_{Sao Paolo Open Wound by Elizabeth Rocha Salgado}

In the 12-minute film, word premiering at Clermont-Ferrand, we follow a handful of underground artists from the Mamba Negra collective in São Paulo, who live to perform and shock, and among whom Laura Diaz is first among equals. As co-founder of the troupe, she organizes free parties in the city within reclaimed spaces and at which the libertarian aesthetic is paramount. And at these gatherings, anything goes.

Laura is also a lucid advocate, protester and socio-philosopher (and also possessing of a fantastic wardrobe of PVC) whose mantra is the reappropriation of the violence of sado-masochism to reverse the established power dynamics. She is joined in the film by other passionate protesters including the gay, black performer Loica who observes how Bolsonaro’s rise to power offered an immediate outlet for the homophobic and racist tendencies that had always hovered beneath the surface of Brazilian society. But “to fight is what gives me life,” he says. “My skin shines and they cannot extinguish our shine.”

Director Elizabeth Rocha Salgado is Brazilian, but the film is produced by Dutch Jos de Putter. It is the third in a trilogy of shorts about contemporary life in Brazil, following on from The Bananality of Evil, about political cartoonist and polemicist Leonardo who had to go in to hiding after Bolsonaro came to power, and Amazon Attack, about the increasingly brutal industrial treatment of the Amazon rainforest.

Salgado comments how the rise of the new right wing in Brazil feels akin to a hidden dictatorship, with all the attendant violence that entails. The film claims that Brazil is the country that “kills more trans people” than any other, and the director also references the assassination of socialist politician and human right activist Marielli Franco in 2018. Mamba Negra and its supporters respond to governmental oppression through protest that is outrageous and in your face and designed to smash taboos. When Bolsonaro banned public nudity, “Mamba Negra said ‘let us be a hundred people nude in front of the museum,’” says the director. The city space must be "rave-talized," Laura Diaz says in the film. There must be “an open wound in the city fabric.”

Are Brazilians natural protesters? Yes, in Sao Paolo, less so in the north of Brazil, Salgado answers. “But after Bolsonaro and also the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, and the situation we are living now, I think that has changed a lot. People are talking a lot about politics. And also with the internet, it is good to see the democratization of this information.” Yes, there is the sticky subject of fake news, of course, and Salgado is fully aware of how social media has been used to manipulate the popular vote, but online engagement can be used productively as well. “It is just everyone needs to learn to have a filter,” says the director.

The natural outlet for this film is online, Salgado underlines. That said, it will screen on Dutch television, albeit without the full frontal nudity that shows in the festival cut. After Clermont-Ferrand, the director is very hopeful that it will be selected for a festival in its home country of Brazil. “That would be my deep wish,” she says, and there is no doubt that the accompanying premier party would be the hottest ticket in town, with Laura Diaz and her Mamba Negra crew leading the way in their very own licentious and deliciously profane style.

Sao Paolo Open Wound is produced by Deep Focus Productions. For more information on Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, click here.