Dublin FIlm Qlub screening: 'Pixote' (1981)

dublin | arts and media | event notice Thursday July 05, 2012 22:39 by Dublin Film Qlub filmqlub at gmail dot com

Amazing film about a gang of homeless youngsters who band together to ensure physical and emotional survival

DUBLIN FILM QLUB

SESSION TEN: SATURDAY 28 JULY 2012

please note change of date!!

@ 3:30 pm
(doors open at 3.00)
New Theatre, 43 East Essex Street, Temple Bar.
(next to The Project -- entrance through Connolly Books)
Day membership: E8
free tea and coffee

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This is the last screening of Season Two, and then we are taking our usual summer break

before we come back in October with another exclusive selection of rarely-seen but fantastic

LGBTQ-interest films

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FILM QLUB SEASON TWO: "AROUND THE WORLD IN THE 80s"

This month we are off to.... Brazil

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PIXOTE: A LEI DO MAIS FRACO

(tr. PIXOTE: THE LAW OF THE WEAKEST)

Dir. Héctor Babenco. 1981. 128 mins. Portuguese, with English subtitles.

Script: Hector Babenco and Jorge Durán, from the book The Childhood of the Dead Ones, by José Louzeiro.

Starring: Fernando Ramos Da Silva , Jorge Julião, Gilberto Moura, Edilson Lino , Zenildo Oliveira Santos.

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Casting homeless boys as actors (their performances are extraordinary), basing the script on real-life stories, and opening the film with a discussion on the evils of poverty, director Héctor Babenco’s “Pixote” is a lesson in politically committed film-making. Filmed before Babenco’s queer classic “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (1985) and before the international mega-hit “City of God” (2002), “Pixote” laid down the foundations for all of his remarkable work. Rejects of society, these children are born without a future, and grow up with guns as toys, police chases as games, drug-smuggling as work. The film tells the story of a group of Brazilian youngsters, including the hard-as-nails but immature Pixote and the much abused but proud transgendered Lilica. They meet after they are sent to a Reformatory, which in fact (just like Magdalen Laundries and Industrial Schools in Ireland) is a concentration camp where they are routinely abused and treated as slave labour. When a few of the boys manage to escape, they discover that surviving in the outside may be just as difficult. They become a family, and they seem to be indestructible, until love, jealousy, and the adult world intrude in their lives. This savage film is often tough to watch, but it is an eye-opener, and a must for anyone who cares about social justice. An absolute classic.

(Warning: the film contains some scenes of violence, including sexual violence, which some Film Qlub members may find disturbing)