Marco Bechis’ Birdwatchers is taking us to Mato Grosso do Sul, in Brazil, where landowners live in luxury, spending their nights with the tourists who visit the area for birdwatching. Meanwhile, just outside their properties, the agitation of the indigenous people who were once the legal owners of this land is increasingly burning. Exiles in reservation sites, with no prospect other than working as modern-day slaves on sugar plantations, many young members of the indigenous community are driven to suicide. One such incident will spark the flame of resistance, when a Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous group sets camp outside of a property, asking for what is theirs. But apart from rage, the conflicting sides experience feelings of charm and curiosity for the “Other” standing before them. A curiosity that will trigger a profound bond between a young Saman student and the daughter of a landowner – a relationship that becomes a beacon of hope and faith in the power of the universe, providing us with an alternative definition of climate activism.
Birdwatchers
Birdwatchers
No physical screenings scheduled. |
- Direction: Marco Bechis
- Script: Marco Bechis, Luiz Bolognesi, Lara Fremder (collboration)
- Cinematography: Hélcio Alemão Nagamine
- Editing: Jacopo Quadri
- Sound: Gaspar Scheuer
- Music: Domenico Zipoli, Andrea Guerra
- Actors: Abrísio Da Silva Pedro, Alicélia Batista Cabreira, Ademilson Concianza Verga (Kiki), Ambrósio Vilhalva, Matheus Nachtergaele, Fabiane Pereira Da Silva, Eliane Juca Da Silva
- Production: Gullane, Classic
- Producers: Marco Bechis, Caio Gullane, Fabiano Gullane, Débora Ivanov, Gabriel Lacerda, Amedeo Pagani
- Costumes: Caterina Giargia, Valeria Stefani
- Executive producer: Daniele Mazzocca, Sônia Império Hamburger
- Sets: Clóvis Bueno, Caterina Giargia
- Format: Blu-ray
- Color: Color
- Production Country: Brazil, Italy
- Production Year: 2008
- Duration: 104΄
- Contact: Tamasa Distribution
- Awards/Distinctions: Unesco Prize – Venice IFF 2008, Amnesty International Award – Motovun FF 2009, FACE Award – Istanbul IFF 2009
Marco Bechis
Marco Bechis was born in Santiago del Chile to a Chilean mother and an Italian father. He grew up in San Paolo and in Buenos Aires; in 1977 he was expelled from Argentina for political reasons and he landed in Milan. Since then he’s been living and working in the self-managed house of Morigi 8. He later spent long periods in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris. Before the cinema, he studied Economics at the Bocconi University of Milan, he was an elementary school teacher in Argentina, a Polaroid-Photographer in Paris, and a video artist in New York. In 1981 he attended the film school Albedo, in Milan. In 1982, Marco Bechis created, in collaboration with Amnesty International, a video installation, “Desaparecidos, dove soon?” in Milan, on a concentration camp. The film Garage Olimpo was later based on it. From 1983 to 1986 he worked with the Studio Pontaccio in Milan directing and producing experimental shorts for RAI.
Filmography
1984 Absent (short)
1991 Barbed Wire
1997 Luca’s Film
1999 Garage Olimpo
2001 Sons and Daughters
2003 Who Knows Ezra Pound? (short)
2008 Birdwatchers
2011 Il Sorriso del Cap (doc)
2015 Il Rumore della Memoria (doc)
