Ode to the Brigadeiro... and Magali

Oi gente,

Ok so it's Carnaval. There's an annual huge glitter samba parade in the Sambadromo in Rio de Janeiro (the entrance or exit to which is shaped like a woman's butt I believe... how Brazilian! just kidding!), parties on every street corner, and so many beers and caipirinhas flowing you couldn't count the liters consumed during this week. But oh well, I'm not there - not that I have ever been to Carnaval, I believe the closest I came to something like it in Brazil were the parties after the World Cup games in 2010. But... I guess I still might swing by sometime ey ;)
 

Well, Carnaval is the time of a bit of excess.. I guess. Actually, what I came to talk about here was driven by some nostalgia and I never really said much about my final couple of weeks in Brazil, well, Juiz de Fora, in particular. But I will keep it short this time... (I'll try), and I also wanted to say a few words about the lovely food consumed in that time... also a bit in the Carnaval theme, don't you think?

Hmm-mmm. You see all that food? I honestly cannot remember the name of that restaurant anymore, but it was near the Mariano Procopio park in Juiz de Fora, that I do know (if that helps anyone).

But yes, we have actually been to this place a couple of times in the final weeks I have spent in Brazil, and their food is totally overwhelming, what with the delicately prepared meat, and little round delicious potatoes the colour of sunflowers, and perfectly sliced tomatoes. Mmm. And of course, to top it all off, after the lunch (yep, that was lunch) our friend Carmen also took us by her place to feed us intricately prepared chocolate truffles. Seriously.

And after all that food, we gringas still managed to swing by a family party that evening (and you know, you get fed quite a bit at Brazilian family parties...), and to get to a club as well, the very cool Cultural, located who knows how far out of town. And jump to rock music and make fun of guys who wouldn't leave some of us alone ;)

Anyhow, soon after this I was facing my last week in Juiz de Fora. Honestly, it seems like such a while ago now, and yet not really, and I still remember everything so well. Going back to Saci, the school where I worked, a couple of times and saying goodbye to everyone, going by my first host family and saying goodbye, watching a random movie at the cinema with Tammy (and the lady at the ticket kassa thought I was American because of my student card.. *khem it was already expired*), picking up my id-card from the local police (yep, it was finally ready, and I remember the policemen were encouraging me to come back to Brazil and Juiz de Fora again in the future, how cute), a family birthday party with my current host family at the time, going shopping for havaianas, taking photos of the city and Mari's apartment that has been my home for 3 months, having lunch with Vico's family and going to the media-access-only premiere of the new play Cibele, Vico's sister, played in, and having lunch with my host family before leaving to the Juiz de Fora bus station on my last day in Brazil, and of course... my despedida!!

My goodbye party, a couple of days before I left, where several people held lovely speeches about me, tear tear. I was also then encouraged (no choice?) to speak... hmm (did I swear in Portuguese..? uhm... oh boy), but I did so all in Portuguese, very proud. And there were banners for me, too, and my host sisters Mari and Cacau brought along a little green notebook in which everyone wrote their message... I re-read them a few months back, and they made me want to cry..! Oh, and of course there was pizza (yum) and... brigadeiros!! A gift from my host family for the party (in addition to everything else!) - a full plate of these delicious chocolate marvels.

Actually, brigadeiro was one of the first Brazilian foods I have tried, back on my very first day in Brazil. It's yummy like you wouldn't know, but man that is some heavy chocolate! Here's some cheers to the brigadeiro.

Oh yeah, something that's not about food - yeah, towards the end of my stay in Brazil, and especially the last 1.5 weeks after returning from Bahia, I did start to resemble a hippy a little. I got a Brazilian tereré done in Salvador (a multi-coloured bead in my hair, actually green-white-blue-yellow on my request... can you guess what those colours stand for?), and I wore all these colourful random earrings, like a long feather one, and I had bought a long dress in Rio, and multi-coloured acai beads from this Chilean market seller in Salvador... actually, when I boarded the bus in Juiz de Fora and arrived in Amsterdam some 20 hours later or something, I did look very... flower power? Brazilian flower power? Hmm maybe I should re-do that look here again sometime :)

Oh, and after some great fun with my good friends in the party area of our building, some of us still managed to get our butts out to samba, even after all the brigadeiro. At the local Muzik of course, samba every Wednesday, with the lovely singer Sandra Portenhos (oh god do I have her name right?). And I even got a picture together with her after the show, I was quite a fan during my stay in JF. I think I tried to explain that I was a gringa and I was leaving Brazil, not sure if she could hear or understand me, she just smiled and posed with me for the photo. :)

And you might wonder, who is this Magali, and why is there an ode to her, too? Brigadeiro, that's understandble, it's chocolate, and I'm a girl. (Well, I could talk about food in Brazil more but I might get hungry unnecessarily. I think you get the point anyway.) Magali is one of the protagonists of the Brazilian comic books for kids that I have talked about before, she's the sweet little one who's always eating or thinking about food, and an important character in my life since I started reading the comics... I think that explains it, don't you?

PS Ok, so everyone in Brazil is dancing to samba and axé now, and you name it what else. (And I'm in the Netherlands being nostalgic and writing). I just wanted to point out another little bit of nostalgia.. last week my friends from university and I went back to our campus for an alumni event, some of us nearly welling up after all this time. Later, at a friend's house who happens to be half-Brazilian, I remembered a few things from both our university time and Brazil that I forgot... dancing with her on the university stage to the axé-samba routine of the popular band E o tchan - and now I finally remembered the routine! And some time later in my life, I recalled trying to do the moves in Brazil to the then omnipresent Rebolation... bom-bom-bom! (That refers to the hips movement, I think). Well, what can I say... I think many of you might know this one by now, whether you've ever been to Brazil or not: 'Nooossa..!'

What won't cinema do for you?

Hello my readers,

Back in the 1990's, when I was growing up in Russia, we thought that Brazilian life was like a... telenovela. A soap opera - passionate, dramatic, people cheating left and right.. haha, just kidding. But the telenovelas, from both Brazil and Argentina, were hugely popular then in Russia and did establish a certain idea we had of these countries. Just like watching American cinema quickly became a normal part of life of a Russian child like me, as if it was always like that (which it wasn't for many years in Russia - I don't believe a history lesson is needed here).

We know now, fortunately, that it's not all like in a telenovela. Soap operas do stay immensely popular in Brazil though, and it's a daily routine for many to watch one after another in the evenings. Polished as they may be, to some extent they still reflect the culture after all, just as music and cinema do and have done for many decades also, and will continue to do as their makers reinvent and keep challenging themselves. And music, dance and cinema are huge presences in Brazil.

This past week - and may I say in response to my own previous blog post that now winter has actually finally arrived in the Netherlands, with snow (which crunches under my feet quite nicely but makes them sooo cold) and chaos on the roads and everything - Rotterdam was the proud host again of the annual International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The IFFR is a huge deal, there are hundreds of movies shown from all over the world and people from everywhere come to watch the films, their directors included. I actually wish it was there for longer than ten days, so I could manage to go more than once... but still, for the third time in my life, I've caught a film at the film festival in Rotterdam this week. There were a great many Brazilian movies showing this year, though might I say some of them quite explicit ;) As I scrolled down the South American list, I came across what turned out to be a really nice film (and not explicit, hahaha) called Rania. The film is about a 16-year-old girl - Rania - from the favelas of Fortaleza (a city on the seaside in the far, far Northeast of Brazil), who dreams of being a dancer but struggles against various obstacles, many as a result of her socio-economic situation.

What's interesting about this film, it was directed by a woman and you can see that in the softer, feminine perspective throughout, such as in the characters' portrayals, scenes based on daily life, softer contours and colours... or perhaps it was my perspective on it ;) What's great is that the director was also present at the showing and after the film, she was able to tell us a bit more about it, which was good to complete the understanding of how this film, for instance, reflects some issues in Brazilian society nowadays. One such example would be the relative difficulty of access to art education by the lower classes in Brazil which the director pointed out, and which features widely in the film.

It also caught my eye that the sea and the beach really do play a big role in the lives of people living along the coast in Brazil, as they were also featured prominently in the movie. In Rio, for example, the beach plays an important part of life and it is a place where everyone comes to, no matter whether they live in the fancy houses with security systems in Ipanema or the favelas in the hills around. In Fortaleza, too, the sea seems to play an important part in life, and banal as it may seem, Brazilian life along the coasts must generally also depend much on its proximity to the water, it is not for nothing that they call the country a 'crab civilization'.

As I already admitted, for a long time my main impression of Brazil was based on the telenovelas I used to watch as a young girl (I wasn't the only one back in the day though!), which was years later expanded by studying a bit about Brazil in anthropology classes at university. This included watching Brazilian movies - such as the famous City of God (Cidade de Deus) and Bus 174, both realistic and harsh portrayals of life for those from poorer backgrounds in Brazil. Where Rania stimulates one to reflect on continuing inequality in Brazil in terms of dance and cultural education and opportunities (or lack thereof) for the youth, films such as City of God are almost like a fist in the face; and at the same time still show the vulnerable side of that aspect of Brazilian society.

Some time ago now, a week after coming back from Brazil actually, I also caught a Brazilian film called O Pai O at the open air film festival in Amsterdam. O Pai O is set in Salvador, the capital of Bahia in the Northeast, and doesn't hide the ups and downs of Brazilian life, either, but does so with significant Carnaval flair and happy-go-lucky music. The film takes place during the final days of Carnaval in Salvador and evolves around several characters, and it's colourful, bright, euphoric, sad, and of course full of music, all at the same time. They say that Salvador might now be overtaking Rio with its street parties at Carnaval, so this is a great movie to see for those who want to catch a glimpse.

There is also a great Brazilian comedy (with an inevitable sequel, which is less good, but still amusing) called Se eu fosse voce (If I were you). It's actually not so much about social criticism, and funnily enough it's even made quite in the style of telenovelas, so you can draw a breath - I won't go into Brazil's socio-economic challenges anymore for now. What's funny about it, the film actually stars an actress I remember back from watching the soap operas in the 90's - in fact, both principal actors are famous from telenovelas. I won't go into the plot though as I don't want to spoil it for anyone who might potentially want to see it! But in any case, though just slightly superficial, it's a great breath of fresh air (waved down from the beaches in Copacabana, as it takes place in Rio).

Hmm actually I've come to the end of my first hand knowledge of Brazilian cinema as these are the films I have seen (plus Rio, which, ok, is from the US, but the director is Brazilian so technically there is something rather Brazilian about it, like the music), so I'm now going to round up this post. (The history of Brazilian cinema is pretty interesting, too, but that you can google ;)) There are more Brazilian movies I'd want to see, too: Estacao Central, Tropa de Elite, and such... and I must admit, I sometimes miss watching the telenovelas, too - they still do make for great entertainment when you want to forget about all kinds of stupid things by watching others doing stupid things, and they would now be very handy for practicing Portuguese.

Well, this was it for now, I actually just wanted to reflect a bit on Brazilian cinema and its power to reflect and show us different facets of its culture, and its challenges and opportunities...

...até logo!