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with Miguel Silveira and Andrew Eick to Columbia
Interview
with Miguel Silveira and Andrew Eick to Columbia
Filmmaking,
from Columbia to Brazil
By Beth PalmerPrint
Send an Email to Beth Palmer
Staff Writer
Andrew
Nelles / The Chronicle
Columbia filmmakers Andrew Eick and Miguel Silveira
pause for a photo in the Alexandroff Campus Center,
600 S. Michigan Ave. on Jan. 31. The pair recently
completed ‘Carnaval Blues,’ a film shot
in Brazil.
A group of American students in a foreign country,
sometimes going hungry, nearly arrested by police,
witnessing a physical fight between strippers at a
raunchy club and at times fearing for their lives—it
all may sound like a script straight from Hollywood.
However, it’s anything but a suspense film.
Those
events were experienced by a team of risk-taking Columbia
filmmakers while shooting Carnaval Blues in Brazil.
For the first time, the public can view the film at
a private screening on Feb. 9 at Film Row Cinema in
the 1104 Center, 1104 S. Wabash Ave.
The
screening comes exactly two years after filming began
in Rio de Janeiro, and it kicks off the festival run
of Carnaval Blues, which writer/director Miguel Silveira
plans to submit to the Chicago International Film
Festival, the Los Angeles International Film Festival,
the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival and
others.
“This
film was my student project; it was nothing other
than that,” said Silveira, an undeclared major
with a cinematography concentration who graduated
from Columbia in 2005. “We’re just proud
we can present it to Columbia.”
The
film, set during the real Carnival festival in Rio
de Janeiro, combines documentary-style footage with
Silveira’s screenplay, which traces the interactions
of an American anthropology student studying Brazil’s
“culture of violence” with a Brazilian
father and daughter.
“It’s
a narrative film, but there is so much documentary
in it that you just can’t plan the content,”
said Silveira, who lived in Brazil until 1999. “It’s
like a bomb: When it goes off, it doesn’t go
back to the state it was before the explosion.”
Silveira,
who has taught Production I at Columbia since fall
2006, financed the film primarily with Sallie Mae
school loans, which still left them financially short.
“I
risked everything,” Silveira said. “But
the way it worked out, it was magic.”
They
didn’t have insurance on any equipment, yet
nothing was stolen or broken. They didn’t have
healthcare plans, money or, for a few days, food.
“We
didn’t have money for food, literally,”
Silveira said, whose family lives in Brazil. “One
day when we had no food, my father brought mangos.
Then we borrowed a tiny bit of money. We fed the entire
crew for 12 days with $200.”
Silveira
adapted this risk-taking attitude and met most of
his crew, which he says is more like a brotherhood
and sisterhood of best friends, in his 2000 class,
Idea Production. Russell Porter, a faculty member
of the Film and Video Department taught the class.
“He
took to heart something I said to him, which is, ‘In
order to get anywhere in life, you have to take risks,’
and he was prepared to do that,” Porter said.
“All the risks, dangers and difficulties in
Brazil, they also tend to be brilliant source material
and I think that is what Miguel has captured.”
They
made two versions of the film: Carnaval Blues, which
is an hour long, and Namibia, Brasil, a short they
created from five minutes of footage that stood on
its own, Silveira said.
The
low-budget film required the entire crew to buy their
own tickets to Brazil.
Andrew
Eick, a junior film major and a producer of both Namibia
and Carnaval, couldn’t afford the ticket, so
he stayed in Chicago, making phone calls and gathering
monetary support to send to Silveira in Brazil.
When
the crew returned from Brazil, they spent almost two
years in postproduction: a year of editing and another
year finding money to finish the sound, Eick said.
During that time, they submitted Namibia to Big Screen
Ten, an annual Columbia showcase of top student films,
where the short won the jury prize of $2,000.
“But
by the next week the $2,000 was gone because we still
owed people money,” Eick said.
Taking
the wins as an “in” at Columbia, Eick
asked if they could use the Film and Video Department
equipment to finish Carnaval Blues; they were allowed
four days to do so, at no cost. At other production
sites in Chicago the same equipment would cost $15,000,
Eick said.
“Columbia
really came through for us,” Eick said. “First
they let us do the sound there, and Columbia doesn’t
do that with feature films. But this was never meant
to be a feature film; it was meant to be a short independent
project at Columbia. But as they were filming, it
turned into something bigger, something that couldn’t
be told in 20 minutes.”
Silveira
and Eick also submitted Namibia, Brasil to the Chicago
International Film Festival in October 2006.
Phillip
Bajorat, a programmer for short films at the Festival,
makes final decisions on which films are accepted
and contacted Silveira when Namibia was selected.
“The
two things that impressed me most about Namibia, Brasil
were Miguel’s ability to strongly establish
mood and to simply tell a story,” Bajorat said.
“It’s remarkable the troubles that many
filmmakers, veteran or amateur have with storytelling.
I found Miguel’s clean, straightforward approach
quite affecting.”
Audiences
at the Chicago festival definitely enjoyed Namibia,
Bajorat said, and he can imagine Carnaval Blues having
a decent run in U.S. festivals.
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