RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Five actions in defense of the Cinemateca Brasileira took place across Brazil on Saturday afternoon, August 7. This day marks one year since the federal government took control of the institution, which had part of its material burned in a fire in one of its warehouses in São Paulo on May 29.
Protesters demanded the hiring of technical staff to preserve the Cinematheque’s collection and the rapid selection of a new management company. The actions were organized by the Broad Front in Defense of Cinemateca Brasileira, composed of the Brazilian Association for the Preservation of Audiovisual Media, the Brazilian Association of Filmmakers, Cinemateca Acesa the Association of Residents of Vila Mariana, and Cinemateca Brasileira workers.
In São Paulo, protesters gathered in front of Cinemateca’s headquarters in Vila Clementino. But the actions also took place in Rio de Janeiro (at the Museum of Modern Art), in Curitiba (at the Cinemateca de Curitiba), in Porto Alegre (in front of the Cinemateca Capitólio) and in Brasilia (at Praça dos Três Poderes).
The fire on the 29th occurred a little more than a year after a flood in the same shed in Vila Leopoldina. It is not yet officially known what was lost in the fire, but the warehouse housed an important part of the institution’s collection.
Experts believe the losses include decades-old documents from state audiovisual institutions – such as Embrafilm and the National Film Institute – films from teachers and students at the University of São Paulo’s Faculty of Communication and Arts, hundreds of 35mm reels from the Pandora Filmes collection, and duplicate film matrices located in the main building. The depository also houses documents from the Tempo Glauber Archive, collecting diaries, personal notes, and original posters of iconic Bahian filmmaker Glauber Rocha.
According to former employees of the facility, the fire was a “predictable crime.” The reason is that for the past year, the Cinematheque has been operating only with maintenance services, such as security and cleaning, and without specialized staff. Several experts had also pointed out the high risks of a tragedy.
The Cinematheque, which experienced its heyday and international recognition in the 2000s, has been in crisis since 2013. At that time, then Minister of Culture Marta Suplicy dismissed the institution’s director, Carlos Magalhães, and an audit crippled the transfer of funds to the Society of Friends of the Cinematheque, which co-managed the institution.
In 2018, the Roquette Pinto Educational Communication Association took over. The social organization handed over the keys of the Cinematheque to the federal government in 2020, in action attended by the federal police after its contract was terminated at the end of 2019. The employees were dismissed, and since then, the institution has been the responsibility of the federal government.
Earlier this year, the government had selected the Society of Friends of the Cinematheque as a stopgap measure to manage the Cinematheque. However, the Bolsonaro government did not sign an agreement with the management company, as announced.
A day after the fire, the Special Secretariat for Culture, led by Mário Frias, published a public notice to hire the Cinemateca Brasileira’s management company, providing a five-year contract with a private nonprofit.
On Twitter, Frias blamed the Workers’ Party. “The state in which we have preserved Cinemateca is one of the cursed legacies of the apocalyptic Petismo government, which destroyed the entire state to steal public funds and maintain a huge gang of corruption and criminal filth.”