Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Tuulensieppaajat / Pixadores

Tampere Film Festival, National Competition 1

TUULENSIEPPAAJAT
PIXADORES

Finland, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Sweden 2014
Documentary | 93 min

Director: Amir Escandari
    
Pixadores. Ovatko he taiteilijoita, anarkisteja vai rikollisia? Elokuva neljästä ystävyksestä, jotka pitävät itseään sotilaina. Maalaaminen on heille taistelua olemassaolosta ja omasta paikasta maailmassa Sao Paulossa. Vain junan katolla on unohdus.
    
Some call them artists. For others they are anarchists or criminals. They prefer to call themselves soldiers. The Pixadores are here to make their mark on the world. Pixadores is the debut feature by Amir Escandari
.

AA: Shot in São Paulo and Berlin in black and white and scope. The language is Portuguese, and there are English subtitles.

The picture belongs to the general wave that started in the 1970s, including street dance, hip hop, rap, graffiti, skating, flash mobs, and parkour. The general wave of urban conquest by the young and disenfranchised. At least it's a cultural conquest by images, sounds, and movements. Covered in real time by cell phone videos, with YouTube and other sites in the internet as the huge forum for this global phenomenon of youth culture.

The picture also belongs to the wave of movies about extreme sports including surfing, skating, and climbing.

The Pixadores risk their lives spray-painting in impossibly high and dangerous places, and hanging on fast trains.

"Refusal is the essence of spray painting". Children of the favelas, the Pixadores claim their identity with their derring-do. Acknowledged by the Berlin cultural elites, they react with ingratitude, spray-painting the cultural curators.

But even the advertising industry is interested: Puma, clothes lines. "They are after us".

The conclusion is about integration to society. Money from the advertising is not rejected. There are families to be taken care of.

The visual look is a collage of hugely different sources, from glamorous images to cell-phone quality.

A good contribution to an interesting trend in current cinema.

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