Oblique Screens #15: Queer Cinema in Super-8 from Paraíba

Oblique Screens is an informal collective, consisting of Rita Davis, Fernanda Saval, Sunny Lei, and Seppe-Hazel Laeremans, that screens queer films in and around Tallinn, with a particular emphasis on visual production in the periphery.

The films draw on the collective work of Nós Também, a gay liberation group, and several queer filmmakers in their orbit, active in João Pessoa, in the Northeast of Brazil in the early 1980s, at the tail end of the country's military dictatorship. Under conditions of political censorship, social repression, and material precarity, they developed radical strategies for making and distributing their work: experimental short films on Super 8, manifestos, exhibitions, and protests.

Era Vermelho Seu Batom tells a fictive story of carnivalesque love, desire, and rejection in Baía da Traíção. Closes sheds light on the conditions of homosexual life in João Pessoa through intimate scenes alongside street interviews. Perequeté elegantly portrays performer Francisco Marto. Baltazar da Lomba reimagines, anachronistically, the story of the first man convicted of sodomy in colonial Brazil, in 1595.

For this evening at Kino Sõprus, Oblique Screens curated four short films that will each be accompanied by a short piece of reflective writing, made in conversation with the directors.

About the films. 

1. Era Vermelho Seu Batom (translation: Red Was the Color of Their Lips)

Fiction short, 12min, 1983

Director: Henrique Magalhães

Cast: Luiz Carlos Durier, Henrique Magalhães

Country: Brazil

Production / Distributor: Cinelimite

Festivals: Courtisane Festival 2024; Lagos Queer Film Festival 2025

Language: Portuguese

Subtitles: Estonian

2. Closes

Docufictional short, 32min, 1982

Director: Pedro Nunes

Cast: Lauro Nascimento, Henrique Magalhães, João Silvério Trevisan, Luiz Carlos Durier, Sérgio Vianna, Ricardo Correia, Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos

Country: Brazil

Production / Distributor: Cinelimite

Festivals: Travessias Brazilian Film Festival 2024; Festival EDOC 2024

Language: Portuguese

Subtitles: Estonian

3. Perequeté

Documentary short, 21min, 1981

Director: Bertrand Lira

Cast: -

Country: Brazil

Production / Distributor :Cinelimite

Festivals: XXI Panorama Internacional Coisa de Cinema; Festival EDOC 2024

Language: Portuguese

Subtitles: Estonian

4. Baltazar da Lomba

Period short, 20min, 1982

Directors: Nós Também

Cast: Nós Também

Country: Brazil

Production / Distributor: Cinelimite

Festivals: DOBRA Festival 2025; Courtisane Festival 2024

Language: Portuguese

Subtitles: Estonian