July 26, 2022

15:07

Iury Lima – from Amazon Agency

VILHENA (RO) – Street sellers, hikers, drivers. People who live off the roads and the long paths that cut through – and connect – Brazil. These people and their way of life will be the focus of “Rios de Aço” (Rivers of Steel), a new film by director Lucas Oliver, from the state of Rondônia.

The feature film, initially conceived as a series for streaming, promises to tour the cities of Rondônia with a recording circuit during this second semester. At the center of the plot will be the character Luiza, a middle-aged woman who earns her living as a peddler on the state’s main highway.

Oliver announced the new project exclusively, in an interview to AMAZON AGENCY. According to the director, the idea is to portray, precisely, the real stories connected to the road and that often go unnoticed by all of us, while presenting “a more intimate vision” about BR-364, with critical and poetic language. 

“Luiza lives on the road, in a Kombi, and needs to make her sales to survive. This is one of the many life systems that exist on the highways. It is through this journey, as a saleswoman, that she discovers various life systems. In fact, she already knows about them, but through her eyes as a witness during the film, we will get to know them too”, revealed Lucas Oliver.

“The actress will have the great challenge of acting alongside real people. This is a totally different film because of that”, he continued. “She arrives, says that everything is being filmed, and goes on to play the main character alongside people who live there, who live from the BR, from transportation, and from there, it can be too much”, the director further explained.

River ‘framed’

Oliver, who debuted with the short film “Parecis”, also shot in Rondônia, has completely changed the recording set. He left the enchantments of the Amazon and the Cerrado, the secrets and knowledge of the traditional peoples portrayed in his first work, to find meaning in the hard and constant routine of the roads. With this new scenario, which has also been prepared, he promises a powerful feature film full of drama. 

“I felt a very abrupt change as well. A little more than two months ago, when we spent testing and visiting the locations, we saw that everything was still green and beautiful (…) there was life on the banks. But last week, when we went by again, we ended up seeing fire and garbage more in sight. So it is a place that is in constant transformation. But what we also discover is that BR-364 is very much alive. There are lives and lives that depend on the highway for their stability. People don’t know about the lives around the highway”, he said. 

“The poetry, here, in ‘Rivers of Steel’, is different”, he assured. “It is harder, more critical, and also more personal. The aesthetic is brutalist, clean, raw (…) We want to make a verité cinema, so I think that the poetry here will also come visually, and each person will have a very deep interpretation of what their ‘River of Steel’ is today”, he added.

As for the name, Lucas says it is an analogy to the poem “A Flor e a Náusea”, by Carlos Drummond de Andrade. “He calls the highways rivers of steel, because of the asphalt. Besides, comparing the aerial images that we took with a drone, with the images taken by plane, forty years ago, we realize how much nature was deforested for the implantation of the BR. Today, it is as if it had made a frame around the edges of the highway. Not that it has adapted, but it has really framed the highway as if it were a river”, Oliver explained.

Why BR-364?

The fact that BR-364 is the state’s main access route for shipping and importing products is not the only reason for the choice as a backdrop. “It is a highway that is genuinely from Rondônia”, says the author and director of “Rivers of Steel”.

“It was built from the southeast with the intention of crossing Rondônia, the ‘Gateway to the Amazon’. Just because of this, it would be reason enough for the choice. Another fact is that it cuts through the state from end to end, taking us from Vilhena to Porto Velho, connecting Rondônia to Acre, Amazonas and everything else. That’s why, as the film goes along Rondônia, the BR reveals the beauties and challenges of each path”, he told the report.

Bolsonaro, enemy of art

In the director’s evaluation, the president of the Republic Jair Bolsonaro hinders the artistic class more than he helps it. In this pre-production phase, “Rivers of Steel” counts on the Paulo Gustavo Law – which was the target of Bolsonaro’s attacks. The result of this is a delay in production, not only for him, but for many other artists across Brazil.

“The first veto delayed the process by almost two months, because the federal law works like this: we have the first governmental instance, which will do the state application part, and then it goes to the municipalities. Each municipality has until December 30th to execute the law and pay all the artists. When we suffer a veto, this whole process is delayed by two months, which means that everything will have to be done in a hurry, and many artists will, unfortunately, be left out. They won’t be able to deliver a production, they won’t be able to write a script, much less write an edict. And many people depend on this money to survive”, he lamented.

Cultural Commitment

Oliver, besides being a film director, is also a cultural agent. He recently left the artistic-director position that he had held for almost two years at the Cultural Foundation of the city of Vilhena, 706 kilometers from Porto Velho. He says he has seen a lot of transformation, but fears that the work will no longer be taken as seriously, due to the moment of political uncertainty the city is going through, with the removal from office of the mayor Eduardo Japonês (PSC) and his vice-mayor Patrícia da Glória (PV), in addition to the decision to hold new elections, while the city is being run by interim management.

“A Cultural Foundation has, today, a very important role for any municipality. Its duty is to stimulate and promote culture. And we had a foundation that had a distorted role, that instead of fostering, it performed, as it should be the bridge for the artist to perform and that becomes a cultural action. So we thought about giving them the means to do their work, and it was a path with no turning back: the foundation has evolved, let’s say, forty years in this time”, he evaluated.

“Today, after a year and a half, it is still not excellent, but we managed to put the foundation on the map and show its activities. On the other hand, part of the artists still don’t believe much in the public machine, and when these management problems happen, credibility is lost even more, because the work has no continuity. Independent of the management, it is necessary that the artist knows where the doors and windows of the foundation are, where to reach, who to talk to, and who to ask. In any case, my commitment to the culture of Vilhenense continues, for sure”, he guaranteed.

Premiere in 2023

According to the director, “Rivers of Steel” should reach the public next year, but there will be a premier still in late 2022.

“The idea is to place the film in international film festivals, because it is a feature film and we want to treat it as it deserves, with all dedication. In ‘Parecis’, we did not have a marketing strategy as we should have, because it was a low-budget film. But with ‘Rios de Aço’, we really want to take the stories of Rondônia, the story of the margins of BR-364, to the world, with real people. And I think this is what will make us get the artistic attention our state deserves”, concluded Lucas Oliver.