Claudio Szynkier
Directing
Biography
Brazilian musician, composer, visual artist and filmmaker born in central São Paulo. Has acclaimed music works under the name Babe, Terror. Has been active in Brazilian film criticism (Folha de S. Paulo, Kleber Mendonça Filho's Cinemascópio, Contracampo, Paisá) in the 1990s and early 2000s. Makes, in his own words, "garage cinema" and "phantom bedroom music" since 2007. Started for real with short "Planalto Rhonda". Then made 2 features in a row, "Os Pólos" and "A Princesa de Rangoon". Has an interest in "secret archives", the "cinema as a platform for music and vice versa", likes the "mixtures that don't have much reason, but lead to strange portals"; says he makes music and movies "for the mystique of uncertainty". --Marjorie Maccard
Known For
A small-scale romantic love story, shot with a digital camera in black & white and in a documentary style. We follow the conversation between two lovers, each on a different side of the world; he is in Recife, she is in Kyiv. On one side is dark, on the other light, but both experience the same emotions and hence feel nearness and contact.
Friday Night, Saturday Morning
A mother gives her daughter a box full of old, coloured little vinyl records. The daughter may listen to them, but she should never, ever, play the green one.
Green Vinyl
A middle-class family living in a house filled with superfluous electronic appliances see the arrival of a new item, a 29" TV-set.
Eletrodoméstica
Apparitions, mystical presences and lost stories from São Paulo and Rangoon are discovered over the course of a summer in the future. São Paulo spots are visited by people from the same family in 1991 and then around 30 or 40 years later. Meanwhile, family archives and memories in Tropical America and in Magical Asia are revealed.
The Rangoon Princess
A natural study on the motorcycles fauna in São Paulo at the beginning of Covid19 pandemic. Filmed in the early fall 2020, this is Claudio Szynkier's first formal experience with cinema, music and the city. The film is a short musical effort, developed and improvised along a post-quarantine afternoon ride.
Rhonda Highlands
Just before the Covid surge, a tour through futuristic carnivals of antiquity and the latest versions of things in São Paulo before the outbreak. Cars, bicycles and vehicles powered by petrochemicals still take one last ride in normality. In another parallel world, Carnival takes place in its various forms.