News Release: Around the Amazon

Nov. 3, 2003– Trinity University will screen a film that provides a rare, inside look at present day life in the Amazon. The film, Around the Amazon in 80 Minutes, is actually a collection of ultra-short films that captures life on the Amazon by those who live the region. The screening will take place at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 11, in the Chapman Auditorium and will be followed by a conversation with Brazilian producers responsible for the film festival that first showed the film. The event is free and open to the public. The film will be in Portuguese with English subtitles.

Around the Amazon in 80 Minutes is a selection of the best films shown at the One Amazonas – Minute Films 2003 (see http://portalamazonia.globo.com/festivaldominuto/). The festival, to be held December in Manaus, Brazil, is organized by Júnior Rodrigues and Sérgio Andrade of the Amazon Film Commission. It shows the work of regional filmmakers who participated in public workshops organized by the Secretary of Culture of the Brazilian state of Amazonas.

The one-minute films communicate and immortalize the filmmakers’ understandings of a landscape, a moment, or a gesture. They create a permanent record of daily life in the cities towns, and rural areas in the Amazon rainforest. The films reach beyond frontiers and begin a dialogue between the inhabitants of the rainforest and the outside world.

The film screening is sponsored by the Secretary of Culture, Amazonas, Brazil; the Brazil Center at the University of Texas, Austin; the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas; Cine las Americas; and Trinity’s international studies program.

A Look at The Amazon Through Insiders’ Eyes: Trinity to Screen Brazilian Film