1968: A Feira (short); Lavrador (short) (co-director). 1969: Ind?stria (short); Articula??es (short). 1970: Tres Desenhos (short); Monteiro Lobato (short) (co-director with Sarno); As Fiandeiras (short). 1972: Guerra do Paraguai (War of Paraguay) (documentary, short). 1973: Pantanal (documentary, short); O Sonho Acabou (short). 1974: Get?lio Vargas (documentary). 1977: Mar de Rosas (Sea of Roses) (+ scenarist/scriptwriter). 1979: Nelson Pereira Dos Santos (documentary); Anatom?a do Espectador (short?16mm). 1982: Das Tripas Cora??o (Hearts and Guts) (+ scenarist/scriptwriter). 1987: Sonho de Valsa (The Lady in Shining Armor) (+ scenarist/scriptwriter).
Live-Action Films: 1956: The Boy Who Saw Through (Stoney) (producer). 1965: Finnegans Wake (Passages from James Joyce?s Finnegans Wake) (director, producer).
1967-74?made short and medium length films; 1974?first feature film, the documentary Get?lio Vargas.
S?o Paulo, Brazil, 1943.
Studied journalism and photography at the Universidade da S?o Paulo.
Brazilian Ana Carolina arrived at filmmaking after first pursuing a career in medicine and then in journalism and photography. Her ultimate career choice did not reflect a childhood of moviegoing, in fact her family rarely went to the movies. A medical student in the turbulent sixties, Carolina found herself more attracted to the university?s cultural activities and academics than to her medical courses. She fell in love with a film student and began to make films with him. He wanted to make documentaries and that led Carolina first to the production of documentary films. As Carolina commented to Luis Trelles Plazaola in a 1989 interview, ?I had no ideology, neither as a cinephile nor in any way.? From this rather odd beginning, Carolina quickly progressed to writing, producing, and directing her own films.
In the late 1960s, Brazilian life was ruled by a repressive dictatorship. Brazilian filmmakers concentrated on politicized projects, striving to use film to engage the audience and to incite change. Carolina entered the scene making social, cultural, poetic, and political documentaries, films for which she was imprisoned twice. Made in 1974, her first feature film, Get?lio Vargas, documented the political life of Vargas, who ruled Brazil as president from 1930 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1954, his rule ending with his suicide. With this film, Carolina learned about the commercial aspects of filmmaking, working with producers, restructuring her approach
In a 1985 interview, Carolina commented that it was the experience of making Get?lio Vargas that made her see the possibility of making feature films. Not only were documentaries not commercially viable, but it was very difficult to express political views in such a ?real? way given Brazil?s repressed political culture. So, she went inside herself and followed Get?lio Vargas with a trilogy of films centered around female protagonists confronting and sometimes subverting their roles within a patriarchal society. It is difficult to classify neatly Sea of Roses, Hearts and Guts, or The Lady in Shining Armor as any one genre. Here we defer to Carolina who describes the films as ?dramatic comedy,? lacking any more well-defined category for them.
In Sea of Roses, Carolina?s best-known film, two generations are contrasted: The mother is pushed around by the macho husband and, even though she attempts to flee with her daughter, she ultimately has no way out. Her daughter, however, might escape the controlling patriarchal family structure. With its nonsensical, even hysterical dialogue, the film might at first seem absurd. Yet, the tension between man and woman and between generations is very real and quite poignant. Called ?modern and inventive? by one critic, ?at once iconoclastic and malicious? by another, and ?schizophrenic? by a third, Sea of Roses offers characters informed by Carolina?s own experiences, as both the daughter in a patriarchally ordered family and a daughter of Brazil.
Tereza, the protagonist of The Lady in Shining Armor, is a single 30-something woman who lives with and seems to have strangely close relationships with her father and brother. The film examines her near-hysterical search for a man, literally a ?Prince Charming? who will love her unconditionally for the rest of her life, and her continual disappointment. This plot summary, however, is misleading because it omits the central elements of the film?Tereza?s fantasies or nightmares, filled with religious imagery that are at once both humorous and scandalous. Another child of Brazil?s recent repressive regime, Tereza?s quest for love belies her search for herself?as she says herself early in the film, she has no identity.
Set in a girls? boarding school, Hearts and Guts explores the hypocrisy and educational atmosphere that control the students? behavior. The 16- and 17-year-old girls are rebellious and curious. Confused about their identities, especially their sexual identities, these girls go on hysterical (both pathologically and humoristically) romps through the school, obsessing about each other and their teachers.
It is fitting that Carolina?s first feature examined Vargas?s life, as her subsequent films are peopled by the generation most affected by his rule, and the generation perhaps most responsible for the pushing Brazil toward a representative democracy in the 1960s. Carolina speaks often of ?power? and believes that her generation never had any sense of their own power, as individuals or as a group, because of Vargas?s paternalistic, repressive regime. Her characters struggle with this, and amuse their audiences with their attempts at rebellion.?