Amazonas Film Festival

A film by ZELITO VIANA, President of Honor, showing on opening day.

 

The story, affairs and, especially, the career of one of the most important Brazilian and Latin American composers of all times is the theme of "Villa Lobos, Uma Paixão de Vida", movie by the filmmaker Zelito Viana, President of Honor of the 9th Amazonas Film Festival (AFF), which will be shown at 10:30 a.m. this Sunday (4), in the Amazonas Opera House, free of charge.

Public and critical success since its launching in 2000, the film biography begins with Villa Lobos getting ready to watch a concert in his honor at the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro. During the presentation, the memories dominate the protagonist from his childhood, when the figure of the father, Raul, public official, amateur cellist and great stimulator of the musical vocation of the boy contrasts with the mother Noêmia, who would prefer her son to be a doctor.

The memories go on for six different decades of the life of the composer presenting a character which at each moment will reveal himself to us in all his complexity, from the disastrous relationship with the first wife, Lucilia, to the impossibility to have children. The adventurer and intuitive man who loved his land and who made the music a portrait of his passion for Brazil in spite of the difficulties of acceptance of his work in a country that did not recognize its origins yet.

To tell these constant variations between geniality and madness, simplicity and megalomania and the lovely and at the same time self-centered being, three actors play Villa Lobos: Andre Ricardo is Tuhu, nickname of the composer in childhood, Marcos Palmeira, the son of Zelito, is the young conductor and Antonio Fagundes plays a mature and vibrant Villa.

Among the female characters we highlight Ana Beatriz Nogueira (Lucilia), Leticia Spiller, who plays Mindinha, the great love of the composer, and Marieta Severo as the mother Noemia. Othon Bastos, José Wilker, Ilya São Paulo and Antônio Pitanga are also included in the cast.

With a luxurious production, costumes of the time, script by Joaquim Assis, photography direction by Walter Carvalho and production by Vera De Paula, another highlight of the film is the musical direction by Silvio Barbato, who together with the Symphonic Orchestra of Rio de Janeiro are responsible for the sound track winner of the Grande Prêmio BR do Cinema Brasileiro (2001) and Best Art Direction in the Brazilian Film Festival of Miami (2001) in addition to other honors and nominations.