Pixote

SESSION TEN: 28 JULY 2012

please note change of date!!

This is the last screening of Season Two, and then we are taking our usual summer break.

After the screening, we will announce the theme of Season Three, another exclusive selection or great films with an LGBTQ interest.

After the screening, we are all off to dinner in a local restaurant!

Everyone is welcome. To give us an idea of numbers for dinner, if you want to join us please send us a line: filmqlub@gmail.com

Brazil

PIXOTE: A LEI DO MAIS FRACO

(tr. PIXOTE: THE LAW OF THE WEAKEST)

Dir. Héctor Babenco. 1981. 128 mins. Portuguese, with English subtitles.

Script: Hector Babenco and Jorge Durán, from the book The Childhood of the Dead Ones, by José Louzeiro.

Starring: Fernando Ramos Da Silva , Jorge Julião, Gilberto Moura, Edilson Lino , Zenildo Oliveira Santos.

Amazing film about a gang of homeless young boys who band together to ensure physical and emotional survival

Casting homeless boys as actors (their performances are extraordinary), basing the script on real-life stories, and opening the film with a discussion on the evils of poverty, director Héctor Babenco’s “Pixote” is a lesson in politically committed film-making. Filmed before Babenco’s queer classic “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (1985) and before the international mega-hit “City of God” (2002), “Pixote” laid down the foundations for all of his remarkable work. Rejects of society, these children are born without a future, and grow up with guns as toys, police chases as games, drug-smuggling as work. The film tells the story of a group of Brazilian youngsters, including the hard-as-nails but immature Pixote and the much abused but proud transgendered Lilica. They meet after they are sent to a Reformatory, which in fact (just like Magdalen Laundries and Industrial Schools in Ireland) is a concentration camp where they are routinely abused and treated as slave labour. When a few of the boys manage to escape, they discover that surviving in the outside may be just as difficult. They become a family, and they seem to be indestructible, until love, jealousy, and the adult world intrude in their lives. This savage film is often tough to watch, but it is an eye-opener, and a must for anyone who cares about social justice. An absolute classic.

(Warning: the film contains some scenes of violence, including sexual violence, which some Film Qlub members may find disturbing)

Film Qlub

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