Associação Cultural Videobrasil

To celebrate Museu da Imagem e do Som’s 45^th anniversary, Videobrasil participates in the museum’s special agenda with the video program Videobrasil Geração 80 (Videobrasil 80s Generation), which features artworks essential to understanding the history of video making in the country. Curated by Solange Farkas, the show puts together twelve artworks culled from the Videobrasil Collection, created by artists such as filmmaker Fernando Meirelles, who showcased his very first documentary video in the Festival, Marcelo Tas, with his earliest TV appearances as the fictional reporter Ernesto Varela, as well as Eder Santos, Lucilla Meirelles, Pedro Vieira, Rafael França, Sandra Kogut and Tadeu Jungle, among others. Videobrasil Geração 80 takes place at the LABMIS auditorium on Sunday, May 31, from 1 pm, as part of the special project MIS – 45 anos (MIS – 45 years), a celebration of the museum’s anniversary with various activities running from May 29 to 31 in São Paulo.

Eighties video productions in Brazil set out to take over TV and subvert it, in a quest for a new, more experimental and authorial language that combined video and contemporary art, making Brazilian video art into a force to be reckoned with. “Amid these two opposing approaches to production, a permanently bustling scene developed, amplified by popular culture, contaminated by video art, at once flirting and at odds with television,” says Solange Farkas. Videobrasil Geração 80 highlights artworks dating from 1984 to 1989 that were featured and won prizes in early Festival editions – the MIS hosted the event from 1983 up until 1990. “São Paulo’s Museu da Imagem e do Som was the physical birthplace to this movement and its primary embodiment: Videobrasil,” she adds.

Check out VB Channel for statements from Olhar Eletrônico’s Fernando Meirelles, Marcelo Machado and Marcelo Tas, now featured at the MIS with Do outro lado da sua casa (1985) and O Mundo no Ar (1987); and from Tadeu Jungle and Walter Silveira of TVDO (TVTudo or Tvudo), the authors of Heróis da Decadên(s)ia (1987) – also featured in this program – and Sandra Kogut, the co-director of music video Kátia Flávia, a Godiva do Irajá (1987) alongside Rodrigo Berliner.

VB Channel is a privileged space to watch documentaries and recordings of conversations between these artists, researchers and other key figures for art and culture of this time such as José Celso Martinez Correia, who won the first Festival’s grand prize for Caderneta de campo (1983). He was alongside Gabriel Priolli Netto, Pedro Vieira, Tadeu Jungle and Walter Silveira at one of the seminars entitled Counter-TV: Experimental Practices in Video in the 1980s, under the theme "Everything can be a TV show”.  The second meeting, "Invading the grid”, featured Fernando Meirelles, Goulart de Andrade, Marcelo Machado and Marcelo Tas.

VB Channel also presents Videobrasil on TV documentary series episodes (aired on Sesc TV) Independent production: television and political opening, about the issues that spurred the Festival’s emergence within the context of early independent video productions, the country’s political blossoming, and the demise of military dictatorship; and Video: languages, technologies and new possibilities, an overview of the use of video by independent artists and producers looking to build new image-in-motion aesthetics.

Here are the artworks featured in Videobrasil Geração 80 at the MIS:

Program 1 – 1pm (duration: 41’15”)
Do outro lado da sua casa, 1985 | 19’07”
Olhar Eletrônico (Marcelo Machado, Paulo Morelli, Renato Barbieri)
O mundo no ar, 1987 | 21’43”
Olhar Eletrônico (Fernando Meirelles, Marcelo Tas)

Program 2 – 2pm (duration: 52’29’’)
Heróis da decadên(s)ia, 1987 | 32’09’’
TVDO (Tadeu Jungle, Walter Silveira)
Duelo dos deuses, 1988 | 19’51’’
Pedro Vieira

Program 3 – 3pm (duration: 45’04’’)
Reencontro, 1984 | 7’50’’
Rafael França
Mentiras e humilhações, 1988 | 3’57’’
Eder Santos
Kátia Flávia, a Godiva do Irajá, 1987 | 4’06’’
Roberto Berliner, Sandra Kogut
Temporada de caça, 1988 | 28’36’’
Rita Moreira

Program 4 – 4pm (duration: 49’08’’)
Pivete, 1987 | 5’43’’
Geraldo Anhaia Melo, Lucilla Meirelles
Amigo urso, 1985 | 11’50’’
TV Viva (Cláudio Barroso, Claudio Ferrario, Eduardo Homem)
A paixão segundo Bruce, 1989 | 16’40’’
Luiz Duva
E o Zé Reinaldo, continua nadando?, 1989 | 14’19’’
Adriano Goldman, Hugo Prata

Videobrasil Geração 80
May 31 (Sunday), starting at 1pm
LABMIS Auditorium (66 seats)
Museu da Imagem e do Som | Avenida Europa, 158, São Paulo, Brazil
www.mis-sp.org.br