Livia Perez, a Brazilian media scholar and filmmaker, has a diverse portfolio encompassing non-fiction media, Latinx, feminist, and queer media history, as well as visual memory, diasporic media history, transnational film, and multimedia. Her educational background includes an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Ph.D. from the University of Sao Paulo.

She directed Quem Matou Eloa? (Who Killed Eloá?) (2015), Lampião da Esquina (2016), and M de Maes (M is for Mothers) (2023), which follows a Brazilian lesbian couple, Melanie and Marcela, who decided to both breastfeed their babies. She co-produced A Wild Patience Has Taken Me Here (2021, dir. Éri Sarmet), which premiered at Sundance, and Carne (2019, dir. Camila Kater), which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. In 2022, she was a visiting intern at the Isaac Julien Studio in London. Dr. Perez is an active member of the Red de investigación del Audiovisual hecho por Mujeres en América Latina (RAMA) and the Brazilian Filmmakers Collective (BRFC), showcasing her commitment to promoting and advancing the work of women in Latin American audiovisual creation. Perez is currently working on a project that focuses on the Brazilian queer filmmaker Norma Bahia Pontes (1941-2010) and the intergenerational encounter between her generation of feminist filmmakers and the generation of Bahia Pontes, who was active during the 1960s and 1970s in Brazil, France, and New York. The documentary, Encontrando Norma (Finding Norma), deals with memory and reflexivity while investigating how Norma has been erased from film history.

The interview was conducted via Zoom Meeting on May 7th, 2024, made in Portuguese and translated into English by Maria Padilha

How and why did you decide to become a filmmaker? How did this come about for you?

Thank you, Maria, also for the invitation. It is an honor to participate in this project. I began to see myself as a filmmaker after I started to become interested in social issues, social topics, and documentaries. So both things came together in my life—my social engagement, my activism, and my interest in cinema. Of course, when I was a teenager, I had a habit of recording tapes and editing VHS tapes by hand, which was a medium of my time. I had a strong desire to archive things—archives that were within my reach on TV—and I started making documentaries.

I started making my first films on topics I wanted to talk about, on things I had something to say about, and that I perceived society might not be seeing in the same way, or where I could contribute to some debate. That's where my first films come from. From the beginning, I also felt that the space [of filmmaking] was very closed off to people like me.

Being a woman, a Latina woman, a Brazilian woman, I felt that these spaces were very segregated, especially in audiovisual [work], in cinema. Even in university, the ones who would handle the camera were men. In my time and in Brazil, it was like that. They would divide the room: who would do what? And the men would rush to the camera. I felt these segregated spaces. But at the same time, I had a great desire to experiment, to get closer, and to find a space there, to understand how I could express myself with that medium. 

In your two works, Quem Matou Eloá? (Who killed Eloa?), a strong critique of sensationalist media and Lampião da Esquina, a documentary about a left and alternative newspaper, you bring a reflexivity of one media within another media. Is this important to you?

In university, I did a degree in social communication at Unicamp (State University of Campinas), with an emphasis on media. So I think that's why my work has always been greatly influenced by questioning of the mainstream  media, by media literacy. That’s very present in my work. 

Being from Brazil, an ultra-mediated society where the media dictates many debates, that has always been an area that has interested me a lot: a reflection on the media. 

How do we look at that? How do we reflect on the existence of the media? And so this is present both in Quem matou Eloá? (Who killed Eloa?) and Lampião da Esquina. And now, in my most recent film, which is also a film about another filmmaker from the 60s and 70s, but in a generational dialogue, I am trying to understand why this filmmaker was so erased and why her films didn't circulate, even if her work was extremely relevant and generative to many women and queers of my generation.

In the case of Lampião, I really wanted to work with alternative media. I've noticed a lack of images in the media depicting people participating in demonstrations and civil organization since the early 1980s. There's not much in the mainstream media.This includes civil rights protests, black activist groups, and gay women, who were referred to simply as gay or homosexuals at that time. So I sought out independent and queer videomakers  from the late 70s, early 80s. I find this topic intriguing. I started to explore the archives and various media sources to understand how these events were documented, especially what has been omitted. 

Your filmmaking process is, in a way, a resignification of history. Do you have an interest in ressignifying history?

Oh, yes, definitely yes. So much so that this is also my most recent project looking at  [Brazilian] filmmaker [Norma Bahia Pontes]. It is a desire to be inscribed in history, for one. For a more political attitude towards the general public, but also to understand that there are other stories, that there are other people making media, there is other media representing different groups.

It’s part of my desire as a filmmaker and a Brazilian woman in the Global South—there's this desire to find media that looks more like me, that tells stories the same way I tell them, to understand where our tradition comes from—if you will allow me to use that word.

I think I found so much belonging in Norma Bahia Pontes' work, this filmmaker with whom I'm working and engaging in dialogue in this new project. So, what is it like to think about this? Why was Norma erased? Will my future probably be very similar to Norma's of being a filmmaker also erased?

But things have changed. So how do we stage a dialogue also in terms of generation? Because this is something that the world's dynamics take away from us when we are only exposed to Hollywood and eurocentric films or when we are only exposed to white male cis-hetero media. So how do we see and understand these materials that can bring a lot of belonging to people, as they brought to me?

Do you consider yourself an experimental and feminist filmmaker? What does that mean to you?

Yes, I primarily identify as a feminist. That came even before being a filmmaker, although perhaps that was discovered later. First, I started making films, and then when I looked at my film community, all my peers, most of them were men.

For women, affirming our authorship is very difficult. It might be easier for men, especially the dominant ones. It’s very easy to create a narrative of the genius. And for women, there are so many steps. It is much more complex. It seems like we have to keep affirming ourselves for much longer, asserting our spaces, our film desires, our aesthetic wants, all of that. So I feel, in very recent moments I find myself thinking, “Am I really a filmmaker?”

I have always thought feminism was the most significant social movement of the 20th century. There are many feminisms, which is why it's so hard to define. But my practice of solidarity with women, with queer people, with non-binary people is also part of this feminism, of this attitude as a feminist filmmaker.

I consider myself experimental in the sense that most of what has been produced, the dominant narratives and perspectives, are made mainly by white men living in the Northern Hemisphere.

As a feminist and a filmmaker from the Global South, I put forward my perspective; from the moment I also support and insist on my viewpoint, I think that is already an experimental attitude. And, of course, it frees me to explore other aesthetics and to experiment with different relationships in films.

So, it breaks with the hierarchy of cinema. My relationship with the people who participate in my films in front of the camera is also very experimental and very much based on consent. 

That is also experimental in some way. 

My latest work, M de Mães (M for Mothers), contains some of that.

Is the work you are currently doing experimental? 

Yes, this is much stronger in the project I am currently working on, which is tentatively titled Encontrando Norma (Finding Norma). However, we might change the title to something like Para Nós Mesmas (For Ourselves). This film is one where the only possibility is a much more experimental aesthetic because it's a project dealing with memory, a fragmented memory, a memory that is collective, and also an absent memory.

So, being experimental is this attitude towards what is dominant in cinema.

Let's talk briefly about your film M is Mother (M is for Mothers). Where did the idea for the film come from? 

This film emerged when Brazil was going through a very complicated political phase, with the rise of a conservative right-wing wave that also affected other countries worldwide. And at the very moment this wave was emerging, reaching its peak with the election of a conservative, genocidal, and fascist president, we decided to make this film.

It was a very particular moment for me, because it was also when this family of two women chose to expand. They were choosing to look to the future. So our idea was to stay together, to invent the future we wanted despite the political desolation. That is, if we remain united and focus on these babies who are the future, this family which is the future, it will be much better for us to get through this overwhelming turbulence, which was the new government. 

In this sense, there was also a great desire, especially from the protagonists with whom I made the film. They are also screenwriters. They had a great desire to talk about dual motherhood, lesbian motherhood, and dual breastfeeding because it was a topic they couldn't find anywhere. There was no representation of this type of motherhood in cinema or books. Marcela even started writing a book. Now, she is on her third book, but at the time, she began writing because she felt the lack. They had no reference. There was this great desire to create this representation, knowing there could be many representations. 

How was the filming process of holding a camera in such intimate moments between two women in this transformation of the body, in this transformation of being?

Right at the beginning of the film, I put my hand on the belly, and there are several moments where I also appear directly and indirectly in the film.  This idea of consent is also very intimate and particular in the film. I understand it as wanting to show motherhood in a positive light because most films, especially in Brazil—not only in Brazil but especially—show pregnancy as a problem.

So, teenage pregnancy or a film about abortion is always seen as a social problem that exists and needs to be shown. But here, the idea was to show lesbian motherhood as a possible revolution, a path to the future, a path of hope, and a way to propose something for the coming years.

We stayed very united, and suddenly that bubble burst. Then I had a big problem: how to finish a film that talks about the future, which is actually the beginning of this life, with the expanded family, and so on.

Were you already friends with the protagonists? 

I met Marcela and Mel because we shared a workspace. We shared a lease of this  place called Atelier.

My production company Doctella rented one of the rooms, and they were in other rooms. So, between coffee breaks and lunch in the common kitchen, we started talking, and they told me about the IVF process. And then, at their baby shower, they said, "Wow, there's no representation."

So we started talking and decided to make a film, still determining if it would be a feature-length film. That's how it came to be. I also wanted to bring in the archival aspect because they had a significant internal debate.

What kind of mothers will we be if we don't have references, neither in our families nor the world? What kind of lesbian motherhood will ours be, or what kind of queer parenthood will it be? So, the idea was to bring their voices as well. There are those parts that are more experimental, but that's it. And it's a film that contains many forms of violence and micro-violences within it.

I am making a film about motherhood now. It is a theme that really interests me and I think society doesn't really understand. I’m wondering how was the reception of the film at festivals?

M is for Mothers faced a lot of resistance. So when you tell me, "Oh, I'm making a film about motherhood, I think society doesn't really understand what motherhood is." I totally agree.

It was a film that struggled to get into festivals. I think there are two themes that are still very taboo and are very much rejected by society, which are motherhood and lesbianism.

I sent it to several festivals, to many labs, and it participated in many film labs both in Brazil and abroad. First, European festivals really wanted it to have a social conflict, which is an implicit requirement they have for films from the Global South, that there be explicit violence, a social violence. 

This is something that, actually, I’ve never talked about much in public, but it’s a colonialist pressure I feel to place our subjectivities in this place of suffering and depiction of violence on our bodies, always. Of course it's a film that contains many forms of violence and micro-violences within it, but it wasn’t a film only about suffering lesbophobia. It’s a film about love, about the future. It’s about family. 

Were there more demands?

Another demand they had for the film project was to include a classic conflict in the film. The film has many conflicts, but they are not conflicts in the traditional sense. You can notice internal conflicts between Melanie and Marcela that they go through as they transform into becoming mothers. But you can see them having compassion for each other. 

For example, a consultant once recommended to me that there had to be a fight between them. And I said no, it’s not that kind of relationship I’m filming—it’s another dynamic that they have. There were demanding expectations that I found imposing and lacking in understanding of what the film is about. This goes with the feminist and experimental attitude of saying "no, this is not what the film is about. The film is about something else”. 

Many people are searching for the perfect film, the perfect Latin film, or the perfect film from the Global South that can fit into their program. I find this colonial approach to be quite sad and limiting to our creativity.

So, it’s good that you resisted and made the film you wanted to make, and not what was requested.

I made the film I wanted to make. It was one of the films that gave me the most pleasure to make. It was also one of the films where I felt most empowered, making it with a camera and doing the sound myself because there was no other possibility. A film that accesses such intimate places. How am I going to take a crew?

It was a film that also gave me a lot of confidence in my filmmaking and in my place as a director. And it was also my film that was least shown in festivals. So, it also made me rethink a lot. It made me think: am I a filmmaker? Yes, I understand that I am. It was a form of resistance, and I would do it again if I had to. So, it’s also about the kind of filmmaker I want to be. More close to the kind of filmmaker that Norma was, and other feminists that are my reference.

Could you talk a little about the experimental images used in the film?

I am very interested in experimenting with scientific images in a non-utilitarian way, such as X-rays and ultrasounds, you can see that at the beginning of the film. 

The film is about something that has to be invented: the dual breastfeeding, their lesbian motherhood. So I thought it would be good to invent a bit as well with the images. 

These experimental images were made with the help of a Argentinian visual artist, Leila Monsegur who had already worked with me on another film, Carne (Flesh). We created these images using various elements like ink, water, oil, and paints on a light table. Referencing the micro world as if it were a camera inside the body.

Just as their motherhood was also highly creative, I believe that this creativity is reflected in the film's aesthetic universe as well.

How was the process of making the documentary Quem Matou Eloá? (Who Killed Eloá?)? Is it a film that really criticizes the sensationalist media? Where did the inspiration come from? 

[Quem Matou Eloá? (Who Killed Eloá?) is a documentary that explores the tragic real-life story of Eloa, a 15-year-old girl held hostage and murdered by her ex-boyfriend in Brazil in 2008. It examines the media's sensational coverage of the case and broader issues of gender violence and the portrayal of women in the media.]

Who Killed Eloá? is perhaps my most viewed film, and it became impactful. I was significantly affected by the crime in which Eloá was a victim. I remember the TV stations broadcasting it, and this material, this coverage, was very sensationalist. I was very outraged that no one could recognize that it was a clear, classic case of violence against women and a femicide. [Femicide was not a criminal offense in Brazil at the time of the film. It only became so after feminist social mobilization in 2015 after the film was shot.] 

Because of that, I started looking for these images. I investigated the process of crime in the Santo André court in São Paulo, where the judicial case of the crime took place; my films have this intense research process.

I wanted to make a film that spoke to these images that remain and continue to resonate on the Internet, so I started collecting and gathering this digital archive.

So I have very different kinds of images [in the film]; the contrast between a very unsaturated image, which is these women in the studio, and a very oversaturated and poor quality image, which is the image of the sensationalist TV. 

I was very intentional about using the poor quality images because they were such well-known images to everyone from that sensationalist coverage in the United States, Brazil, Mexico, and many other countries.

The ethics behind my interventions were very important to me. I don't use Eloá's image at all because she was a minor, and it shouldn't have been disseminated on national networks.

Who are these women sitting in the studio talking about what happened to Eloá?

Analba is a Brazilian feminist activist who lives in the northeastern region of Brazil. She wrote a text called "Eloá, a morte anunciada" ("Eloá, the announced death"), where she said everything I was feeling about that crime. How did nobody - the police, the media and the society - see that her destiny was for Eloá to die?

We also have another feminist activist, Elisa Gargiulo. Ana Paula Lewinn is a prosecutor from the Public Defender's Office. She is also a feminist lawyer. Esther Hamburger is a film professor at USP. She worked a lot with TV soap operas, which significantly influenced Brazilian society and media and violence. And there's one man, Augusto Rossini, a prosecutor, who brought some more elements for us on the day of the crime since he was there participating in the negotiation with the perpetrator.

I wanted the people watching the film to believe in those women, no matter who they were. So, I didn't want to label them as experts so that we could believe more in them.

When searching on Google for Who killed Eloá?, many sensationalist videos appear alongside. You can then find your film, which offers a new point of view about this crime. In that sense, it is indeed very activist.

It was always intended and designed not necessarily for YouTube, but to be openly available online, because it is a highly feminist militant film. It was made focusing on some structural change in machismo and in the violence against women in Brazilian society.

That's another point that also touches on how we build our careers and assert ourselves as filmmakers, because there's a whole organized system that is against that. Your film has to be very guarded [from public viewing] and have a festival premiere. Who killed Eloa? is not a film meant to use this channel.

The roles of filmmaker and activist can intertwine. Blurring the lines between them opens up new possibilities for advocacy.

Can you talk a bit about your role as a producer?

I believe that the production side has forcefully emerged in people like me, independent filmmakers who hardly have anyone believing in their work before themselves. I started producing my films because, many times, there wasn't anyone else. I realized that Quem matou Eloá? had a lot of visibility, so I wanted to take advantage of that. And this can even be seen as a feminist attitude. Still, I wanted to take advantage of that visibility to use the little I had in favor of other women or other people making films, to uplift their careers.

Today, a partner works with me and produces my work. But I started to realize that many women and queer filmmakers were in the same situation. So, I got involved in projects that I think are important and relevant today, such as Carne (Flesh) and Uma Paciência Selvagem me Trouxe Até Aqui (A Wild Patience Has Taken Me Here). My idea was always to multiply and support other filmmakers who I saw a bit of myself in.

What would you say to women who are starting out or trying to make films?

I believe there's something very important - to believe in the relevance of what you're seeing, what you want to talk about, and what you want to show. This is the biggest challenge for me, because we've - women, queers and people of color and from the Global South - been taught in our society that what we see and want to talk about isn't relevant or important and that our artistic subjectivity doesn’t deserve to be manifested. So, I think the main point is that if you're seeing something, want to show it, or need to talk about it, then it's important. The second step is to form communities and networks that can support you, with people like you and those who can contribute to your work. Working with people who believe in your potential is crucial. It's important to believe in yourself, your artistic sensitivity, and your intuition, and to surround yourself with people who can support and protect your dream.

Thank you very much. It was wonderful.

Thank you, Maria! It was a pleasure talking to you, and I hope it met your expectations.

It's awesome! It's very inspiring to talk to you and learn about your inspirations, motivations, and concerns. Also, the questions that I think continue, right? Thank you very much.

Well, it's very tough, but it keeps going. But that's part of our work, yes, our extra labor. Thank you, and I wish you much success. We'll keep in touch.