Cine Brazil is a film screening project that aims to bring the diversity and creativity of Brazilian independent cinema to London, while donating part of the box office to grassroots organisations working at the frontline of Brazilian resistance. By doing this, they hope to reconstruct the narrative of Brazilian culture abroad, raise funds for important causes in their home country, and create a space to bring people together. In this blog, Cine Brazil’s co-founder Louise Carpenedo discusses their experience since their first screening in 2019.
How it all began
On a sunny day after work in the summer of 2019, three friends got together to discuss the possibility of creating a Brazilian Film Festival in London, since there was none at the time. We had all been living in the city for a couple of years, and shared a passion for film and activism.
After some time brainstorming, we came to the conclusion that a festival was too ambitious to start with and decided first to organise a standalone film screening to test out the idea. We already had a film in mind and a venue that would let us use the space, so we came up with a name for the project and asked a friend to create our visual identity. From then on, things took form quite quickly.
We wanted, however, for it to be more than just a regular screening; we wanted to include a political and social aspect to it. At the time, charity Latin American Women’s Aid was fundraising for a project working with Brazilian women in London and we thought it was the perfect opportunity for a partnership: we would donate part of our box office to their project.
Everything seemed to fall into place and we had our first screening on a Tuesday evening: 3 September 2019 at Dalston Roof Park in East London. We screened the documentary Enough with Catcalling, where Brazilian women share their experiences of harassment in public spaces and how this affects their sense of safety and autonomy when experiencing life in their cities. We created a Facebook event and shared with our friends, but had no idea how many people would turn up. To our surprise we sold out, and had very positive feedback. It seemed like we had created something that could work. So we decided to do another one.
How our screenings work
So far we have held ten screenings, of which six were in-person with a box office donation to organisations in Brazil, three were online fundraisers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and one was a partnership event with a charity.
We usually screen documentaries with current and relevant themes, and donate the money to organisations that work with causes related to that theme. Because we want to donate as much of the money raised as possible, it’s our priority to reduce costs with things like the venue. For now, we have mainly used non-traditional cinema spaces as we find it’s easier to make deals with those venues. We choose places that we already know have the technical capacity for our screenings, the films are sent to us on digital files and we screen them through our computer connected to the venue’s projector and sound system.
The films we have screened discuss important contemporary topics such as feminism and gender-based violence, transsexual rights, indigenous communities’ rights, Brazil’s colonial past and religious intolerance, among others. This means that finding the right film and the right organisation are the most important parts of our work. We do a lot of research, watch the films we find interesting and get in touch with the film crew to find out if they have a distributor. So far, only one of the films we have shown has been from a UK distributor, for the rest we have liaised with the film crew directly or an international rights holder when there is one. Once that is set, we organise the practicalities such as deciding on a date and putting the word out there. We do all the promotion ourselves, mainly through social media.
At the moment, we sell our tickets through Eventbrite. We started with three different price points so everyone could afford to participate, but after COVID-19 we had to change to a fixed price because of limited capacity in the venues due to social distancing rules. We are now discussing going back to the initial ticketing model. If someone can’t afford it, they can contact us and we offer them a discounted or free ticket. We want to be as inclusive as possible. We donate a minimum of 50% of the box office to charity; the rest goes to pay for the film rights and to cover our costs. The average amount of money we fundraise per screening is £230, which converted to the Brazilian currency is worth six times more. So far we have helped nine organisations.
Due to being a social project we often don’t have to pay for venues, and we have been lucky to find amazing partnerships in East London where we are based. We have also been very lucky with our audiences – our venues have an average capacity of 50-80 people and they often sell out. Our second screening had 100 people and it was our largest so far!
Our challenges
Like many others working in the events industry, the pandemic has been our greatest challenge so far. We had only been running the project for six months when the first lockdown was announced. Then, like everyone else, we went online. During the first months of 2020, we organised three online ‘screenings’ in order to raise funds to help people in need in Brazil. It was an interesting experience but it missed what we consider the most important aspect of our screenings, which is to gather people together. So we decided to wait for things to get better.
In late 2021 and early 2022 we tried to organise a couple of in-person screenings that had to be cancelled last minute due to COVID-19, so the project has been inconsistently on and off for the past couple of years.
What we have learned with Cine Brazil
Cine Brazil is our passion project and it has been an amazing experience so far. We have brought important Brazilian films to London that probably wouldn’t have been seen here otherwise, and we have managed to create a space for our Brazilian community and people interested in our culture to meet and learn more about it. All of this while being able to give a little bit back to our home country and getting to know incredible people and projects along the way.
By trying things out, we have learned basic things such as the best days to hold screenings (we have found Tuesdays work really well for us), how long before the screenings we need to start advertising the event (three to four weeks usually works but keeping in mind that most people will end up buying the tickets last minute…), that selling popcorn is a great way to earn some extra cash, and that when you put your heart into something things often find a way to work out.
What the future holds
We have been extremely lucky so far with the response we have got from the screenings, and with how smoothly everything has happened. Although we don’t profit from it yet, the project has been self-sustainable. We plan on applying to some funding schemes in the future, and diversifying our events to include performances, talks and other activities. We would love to expand to other capitals in Europe, and the dream of creating a Brazilian Film Festival in London is still alive. This year is our third anniversary and we are planning a big event to celebrate, so watch out!
You can find out more about the Cine Brazil project on Instagram.