Original Soundtrack: O Grivo Directed, Photographed and Edited by: Cao Guimarães Soap bubbles bursting. Flies jumping about. The beating of micro- phenomenon pulsed by a toy piano.

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3’00” | DV | Colour | 2002 | Brazil Screening Format: DV Filming Format: Super 8 Directed, Photographed and edited by: Cao Guimarães Collective of people, streets, neighborhoods, names, of buses that lead people through the streets of neighborhoods named after people.

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15’00” | DV | Colour | 2002 | Brazil Screening Format: DV Filming Format: Super 8/ DV Original Soundtrack: O Grivo Original Script: Cao Guimarães & Rivane Neuenshwander Directed, Photographed and edited by: Cao Guimarães This film was born in collaboration with artist Rivane Neuenschwander. The action consisted in randomly distributing pieces of a world map inside books standing in the bookshelves of Stockholm’s public library. The possible correlations between any place in the world and a book (or a page in book) are mysteries safeguarded by the destiny of the library’s regular visitors.

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2001 Duration: 8’00” Screening Format: DV Filming Format: Super 8 Original Soundtrack: O Grivo Photographed and edited by: Cao Guimarães Directed by: Cao Guimarães e Rivane Neuenshwander "Word/World" is a video about communication. The uncannily organised world of ants is faced with two strange objects/actions. To speak and to eat: everything goes through the mouth.

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The illusion of an hypnosis emerges from the serenity of a geometrical succession of forms. In this geometrical 'mini-drama' the pathos is created by colors in movement and the languorous and repetitive beat of a piano.

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This film is a conjunction of light and shadow, forms, colors and textures that herald the necessary interrelationship of all that is alive and vibrant.

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"Fim do Sem Fim" is a feature-length documentary that has as its backdrop the imminent disappearance of certain trades and professions in Brazil. Shot in 10 Brazilian states, the film is a dive into the inventiveness and resistance of men in the face of technological and cultural changes.

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"Sopro" expresses the relation between what's in and outside. The translucid form of an everchanging bubble shows the world to which it belongs and also that which is contained by it.

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(2000) 5’30” | DV | P&B | 2000 | Brazil Screening Format: DV Filming Format: Super 8 Photographed and Edited by: Cao Guimarães Directed by: Cao Guimarães e Rivane Neuenschwander "Blow" expresses the relationship between what is inside and what is outside. The multi-formed translucence of a bubble exhibits the world that contains it and is contained by it. The bubble that never bursts is a metaphor of the continuity of things.

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Brazil, 18th century. The colony of Portugal endures a decline in gold production. A Portuguese minority rules over a corrupt and autocratic society. Joaquim is an efficient soldier, famous for capturing gold smugglers. While waiting for his promotion to Lieutenant, he leaves for a risky mission in search of new gold mines - the only way to buy the freedom of Blackie, a slave he is in love with. Inspired by the true story of Tiradentes, the first leader of the Brazilian revolutionary movement.

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With the world in suspension Dante meets Ava, a woman who offers him her affection to facilitate his crossing over to the other side.

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Juvenal is a metro driver from Belo Horizonte. Margô, a station controller. Both live in a state of complete solitude – each in a particular way. Juvenal refuses to be alone and strolls through the streets of this metropolis taking comfort by mingling with the anonimous crowd. Margo seeks relief in the virtual world of social networks where she struggles to establish long lasting relations with real persons.

Open details →

Freely inspired by the work Catatau, by Paulo Leminski, the plot begins with the historical hypothesis imagined by the poet from Curitiba: “What if René Descartes had come to Brazil with Maurício de Nassau?” The film materializes this hypothesis and joins the father of modern philosophy in his journey through the tropics. Under the effect of hallucinatory herbs, he investigates questions revolving around geometry and optics in the face of an absolutely strange world. Known for his famous sentence “I think, therefore I am”, Descartes faces his doubt towards phenomena reason doesn’t explain. René, Renatus, Re born.

Open details →

Three lonely drifters follow different paths on the roads of northeastern Minas Gerais, Brazil. A film about the connections between walking and thinking, in which the ever-changing nature of things turns life into a place of mere passing.

Open details →