Forging autonomy: CORCINA and the state of things^[1]

Lucas Parente

Brazilian cinema in the 1970s was marked by the expansion of alternative forms of filmmaking and exhibition. Through the exploration of smaller formats, closer to life, such as short films in Super 8 and 16mm, an autonomous cinema was developed, linked to the aesthetics of the chronicle.

Characterized by the absence of a hierarchy between gauges and running times, the Jornada de Cinema da Bahia became one of the main meeting points for a new generation of filmmakers. It was in this context that the Associação Brasileira de Documentaristas – ABD was founded, an organization dedicated to defending the interests of short-film professionals, along with the notion of curta-metragismo (short-film culture), a movement advocating for the distribution and exhibition of Brazilian short films.

By putting pressure on Embrafilme, the ABD secured the enactment of the Lei do Curta (Short Film Law) — Article 13 of Federal Law No. 6,281, of December 9th, 1975 — which made it mandatory for a Brazilian short film to be screened before every foreign feature. In 1977, a resolution issued by Concine made the exhibition of a short film conditional upon the issuance of the Certificado de Produto Brasileiro – CPB, created on that occasion. The same resolution limited the number of films that could be registered by each production company to five and guaranteed short films 5% of the box office^[2].

When it came into force, the law inaugurated a huge short-film market, triggering a very peculiar surge in the history of Brazilian cinema, marked by the spread of a specific format — 35mm shorts, six to fourteen minutes long^[3]— tied to a mechanism of compulsory exhibition, regulated by Concine and mediated by Embrafilme.

Since most short filmmakers did not have production companies, they had to turn to third parties, who pocketed part of the 5% of the box office. To solve the problem, the ABD discussed two possible paths: press for registration as individuals or create a cooperative to represent filmmakers without production companies. The second proposal prevailed, giving rise to the Cooperativa dos Realizadores Cinematográficos Autônomos – CORCINA.

Registered with INCRA in 1978 by ten founding filmmakers^[4], the cooperative began with 32 members and, two years later, had 45 filmmakers^[5]. Members paid a monthly fee, and 10% of the revenue from each short went towards administrative expenses. Between 1978 and 1983, CORCINA produced more than 60 shorts and distributed around 100 through the Lei do Curta^[6]. In addition to the films made for the purposes of the Lei do Curta, CORCINA organized screenings^[7] and brought works to various festivals^[8].

But CORCINA was much more than a distributor: it was a hub for creation, production, and the exchange of knowledge. Meetings took place in an office provided by Jorge Abranches, in apartment 416 of the iconic building at 143 Siqueira Campos Street in Copacabana. There were expectations surrounding CORCINA: the cinema of the 1980s was being prepared there, based on the emergence of ten years of experience in alternative cinema. A synthesis of the short-film movement, the cooperative did not find its raison d’être in an aesthetic proposal, but in a political and economic struggle. Its engine ran on the tension between short filmmakers and the lobbying efforts of international distributors and national exhibitors, since the Short Film Law had opened an improbable rift between these worlds.

Despite the inevitable generalizations, we can sketch a taxonomy of the elective-affinity groups that existed within CORCINA. There were the more politically engaged filmmakers, focused on the issue of amnesty and the political opening, such as José Carlos Asbeg (Alegria de papel, 1979), Rubem Corveto (Lá Dentro, Lá Fora, 1981), and Silvio Da-Rin (Fênix, 1980). There were the manifesto-film filmmakers, betting on a revolution of continuous delirium, such as Sérgio Péo (Cinema Ação Curtametralha, 1978) and Paulo Veríssimo (Bahira, O Grande Burlão, 1979). There was the FACHA group, with José Joffily (Alô, Teteia!, 1978), Jorge Abranches (Na Realidade…, 1979), Mariza Leão (Circos e Sonhos, 1978), and Sérgio Rezende (P.S. TE AMO, 1977), who aimed to make fiction shorts with greater commercial appeal. There were those devoted to more experimental fictions about psychological alienation, such as Pompeu Aguiar (Observatório, 1982), or economic alienation, such as Lúcio Aguiar (A Venda, 1978), who enjoyed making films in a single day. There were filmmakers with an ethnographic outlook, such as Edilson Plá (Jongo, 1979) and José Inácio Parente (A Trama da Rede, 1980). There were also feminist filmmakers, such as Maria Luiza Aboim (Creche-lar, 1978) and Leilany Fernandes (Tempo quente, 1980), who made short films about care work. And there were those more closely connected to contemporary art, making conceptual films, such as Lygia Pape (Catiti-Catiti, 1978), Wilson Coutinho (Cildo Meireles, 1979), Arthur Omar (Vocês, 1979), and André Parente (Curto Circuito, 1979). Many, coming from different groups, took to the streets of Rio, shaping a poetic anthropology of the city, such as José Joffily (Copa Mixta, 1979), Sandra Werneck (Ritos de Passagem, 1980), and Roberto Moura (Angela Noite, 1980).

But the groups were permeable, especially when it came to production^[9]. Someone would arrive at the cooperative, share an idea, and everyone would be swept up by the excitement of the proposal, offering suggestions and imagining ways of producing it. The roles were distributed and groups were formed according to the needs of each project. Curious cases of movement between groups emerged: Arthur Omar composed the soundtrack for a narrative film; Lúcio Aguiar shot a manifesto film; Jorge Abranches became an assistant on an experimental short.

There was also a continuous exchange of knowledge. Abranches, for example, decided to work in sound recording and, after learning from Da-Rin, became the sound technician on Joffily’s films. Collective discussions were held to decide the direction of a film, as in the case of The Hammock Weave (A Trama da Rede, 1980), whose editing was discussed entirely as a group, gathered together to watch the 16mm work prints. And so the rituals unfolded: weekly meetings following the logic of a political apparatus; informal Monday gatherings to screen films by cooperative members; assemblies announced in the Gazeta de Notícias ; weekly manifestos to align ideas.

During Sérgio Péo’s presidency, the cooperative’s strategy was to forge autonomy, focusing on three objectives. First, to seek the acquisition of equipment (cameras and an editing table) with support from Embrafilme — whether through funding or the donation of underused equipment — making CORCINA’s short filmmakers independent of public calls for proposals. Second, to create a system of distribution and exhibition in housing complexes. CORCINA proposed to the Companhia de Habitação Popular  – COHAB, an agency linked to the Banco Nacional de Habitação – BNH, that it become mandatory to build small rooms equipped with 16mm projectors, where screenings could be organized at modest prices, breaking the dependence on the exhibition circuit. Third, to pressure Concine to create legislation taxing foreign films, curbing the remittance of profits and generating new revenue for Brazilian cinema.

The strategy aimed to “unclog the paths of cinema”^[10] at a time when short-film production was far greater than the exhibition circuit could absorb. But above all, the idea was to break with dependence on the state, because it was not enough to make quality films at low cost: it was necessary to become independent of public calls and the Lei do Curta, obtaining equipment and forging an alternative market geared toward building audiences outside the official circuit.

But Embrafilme boycotted the effort. It did not provide the equipment or finance Corcina; it did not sign the COHAB project, although it had been approved by the BNH; and it repeatedly delayed the transfer of cinema box-office revenues, often using the excuse of data processing and the receipt of box-office statements. The delays prevented new shoots or forced filmmakers to shoot at their own expense while waiting for reimbursement. Faced with this, some filmmakers began making direct arrangements with exhibitors: they would give them their future 5% in exchange for receiving a smaller amount in advance^[11]. This allowed them to finance their next film — but undermined the short-film movement.

In response, in August 1979, CORCINA members called a demonstration in Cinelândia to denounce the failure to transfer the funds. Under the slogan “closed cinemas, films in the square” they screened 16mm films on a screen set up in front of the Amarelinho. The demonstration appears in Closed Movie Theaters (Cinemas Fechados, 1980), a pamphlet film screened under the Lei do Curta.

But in a country with a foreign-aligned elite, where farce always comes before tragedy, the creativity of the boycotts goes very far. The North American distributors, represented by Jack Valenti, were opposed to the market reserve in general and to the Short Film Law in particular. They claimed that the U.S. government would impose tariffs on the Brazilian footwear industry if screen quotas continued to expand. The exhibitors, meanwhile, sabotaged the law from within. First, the “5% [of the box office] were seen by distributors and exhibitors as a way of opening up the black box of cinema revenues. Through a simple calculation, the actual revenue of the cinemas would be revealed. This prompted a wave of injunctions seeking to prevent the Short Film Law from being implemented, delaying the effective start of its exhibition by almost six months — a period that allowed exhibitors to purchase content for their programming^[12]”.

When the law was implemented, they boycotted it by programming the short films before features of an entirely different nature — a political film before an erotic one, a feminist documentary before a kung fu film — creating absurd juxtapositions^[13]. Then, by setting up production companies and deliberately making bad shorts — the so-called filmes-bomba, in which pigeons flying around Cinelândia, seahorses leaping about in an aquarium, and so on were shown — in order to pocket the 5% of the box office and turn audiences against Brazilian shorts. All of this was done for an exhausted audience, which had already watched trailers, advertisements, and newsreels before the short film even began. As the years went by, shorts were hardly screened at all; or they were projected with the lights on, pushed to after the feature.

The fact is that CORCINA did not achieve the autonomy it had so sought. Worn down, Sérgio Péo stepped down as president of the cooperative. He was succeeded by José Joffily, then Sérgio Rezende, Joatan Vilela Berbel, and finally Lúcio Aguiar. Increasingly dependent on the Lei do Curta, CORCINA lost sight of the autonomy of alternative modes of exhibition and ended up being stifled^[14]. Sérgio Rezende made Until the last drop (Até a Última Gota,1980), a 16mm feature about the blood trade in Brazil. Frederico Confalonieri was preparing a feature, but Carlos Augusto Calil, then president of Embrafilme, persuaded him to keep Hey, Mangueira! (Fala Mangueira!, 1983) in medium-length format. Paulo Veríssimo made Exu Piá (1986), an hallucinatory feature-length version of Macunaíma, which sealed the cooperative’s bankruptcy. On March 16, 1990, Fernando Collor de Mello abolished Embrafilme, burying the Lei do Curta with it — which, however, was never officially repealed.

Although tied to a law that is no longer applied, CORCINA’s trajectory helps us think about certain atavisms of today’s “independent” Brazilian cinema — in practice, deeply dependent on production and distribution public calls, with exhibition restricted to festivals and a few film clubs. CORCINA shows that it is possible to create production and distribution hubs without making aesthetic unity a requirement, with the aim of forging autonomy through the creation of new exhibition circuits and breaking with the cognitive rigidity produced by dependence on the logic of public calls. But it also reveals the cost of such an attempt in a country where the relationship between the state and culture is among the most complex — not to say the most sadistic. Today, the struggle is for screen quotas and the regulation of streaming services. What we lack, however, is an autonomous way of thinking that can free us from dependence on the state, the isolation of the market, and capture by the demand for communication, opening the way to new modes of production and dissemination for short films.

***

The first retrospective devoted to CORCINA took place in 2018, during the Dobra Festival, at the MAM Rio film library, when the cooperative’s 40th anniversary was celebrated. The event brought together eight filmmakers connected to CORCINA and screened films that, for the most part, had not been shown in four decades. The following year, the CORCINA Apresenta program was held at Capitólio film library, in Porto Alegre. Based on these two programs, around 64 short films produced by the cooperative were mapped. Of these, 38 copies were located: 24 on film, in exhibition-ready or scannable condition; 25 originating from old telecine transfers (U-matic, Betacam, Beta SP, VHS, Mini-DV), of which 15 survive only in these formats. Eleven were digitized in high definition^[15]. Another 16 films could not be located or have copies and negatives in an advanced state of deterioration.

We now propose, at FestCurtasBH, the third CORCINA program, comprising three screenings, including two films that have not been shown previously — Actually… (Na realidade…, 1979) and The heat is on (Tempo quente, 1980). The first screening, Aparelhos de Controle, brings together films that stage the paranoia of the years of lead through specular structures, with loops in closed circuits. In The Sonacirema (Os Sonacirema, 1978), it is the spectator who becomes the object of a film without images. In Once Upon a Time (Era Uma Vez, 1979), Brazilian social types are portrayed as products of the culture industry, which a Black hand takes upon itself to destroy. In Actually…, the character lives through a chain of nightmares in which she may be taken away by the DOPS at any moment. There is also an endless pursuit in Short Circuit, a stroboscopic guerrilla in You, and a music box that repeats the Socialist International in Major chord (Acorde Maior, 1983), until it is destroyed.

The second screening, Do Cinepanfleto à Cidade Corpo, brings together films in which performance and urban intervention are incorporated into cinematic form. First, under the sign of the ciné-tract (the pamphlet film), Sérgio Péo’s films turn the movie theater into a public square — and vice versa — exposing on screen the contradictory mechanisms of film production and exhibition. Next comes the denunciation film Bullets and Balls (Balas e Bolas, 1979), following the testimony of a resident of Pavãozinho about the prejudices of the asphalt and the police invasion of the favela. Finally, Mixed Copa, Rites of Passage and Angela Night portray the performativity of Rio’s fauna through the lens of a poetic anthropology of the city.

The third screening, Estados Alterados de Trabalho, features films about labor and alienation. First, The Hammock Weave, which follows the interaction between body, loom, and thread in a home-based hammock factory in Fortaleza, asking who is the producer and who is the product. Then, two films devoted to care work performed by women from the outskirts of Rio: The heat is on, which addresses their exploitation and lack of infrastructure, and Daycare Home, which envisions new forms of organization. At the heart of the screening is Paper Joy, centered on the hopes and fears surrounding the political opening. Finally, the program closes with three satires of underdevelopment: Unpunished criminal act (Ato Delituoso Impune, 1981), The Sale (A Venda), and Cildo Meireles.

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