A CIDADE É UMA SÓ?

IS THE CITY ONE ONLY?
Documentary | HD | 2011 | 52 minutes (TV), 73 minutes (theaters)
Sponsored by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, together with Empresa Brasil de Comunicação

SYNOPSIS: A reflection on Brasília’s 50 years, focused on a discussion about the permanent process of territorial and social exclusion suffered by a considerable part of the population of the Federal District and surroundings, and about how these people reestablish social order through their daily life. The starting point for that reflection is the so-called Invasion Eradication Campaign (Campanha de Erradicação de Invasões – CEI), which, in 1971, removed the shacks that occupied the surroundings of the – then – young city of Brasília. With CEILÂNDIA as historical reference, the characters in the film experience and witness the changes in the city.

- Critic’s Award at Tiradentes Film Festival (2012)
- Honorable Mention at Semana dos Realizadores (Rio, 2011)

Directed and written by: Adirley Queirós
Produced by: Adirley Queirós, André Carvalheira
Director of photography: Leonardo Feliciano
Editor: Marcius Barbieri



DIRETOR’S STATEMENT

Brasília was born from a modern urban and architectural proposition. A project loaded with symbols of progress in its architecture, supporting the discourse of a new political and economic era. A project that was intended to imagine a new Brazil, a new way of living in the city. “Equal citizens ” in a promising new capital.

However, this ordered and hermetical model is soon shattered. After all, where are the mass of new laborers working in the construction industry and the migrants constantly arriving at the city going to live? These new inhabitants who are unwanted by the city authorities are labeled as “invasores” (invaders/squatters), a derogatory term used here instead of the equally derogatory term “favelado” (a favela/shantytown resident). Hence, thanks to the ideology of its genesis and motivated by the will of the authorities, the new Federal Capital supports the representation of that sanitized model of urbanization and expels the “invaders” well beyond its limits. Brasília starts its history by making invisible the people who built it.

My parents were evicted from Brasília, so I belong to the first post-territorial abortion generation. I have lived in Ceilândia, in the periphery of Brasília, for over 30 years. I have become a filmmaker and a significant part of my work is related to this issue. Everything that I am, that I think, everything that my generation is, how it acts, is a fruit of that contradiction of being and not being from Brasília. It is the fruit of the accumulation of experience of 50 years of this capital city Brasília.

This experience makes us reflect on the city. Instead of the positive tone of the official jingle that rocked the creation of Ceilândia (A cidade é uma só!, “the city is one only!”), we inevitably need to breath, take a step back and ask ourselves: is the city one only?