20 years of independent cinema

Book excerpt: Every January, from 1996 to 2016, while I was suffering with summer in Rio I received snowy news from the Sundance Festival through Carlos Brandão and his partner Myrna. In those 20 years, Carlos and Myrna were my main source of information about independent world cinema. It is a great joy to see all this material gathered in a book. Carlos was a passionate researcher and, along with Myrna, an experienced reporter. Their interviews and reports on films and directors that have passed through Sundance have the mark of someone who saw everything up close. And knew how to tell it. Carlos Alberto Mattos – Film Critic When Robert Redford founded the nonprofit Sundance Institute in 1981, the intense creativity of American independent cinema in the 70’s was too distant. The Festival came to redefine the characteristics of a cinema that was becoming more conservative and less daring, as a reflection of the Reagan years. Betting on risk and dissonant and plural voices, Sundance knew how to reveal innovative directors and organize “Script Development Programs” in different parts of the world, starting with Brazil. The geopolitics of independent cinema would never be the same. Sundance marked the resumption of Brazilian Cinema after the disastrous government of President Collor. It was one of the first international festival to embrace our cinematography at that time and few critics and journalists followed this movement as closely as Carlos Augusto Brandão. With his inseparable Myrna, Carlos foresaw what was still under construction. He covered the Festival from the start, collecting precious interviews from young new-comers. I cannot remember Sundance without thinking about Carlos, his remarks and always relevant and sensitive questions, publishing stories that dimensioned the revival of Brazilian Cinema. These testimonies comprise this precious "20 Years of Independent Cinema". The interviews gathered here tell not only the story of the renaissance of independent cinema in different latitudes, but also speak of the intense passion that Carlos had for cinema. His texts make him both a witness and co-author of a cinema in transformation. Walter Salles – Film-Maker