Gabriel Mascaro Finds Lyricism in Wind-Blown Corners

The Brazilian artist and filmmaker Gabriel Mascaro will will be the guest of UT’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the LLILAS Brazil Center at screenings of two of his films, tonight and tomorrow, as part of the 2014 Latin American Filmmakers Series.

A visual artist and documentary filmmaker, Mascaro makes his fiction feature debut with the film Ventos de Agosto (August Winds), which screens tonight at 7:30pm at the Marchesa Hall and Theatre. The highly lyrical film is not a far stretch from his documentary work, however. With a strong sense of place – a poor village on the northeastern coast of Brazil – August Winds also presents a vivid portrait of some of the area's inhabitants while also using a minimum of dialogue.

The film’s wisp of a narrative is like the titular breeze that Mascaro tries to capture in the film. In discussing the screenplay during an interview on the occasion of the film’s U.S. premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival, Mascaro noted, “We started to write about abandonment, memory, loss, possession, the waves, the sun, the salt, and the brick and mortar of the ruins. I felt, however, that my challenge was how to create images out of something that is invisible: the driving force of the wind. This apparent impossibility spurred my interest.”

The only professional actor in August Winds is the lead female character. The girl is a newcomer to the area, having been sent there by her mother to take care of her aged grandmother. She also drives a coconut transport truck and makes loves with her boyfriend amid a mound of shells in the back. The boyfriend cuts down coconuts, spearfishes, and builds up the seawall protecting the cemetery and home he shares with his disapproving father against the ever eroding shoreline. One day, he pulls up a decayed corpse from the ocean depths and gradually becomes obsessed with its final disposition. All is transitory, except the wind.

A discussion with Mascaro will be moderated tonight by Dr. Jason Borge, of UT’s department of Spanish and Portuguese. On Tuesday, November 11, Mascaro will also be present for a screening of his documentary Doméstica (Housemaids) at the Harry Ransom Center’s Prothro Theatre at 5:30pm. Afterward he will partake in a book talk by moderated by Sônia Roncador, of the department of Spanish and Portuguese, regarding her book Domestic Servants in Literature and Testimony in Brazil.