Film Archive

Jahr

Camera Lucida 2022
Filmstill Swing and Sway
Swing and Sway
Chica Barbosa, Fernanda Pessoa
In the upheavals of 2020 – in the midst of pandemics, election campaigns and anti-racist protests – two friends begin a film dialogue between São Paulo and Los Angeles.
Filmstill Swing and Sway

Swing and Sway

Vai e vem
Chica Barbosa, Fernanda Pessoa
Camera Lucida 2022
Documentary Film
Brazil
2022
82 minutes
Portuguese (Brazil),
English,
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English

One film, two women, three rules: a one-year video correspondence, every three weeks and modelled on experimental female film artists. The two friends Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa begin their dialogue between São Paulo and Los Angeles in the upheavals of 2020 – in the midst of pandemics, election campaigns and anti-racist protests. In thoughtful, sometimes playful visual essays they also search for feminist cinematographic forms for the female body.

Marie Menken, Yvonne Rainer, Chick Strand, Cheryl Dunye and Ximena Cuevas are only some of the renowned experimental film inspirations for “Swing and Sway”. Sixteen references are listed in the opening credits and the stylistic variety is proportionately wide: black and white and colour, analogue and digital images, text inserts and voiceovers, CGI and stop motion, dissolves, overexposures, colour effects. In this cinephile potpourri, orientation is provided by clips of political events. “I left Brazil under Bolsonaro to come to Trump’s United States”, Barbosa reflects on her status as an immigrant denied political participation. Meanwhile, Pessoa becomes an activist during the São Paulo municipal elections and asks herself a question that other left movements will also ask looking back on 2020: “We didn’t win – but we moved forward?”
Jan-Philipp Kohlmann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Chica Barbosa, Fernanda Pessoa
Cinematographer
Chica Barbosa, Fernanda Pessoa
Editor
Chica Barbosa, Fernanda Pessoa
Producer
Jessica Luz
Sound
Chica Barbosa, Fernanda Pessoa
Score
Aline Araújo, Julia Teles, Thiago Zanato
World Sales
Renato Manganello