São Paulo Open Wound

13min
Postproduction script

00:00:02,680 Laura Diaz: I don't think we live in a disguised dictatorship, I think we live in an explicit dictatorship. That's why I think the way out is to come together. Black Women, Transvestites, Suburbanites We managed to create stronger ties and networks than the right has because they are super organized, they are super armed. We have different kind of weapons. There is no way to put it off until tomorrow because tomorrow it can go too far. This mess we are in because of Bolsonaro is going to take a long time to clean up.

00:00:49,359 Song: Throw petrol over them. Throw petrol over them

00:01:08,140 Title: São Paulo Open Wound

00:01:10,009 Laura: Here in Brazil, we still have a military police. So, at the moment, the general is a very important figure. I love to perform covered in vestments as if I was going to war, because I am. And I really like to work with the limits to tie up, to make use of the violence. Since violence is so established as a structural, systemic reality for women, for LGBTQ and for all dissident bodies. As a Latin American woman I feel very comfortable in reappropriating and using these these icons, these symbols of violence and I try to re-signify them. I also work with sadomasochism because in it the woman is always abused, is always raped. I reappropriate this fetish, and I reverse the place of power. Somehow I...maybe in a tomorrow when we take the control of the situations

00:02:24,719 Song: I am the female, beautiful, hungry Embodied of sun rays. And those bodies are temples, wishes From flesh and transformation. No God, no country Revolt in contradiction. It doesn't hurt, it invades me I am him and her, one. Your body is an army. Your body is an army

00:03:08,599 Loïc Koutana: I felt the violence in the country and in the politics with my body. I experienced racism with all the strength that fits the world here in Brazil. The moment when Bolsonaro came to power was the moment when everyone finally felt authorized to be racist, authorized to be homophobic. Also, being an artist, being LGBTQ because I'm homosexual and being black, I'll always have to fight because that's what I know that's what gives me life. My skin shines and they cannot extinguish our shine.

00:04:24,000 Song: I am the living bread that came down from heaven. And whoever eats this bread Will live forever.

00:04:48,826 Malka Julieta: The government has a disgusting representative. Instead of fighting this genocide that happens to our population he publicly encourages that to happen. So, openly, his opinion is that we shouldn't be here that we shouldn't exist. So what is it like to be living art, to make art in a country where the president wants you dead?

00:06:24,215 Edgar o Novíssimo: That is cool, huh. This is awesome! I'll put this in a look. It will be stylish! To make a coverall.

00:06:52,800 Song: They like to give me name of birds. They like to give me name of birds. Blackbird, vulture Vulture, blackbird. They like to give me name of birds. Blackbird, vulture Vulture, blackbird. They discovered only now, that black people have the power to fly.

00:07:28,800 Laura: The proposal established in São Paulo today is a very nasty, neoliberal proposal. Revitalizing city spaces, meaning opening more businesses for white, wealthy and heterosexual men. Violence against women and transgender people is very clear as Brazil is the country that kills the most trans people in the world. When they started to revitalize, we have started the rave-talization. We were for the rave-talization, for the squatting of these idle spaces. The relation we have always had with the streets is also part of our spirit. It is an open wound in the urban fabric.

00:08:22,959 Man: After this rupture, this amputation as I call it. Everything became more difficult, obviously. With this new government, with Bolsonaro, with this implanted fear. It is a condition of general fear, right? That turns into a lot of things, everything starts to get worse and more precarious. Overnight they started to undermine various culture projects and that's where I started to deliver, I joined an app that employs couriers.

00:09:02,120 Edgar: Being poor, black, living in the slums, it is as if a bullet has already been fired, they have already shot. It seems it has already killed several people before me. Several black bodies, slum dwellers have fallen before. It seems that at some point it will reach me,

00:09:53,691 Laura: We need to celebrate because we are alive because we are alive, because we are here working because we are here together because we are doing these things that are incredible, encounters that are unexpected.

00:10:17,161 Laura: Because the general is already half dead, right? He's got dark circles. He's a big ghost. I mean, he's not even a ghost, right? It is worse, he is a walking dead who stinks out there. To trigger a revolutionary process is to be able to feel safe and supported by trans bodies and dissident bodies so that you can perform naked again.

00:10:51,159 Laura: That is to be able to start processes that are not already safe and under control, right? Because we understand that this control is facism in the end, you know? It does not have the necessary transformation that we need to be able to absorb these revolutionary bodies, these revolutionary ideas to the freedom of any body to show itself as it wants, to perform as it wants.

00:12:29,639 Song: I'm a machine gun in a state of grace.

00:12:59,000 Laura: And we have a strange happiness in Brazil that is confused with agony, right? So, what a relief we sometimes feel, of rapture, of life that is confused and mixed with constant agony.

00:13:22,060 Credits:

São Paulo - Open Wound

A film by Elizabeth Rocha Salgado

Starring:

Laura Diaz
Loïc Koutana
Malka Julieta
Edgar o Novíssimo
Bica Tocalino
Carol Schutzer
Miss Tacacá

Archive images:

NUBE
Mamba Negra

Sound

Vladimír Cháb

Commissioning editor

Jos de Putter