Reel Brazil #2: Queer Resistance

Season 2 – Queer Resistance collectively explores powerful stories of marginality, systematic discrimination, alienation and violence experienced by people who transgress prescribed binary gender structures. With works by artists such as Rita Moreira, Rafael França, Graziela Kunsch, Virginia de Medeiros, Ker Wallwork & Juliet Jacques and Aykan Safoğlu, they expose the intolerance of binary moralities, whilst at the same time propose a more imaginative and nuanced world created by self- acceptance, transformation & expansion.

Rita Moreira, Temporada de Caça | 1988 | Brazil | 28min 36sec

This powerful video dives into the wave of homophobic violence that shook São Paulo in the late 1980s, beginning with the 1987 murder of stage director Luís Antônio Martinez Corrêa. Through interviews with both activists and ordinary people, it captures the brutal and deep divisions that opened up in Brazilian society at the time. The film exposes how hatred and prejudice were not only widespread but actively reinforced by the mainstream press and cultural industry, exposing a collective consciousness that is patriarchal, clientelist, catholic, sexist within Brazilian societies.

Rafael França: O Profundo Silêncio das Coisas Mortas |1988 | Brazil | 7min 15sec

Fragmented voices recall the heartbreaks, infidelities, love & loss, and the fragility of homosexual relationships, set against sped-up footage of street carnivals and chaotic urban life. The video uses dreamlike imagery with disjointed sound and shifting perspectives, blurring the line between memory, fantasy and lived experiences. It is haunting, poetic, and at the same time humorous.

Graziela Kunsch: Ensaio Ilú Obá de Min | 2015 | Brazil | 1min 40sec

Set to the powerful rhythm of an all-women afro percussion group, this single-shot video captures a moment of joy and resistance – a group of transgender women and men dance who live under a São Paulo bridge dance to the sounds of the drums, transforming a space in the margins and homelessness into one of celebration, pride, and dignity.

Virginia de Medeiros: Sergio e Simone | 2010 | Brazil | 9min 21sec

Set in Salvador, this striking film follows Simone, a transvestite who worships Orishas, and Sergio, the evangelical preacher she becomes after a near-death experience. The two identities become an embodiment of a dispute between two religious systems as they wrangle for believers in Bahia. The film uses the notion of duality to powerfully explore ideas of faith, identity, inner and outer transformation.

Ker Wallwork & Juliet Jacques: Approach/Withdraw | 2016 | UK | 10min

Approach/Withdraw is a short film narrated by Rebecca Root, which explores how public understandings of oestrogen and sex hormones affect the sense of self and relationships of those who feel at odds with their assigned gender.

The majority of the material relates to the production of pharmaceutical oestrogen or endocrine-disrupting chemicals – substances that behave like oestrogen when they are absorbed into the body. These chemicals are common in plastics, fabric-dyes and soy products. The film also incorporates Christian imagery, 19th century phrenological heads and photographs taken by 20th century sexologists – to illustrate ways in which contemporary identities bear the marks of religious and scientific precepts.

Ker Wallwork: Fungiculture | 2021 | UK | 5min

A short film about an architect who expands beyond their body, becoming the whole city, slowly learning to navigate their new reality. The visuals of the film symbolically represent the narrative through materials, city and domestic architecture and sculptural arrangements. A queer narrative about sickness, becoming and instability.
The majority of the material relates to the production of pharmaceutical oestrogen or endocrine-disrupting chemicals – substances that behave like oestrogen when they are absorbed into the body. These chemicals are common in plastics, fabric-dyes and soy products. The film also incorporates Christian imagery, 19th century phrenological heads and photographs taken by 20th century sexologists – to illustrate ways in which contemporary identities bear the marks of religious and scientific precepts.

Reel Brazil features historic and contemporary works of video art, experimental cinema, and digital commissions that interrogate systems of control, elevate outsider voices, and reimagine art as a tool of social and political transformation. It draws cultural parallels between Brazil’s post-dictatorship era and the UK’s Thatcher years, exemplified by the UK’s National Disability Movement – the festival explores a lineage of creative resistance, enabled by new technologies.

Brazil has long stood at the crossroads of authoritarianism and democracy, a nation marked by deep post-colonial struggles, social inequality, and vibrant cultural resistance. Emerging in the wake of Brazil’s civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985), a generation of artists and filmmakers embraced accessible video technologies to document authentic Brazilian realities, challenge mainstream propaganda, and give voice to the marginalized. This body of work forms the powerful core of Reel Brazil, connecting past creative mutinies to urgent contemporary struggles.

Creatively directed and co-curated by Nina Shen and presented by CT20 in Folkestone, a coastal town at the intersection of art-led regeneration and class conflict, Reel Brazil also confronts the tensions of gentrification, cultural erasure, and experiences of displacement for local residents. It reclaims space for radical creativity through the power of storytelling.

[Gallery Images: Courtesy of Videobrasil Archive, film stills by Ker Wallwork & Juliet Jacques]