"Filhas do vento" (2004)

In a small town in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, two sisters meet again after years apart. One of them headed for the big city, trying to secure a career as an actress. The other stayed to look after their father.
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The cast of the film Filhas do Vento by director Joel Zito Araújo, turned down the eight Kikito awards it received at the 32nd Gramado Festival. The attitude was prompted by statements by the president of the selection panel, the film critic Rubens Ewald Filho.

In an interview with the Jornal do Brazil, Ewald Filho said that the choice of winners was based not only on film criteria. According to him, it was not by chance that the awards were given to “six black actors in a state like Rio Grande do Sul*, which has always been accused of discrediting blacks.”

A statement issued by the cast of the film claimed that the critic’s claim was a disgrace. “To say that the awards were planned and to give the understanding that Filhas do Vento was awarded by concession is a dishonor!”

So, there you have it. From the effort it took get a film with a black majority cast made to the difficulty of attaining the capital and finally the national and international acclaim that the film garnered, Filhas do Vento, a film that should be considered a landmark in Brazilian cinematic history, became another victim of the contradictory racial politics that are at the country’s very core. Of course no one would claim that a film with a 90% white cast could only win an award as concession because, in Brazil, a 90% white cast is the norm. On the other hand, if Brazil is to become the racial democracy that it once claimed itself to be, more people should be asking where the black presence is in the Brazilian media.

At the root of this issue of race and representation in is the difference that exist in the particular brand of racism that exist in multiracial societies such as the US and Brazil. In the US, where strict, legalized segregation occurred in the American south, black businesses, products, leaders, radio and TV filled in the gaping, evident cracks in the racialized facade of the American creed of equal opportunity. In Brazil, on the other hand, a lack of legally sanctioned racial segregation and a denial of the very existence of racism for all intents and purposes denied Afro-Brazilians a blatant, invisible problem to galvanize themselves around. Thus, in the face of very real racism, exclusion and white supremacy, there is no Afro-Brazilian radio or TV and most black Brazilians are more familiar with African-American heroes and historical figures than their own leaders who fought to expose the brutality of Brazilian-styled racism. When black Brazilians DO manage to create or attempt to create things specifically targeted at the Afro-Brazilian population, cries of reverse racism and the importation of segregated American tactics are heard loud and clear.

So the ultimate question is, where to, Brazil? You pride yourself on not having specifically black or white segregated society but you also insist on hiding a huge population of color which, in some ways, denies its very existence. If the powers that be really wanted to do the right thing, they would started portraying the face of Brazil as it really is so that the making of a film with a 90% black cast and the subsequent reaction of such a thing wouldn’t be so shocking.

* – Although Brazil is known for being a multiracial society where mixing and blending of races and cultures has been going on for five centuries, the country’s most southern states, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, where the film festival took place, and Paraná were heavily populated by European immigrants in the period between 1870 and 1940 when the Brazilian government initiated its policy of whitening the Brazilian population which at the time consisted primarily of people of color. Today, these three states are said have the highest influence of European culture and largest percentages of persons that self-identify themselves as white with the population of Santa Catarina being 85.7% white, Rio Grande do Sul, 81.4% white and Paraná, 71.3% white. Historically, these states, particularly Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul have been accused of disrespecting or in some cases, attempting to erase the history of African descendants in these regions.