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In this episode, we discuss some of the most important aesthetic issues in film and contemporary art.Alejandra Moffat is a Chilean dramaturge and writer. She has co-written relevan recent films from her country such as 1976, by Manuela Martelli; La casa lobo and Los hiperbóreos, by Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León, and Cuando las nubes esconden la sombra, by José Luis Torres Leiva, films presented in screens such as the Cannes Filmmakers Fortnight, the Berlinale, Jeonju and San Sebastián.She has written experimental films, documentaries, and animation projects, where the script is developed parallel to the production. In 2022, she published her first novel, Mambo.On the other hand, Juan Cardenas is a Colombian writer, author of seven novels and two books of short stories such as Los estratos, Zumbido, Ornamento and Elástico de sombra. In 2018, he was selected as part of Bogotá 39, of the Hay Festival, and in 2019 he won...

Barren Lives.Before I reread it late this past winter, my clearest memory of Graciliano Ramos’s 1938 novel Vidas Secas (Barren Lives), a classic of Brazilian modernism, was of the dog, Baleia. I’d first read the novel in high school, and my teacher, Ivan, had an illustration of Baleia tattooed on his arm. Barren Lives was a favorite even among those pupils who, unlike me, didn’t obsessively read every book assigned. We all adored Baleia; though she is a dog, she has as much of a consciousness and a perspective as any of the human characters in the book. Her tragic death left us all equally moved and indignant.In Brazil, literature is singular and filmmaking is mostly ignored. I saw online that a movie theater in São Paulo not far from where I grew up was playing a rare print of the film adaptation of Barren Lives...

Few companies have put as much energy as Brazilian TV giant Globo into pushing out their new slate during the week when NATPE Miami was scheduled to occur.

Packed with new and retuning hit shows, Globo’s roster marks a robust consolidation of early last year’s business strategy of unifying free TV, pay TV, streaming and digital properties under the name “One Single Globo”.

Rubbing shoulders with burgeoning franchises – the second season of eco thriller “Aruanas,” Season 4 of social issue medical drama “Under Pressure” — is “In Your Place,” the new telenovela that is airing in prime time in Brazil.

The show is created and written by Lícia Manzo, one of the many talented female writers that are propelling a new era of Globo, author of such hits as “The Life We Lead.”

It follows the lives of twin brothers – played charmingly by “Brazil Avenue” star Cauã Reymond – separated at...

Brazilian TV giant Globo has brought to this year’s Natpe conference in Miami one of its biggest access prime time hits in the last eight years. “A Life Worth Living” underscores that, as Globo and its Svod service Globoplay explore ever more shorter series formats – “Second Call,” “Aruanas,” telenovelas and melodrama are still kings in Latin America.

With a daily audience of 36 million, the show turns on Paloma (Grazi Massafera), a dreamy seamstress and mother of three whose life is turned upside down when she’s diagnosed with a terminal disease. Wrongly, as she later discovers, along with the really terminally ill Alberto (Antonio Fagundes) a wealthy book publisher, on the verge of death. Between them a friendship blossoms inspired by a common love of literature and an awareness of how finite life is.

Variety talked with novela writers Rosane Svartman and Paulo Halm- whose work together has...

The Church of the Devil

Director: Manoel De Oliveira

Writers: Manoel De Oliveira, Machado De Assis (short stories)

Producers: O Som a a Furia’s Luis Urbano and Sandro Aguilar

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

Cast: Fernanda Montenegro, Lima Duarte

Portuguese director Manoel De Oliveira is the world’s oldest living filmmaker, and the past several years has seen the filmmaker engaging in an incredible amount of output, his last title being 2012′s Gebo and the Shadow, which has yet to see a Us release. While his past several titles have been set in Portugal or France, he moves to Brazil with this latest, based on short stories of Machado De Assis, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of Brazilian literature. Needless to say, a glance at the vague description provided has us hooked.

Gist: Three connected stories set in Brazil following a visit of devil to earth,...

1998 Best Actress Academy Award nominee stages a political protest -- a 'lesbian kiss' -- at an awards ceremony in Rio de Janeiro Forget Madonna and Britney Spears, Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep, Bullock and Scarlett Johansson, and Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner. Veteran Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro, best known around the world for her performance as a bitter old hag in Walter Salles' 1998 drama Central Station, which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nod, kissed fellow veteran performer Camila Amado in the mouth at Rio de Janeiro's Theater Producers Association Awards ceremony, which took place in that Brazilian city this past Monday, March 25. (Pictured above: Montenegro kissing Amado.) The mouth-to-mouth kiss between the 83-year-old Montenegro and the 77-year-old Amado, followed a previous "gay kiss" also staged at the awards show -- that one between performers Ricardo Blat and Tonico Pereira. All that kissing wasn't intended to merely liven up...

Zhang Ziyi in Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmasters

For about a week now, Ioncinema has been counting down its "Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2012" — and they're almost there. As of this writing, after 99 individual entries filling us in on all that Eric Lavallee knows about the films he's looking forward to, the title that'll land in the #1 spot remains a mystery. I'll update when it appears, but for now, click the titles to see the files on the top 20 so far:

Update, 1/12: And we have a #1:

Carlos Reygadas's Post Tenebras Lux. Michael Haneke's Love. Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master. Terrence Malick's The Burial (that title's likely to change). Olivier Assayas's Something in the Air. Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmasters. Abbas Kiarostami's Like Someone in Love. Antonio Campos's Simon Killer. Derek Cianfrance's Place Beyond the Plains. Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone.

From Jd Salinger to Sj Perelman, the director writes about the books that have made most impact on him as a film-maker and comic writer

The Catcher in the Rye by Jd Salinger (1951)

The Catcher in the Rye has always had special meaning for me because I read it when I was young – 18 or so. It resonated with my fantasies about Manhattan, the Upper East Side, and New York City in general. It was such a relief from all the other books I was reading at the time, which all had a quality of homework about them. For me, reading Middlemarch or Sentimental Education is work, whereas The Catcher in the Rye is pure pleasure. The burden of entertainment was on the author. Salinger fulfilled that obligation from the first sentence on.

When I was younger reading was something you did for school, something you did for obligation, something you...