- VIOLENCE CUTS THE MAN'S SOUL LIKE A BLIND RAZOR . Rio, Brazil, as known as ''The Big and Wonderful City''. ''On Guard - Estado de Alerta'' is 17 minutes long. With scenes shot in the year 2000, inspired by a crime that happened 20 years before, with a final sequence - with the very same actors - filmed 17 years later (2017). Today. Now. Total: 37 years of history. History that is born terrified, dived into more violence. Violence that seems infinite.—ANDRÉ MATTOS
- Culture is, anthropologically speaking, something very broad. In addition to characterizing the ways of living of these or those people, culture expresses the behavior of the inhabitants of each place, in a micro scale, or each region, in a macro scale. But in the end culture deals with behavior. Behavior towards life. Behavior towards death.
We start locally, Rio de Janeiro, to reach the universal. Concretely, we chose the theme of violence allying it with the state of panic that it provokes precisely in the inhabitants of large cities - in this case, Rio de Janeiro. We open a paragraph to explain why we want to reach the universal: we believe that neurosis - a state of panic - that surrounds our protagonist, can install itself in any citizen of the planet. Any citizen who lives in the CULTURE OF FEAR that germinates, and grows scandalously, in the minds of the inhabitants and in the media that surrounds us. Panic grows there, frightens there, manipulates there, paralyzes there, explodes there.
Why did we choose the theme of violence in the BIG CITY? Why did we decide to focus on the theme by looking for what is real and what fantasy exists in the CULTURE OF FEAR? The answers are embedded in the essence of the fear that we ourselves feel. Even more so when we think of our children, beings that grow and develop immersed in the violence of Rio de Janeiro and the big cities.
For that we followed the news about violence in Rio de Janeiro, for that we observed - or watched? - the people around us, for that we want - through the short film "On Guard" - to think and make people think about all the lost bullets, kidnappings, crimes, fear. Was it the police? Was it the bad guy? Who died? The child. The innocence.
It's up to the public to imagine, judge, feel. Even because our ultimate goal is to provoke reflection, is to raise questions that draw us from apathy towards violence. Apathy that - as in the case of our protagonist - can lead a common citizen to commit a crime. We believe that by knowing how to discern the real violence of the "fabricated" violence, we will know how to combat the CULTURE OF FEAR and, at the same time, violence.
For peace. For peace. For peace.
¨ Man is what he believes in ¨ (Anton Tchécov)
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