Film
In the Intense Now (No Intenso Agora)

Sat, 09/29/2018
2:30 PM National Gallery of Art

Director and writer: João Moreira Salles
Brazil 2017, 127 min., Documentary

Michael Kraus, Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College in Vermont, will give an introduction to the movie. His research interests have dealt with transitional justice, the politics of memory, nationalism, Cold War, and democratization.

In this documentary the Brazilian director João Moreira Salles sheds light on the historic events of the 1960s taking place in China, France, Czechoslovakia, and Brazil. In a cinematic montage, he uses archival footage to not only show the state of mind in the four different countries of the era, but also to investigate further developments after the protests had reached their peak. The director himself narrates the film, providing commentary on the material shown.

The type and sources of the material being used highlight what makes the documentary so unique. The footage of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China in 1966 was shot by one of the few tourists that were allowed in the country at that time – Salles’s mother; the images of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops that put an end to the Prague Spring were being captured by amateurs. Further focus is placed on the student protests in Paris in May 1968, and on images of the funerals of students, workers, and police officers killed during the events of 1968 in the cities of Paris, Lyon, Prague, and Rio de Janeiro.

João Moreira Salles, born 1962 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, studied economics at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. The founder of the production company VideoFilmes, he has directed many award-winning documentaries. Since 2006 he has published the monthly magazine piauí, which is devoted to long-form journalism.

This event is part of the event series 1968: A Time of Uproar in Europe and the US.