Brazil’s Gramado Film Festival: Brazilian cinema’s main event and resistance symbol

In 1986, the Hollywood Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences legally contested the design of the Kikito, the statuette of the “God of good humor,” awarded annually by the Gramado Festival.

The representatives of the Beverly Hills organization argued that the symbolic mark of the event in the Serra Gaucha was an “unfortunate imitation, slightly modified” of the Oscar because it is also a human figure.

Since the Kikito is a stylization of the human body, adorned with a flower or sun head, with a smile stamped on both sides of the statue and no feet at its base, the case went no further. Not least because, if the claim were upheld, any trophy design with the human silhouette as inspiration would be framed as a copy of the Oscar.

Bathed in bronze (not gold like the Oscar), the Kikito was not even born with a cinematographic vocation. It was created in 1967 by artisan Elisabeth Rosenfeld.

“The statuette symbolized the Gramado people, especially their handicrafts, which made the city grow. Before becoming a movie award, it was the trophy for the handicraft fair,” says Orival da Silva Marques, aka Xixo, the artisan chosen by Rosenfeld to carve (at the time, in wood) the Kikito for the first edition of the film festival, in 1973.

The Oscar’s fight with the Kikito, among other curiosities, was rescued by the Gramado Film Festival Museum to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the event this year, the oldest of its kind held uninterruptedly in Brazil.

The Brasília Film Festival came before in 1965 but had some hiatuses along its trajectory. The commemorative edition of Gramado will be opened this Friday, the 12th, at the Palácio dos Festivais, with the presentation of the national feature film “A Mãe”, by Cristiano Burlan, in competition.

“Gramado had its beginning modestly, with only four award categories: actor, actress, film, and special awards (such as soundtrack and photography),” recalls researcher Luiz Carlos Carrion, author of the book “Gramado Film Festival”, released by Tchê.

“It was created to showcase what was being produced in national cinema. And, of course, there was the idea of promoting the town of Gramado for tourism, perhaps its greatest purpose,” Carrion adds.

This festival is a public event currently held by Gramadotour, the city’s tourism autarchy. “Gramado has an eternal debt of gratitude to the festival for what it has done and still does to promote the city, thanks to the glamour of cinema and the movement around the artists,” says Rosa Helena Volk, president of Gramadotur.

This year, she expects the city of almost 40,000 inhabitants to receive more than 500,000 visitors during the festival. In 2019, the most recent in-person edition attracted an audience of 350,000 people – there was only online programming in 2020 and 2021.

Throughout its history, the festival has experienced ups and downs, changing its profile at the hands of different curators. Its golden age corresponds to the 70s and 80s, attracting the most important Brazilian filmmakers to the competitive screenings.

Like Arnaldo Jabor, awarded with the Kikito for best film in 1973 for “Toda Nudez Será Castigada”; Nelson Pereira dos Santos, the great winner in 1975 with “O Amuleto de Ogum”; João Batista de Andrade, consecrated with “Doramundo” in 1978; Roberto Farias, recognized with “Pra Frente, Brasil” in 1982; and Carlos Reichenbach, who conquered the most coveted Kikito with “Anjos do Arrabalde” in 1987.

“Until the beginning of the 1990s, the biggest directors and producers wanted to compete in Gramado,” says Sérgio Rezende, who was part of this group with his “O Homem da Capa Preta” (1986), winner of the Kikitos for best film, actor (José Wilker), actress (Marieta Severo) and soundtrack, as well as the audience award.

“Over time, however, they stopped sending their films to Gramado because they felt belittled at the festival for making big productions. The curators at the time paid more attention to young directors,” adds Rezende.

But it was after 2000 that the festival risked its reputation by prioritizing social events and red carpet lure to the detriment of the quality of the films. Weak films with no chance of winning Kikitos were selected based on the cast – especially if they included well-known actors, to ensure visibility in the celebrity-focused media.

An example was “Procuradas”, a film directed by Zeca Pires and José Frazão and starred by Paula Burlamaqui, which competed in 2004.

There was also a phase of more authorial films, from 2006 to 2011, when Gramado distanced itself from the general public, presenting some more radical productions. That was the case with the documentary “Mountains of Disorder”, about the massacre of the Awa-Guajá tribe in the Amazon, which won the Kikito for best film in 2006.

“Since 2012, when the festival turned 40, we have sought aesthetic, narrative, geographical and genre diversity, but always keeping an eye on cinematographic rigor, both technical and artistic,” says Marcos Santuario, one of the current curators. “As Gramado is an important label for those who participate and even more for those who win awards here, we also try to mix experienced directors with new people,” adds the curator.

In this 50th edition, with only unseen works in the competition, six more national feature films are fighting for the Kikitos – besides “A Mãe”. They are: “Mars One”, by Gabriel Martins; “Alien Nights”, by Sérgio de Carvalho; “The Shepherd and the Guerrilla”, by José Eduardo Belmonte; “Tinnitus”, by Gregório Graziosi; “Next Door”, by Julia Rezende; and “The Angels’ Club”, by Angelo Defanti.

“Whether it’s high or low, something I wouldn’t be able to say, the Gramado Festival is an important piece of resistance for national cinema,” says actor Otávio Müller, winner of the Kikito for best supporting actor for “Um homem só” in 2015. This year he competes in the main category playing one of the friends who celebrate gluttony and share existential anguish in “O Clube dos Anjos”, based on the work of Luis Fernando Verissimo.

For Sérgio Rezende, the fiftieth anniversary of Gramado is also a family milestone. “When I was 36, I competed in Gramado and won Kikitos for ‘O Homem da Capa Preta’. And my daughter Julia, who was born the week the film was presented, is competing in this edition with her ‘The Door Next Door’, and at the same age as I was,” he says, hoping that Julia will leave town carrying at least one Kikito. “The first one she won was chocolate”, jokes the filmmaker.

With information from Valor Econômico