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Entrevista com Miguel Silveira
e Andrew Eick para Columbia
Filmmaking,
from Columbia to Brazil
By Beth PalmerPrint
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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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