Professional and personal strategies of documentary filmmakers in Brazil: the case of the State of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais

Between 2012 and 2019, this qualitative sociological research was part of a documentary "boom" moment in Brazil, in terms of production and international recognition. Faced with a bottleneck in terms of their distribution, a growing number of festivals have opened up for documentaries, not counting the historical festival "É tudo Verdade" (São Paulo). This period also corresponds to a time when attempts at policies in favor of documentary films were made by the Federation and the Ministry of Culture (MinC) – public channel TV Brasil, TV Cultura, Doc.TV... These various advances have allowed the expression of a "black" cinema (Joel Zito Araujo), LGBT concerns (Karla Holanda), women’s rights (Helena Solberg and Susanna Lira) and the possibility for indigenous people to seize digital tools to reflect their own realities (Vincent Carelli, Video nas aldeias). Thus, while the Brazilian authorities were carrying out unfinished policies facing the weight of the private oligopolistic sector, it was interesting to analyze how documentary filmmakers developed their professional strategies. From this perspective, fourteen directors were the subject of semi-structured interviews in the state of Rio de Janeiro and three in Minas Gerais. In addition, producers and festival managers were also contacted. But the arrival of the Bolsonaro government caused a real rift. Against a backdrop of cultural war, fake news aimed at discrediting artistic circles, the takeover of the National Cinema Agency (ANCINE) and the abandonment of the São Paulo film library, cuts from major corporate sponsors, and beyond, Brazilian documentary filmmakers have found themselves strangers in


Introduction
The qualitative survey, the results of which are described below, was carried out between 2012 and 2019. It consisted of semi-structured interviews with seventeen directors, as well as the delivery of a questionnaire to which some of them responded. The choice of these people was established after consultation with producers, festival managers, academics, editors of specialized magazines, and the directors themselves. The stipulation being the chosen participants produced and disseminated their works professionally, and some or most of their income was based on their creative commitment. I would like to make a point regarding my methodology: as a sociologist, my main interest lies in the interactions between public/private cultural policies and culture professionals. Hence this article is mainly based on professionals' perceptions of the Brazilian cinematographic and audiovisual context. This choice may seem "impressionist", however it speaks to our empirical approach, by highlighting individual expectations and motivations, without neglecting the interdependence of artistic activities and the resulting "division of labor" 1 .
Also intentional was the comparative study of two states -the State of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, for their similarity in terms of professional requirements and their disparity around access to notoriety and international contacts, despite efforts made by Minas Gerais to help its cinematographic and audiovisual production 2 . More generally, disparity between production and diffusion/distribution was observed in both states. The upheavals that affected Brazilian political life between 2012 and 2019, of course, formed an important part of the strategic environment in which professionals evolved. The recent measures taken by the government of Jair Bolsonaro, aimed at destabilizing cultural circles, particularly those in the cinema and audiovisual sectors, were taken into account in this investigation 3 . This work was supported by CRESPPA, a joint research unit of which the author is a member 4 .

Identity or unfinished identity?
We started with a reflection by Francisco Elinaldo Teixeira in the collective work he edited, Documentário no Brasil: Tradição e transformação 5 .
In it, the author noted that in the 1980s, the designation "documentary filmmaker" constituted half an identity (meia-identidade), undermined by the competition with major art and fiction.
But what fiction? Two traditions coexist in Brazil: one is entertainment-based (comedies from the 1920s) and the other, notably that of Cinema Novo (Glauber Rocha et alii), is radical and reflexive, a cinema of denunciation and criticism.
The second Brazilian dictatorship  and its influence on cultural potential (cinema, audiovisual and music) is substantial, as indicated by the establishment of Rede Globo, a private television company which was financed initially by public authorities 6 . According to journalist and professor Christina Ferraz Musse, the Rede Globo is the privileged, dominant and far-reaching entrepreneurial arm of national integration, the fabric of Brazilian identity; that is, a decolonized but colonialist identity: a white perspective of Brazilian society, where blacks are servants, and the indigenous are absent from the cast. Even today, according to Cristiano Rodriguez, then documentary film producer in Minas Gerais, the Rede Globo stifles all alternative space and contaminates the aesthetics of Brazilian fiction films 7 .
Director and essayist Joel Zito Araujo comments: "All existing studies show that telenovela, like Brazilian cinema, has always rejected a representation of Brazilian racial diversity, for a white minority country with a population of Afro-descendants made up of Blacks and mestizos, which corresponds to 54.9% of a total population of 205 million inhabitants, according to the last census of 2016 carried out by the IBGE, the official statistics body of the Brazilian state. 8 " Another initiative during these years was the creation of Embrafilme in 1969, a semi-public company intended to manage the entire cinema chain, so as to be less dependent on American majors and represent Brazil abroad.
A few years after the end of the dictatorship, a working-class trade unionist, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was elected, and from 2011, Dilma Roussef, a former member of the resistance during the dictatorship years, took over. But some Brazilian sociologists warned: neither Lula nor Roussef were representative of their constituents. In the meantime, several circumstances combined to facilitate Brazilian documentaries: the development of video from the 1980s, and later, the Internet. Mariana Ferraz Musse reports on the following: "The increase in documentary production in Brazil is due, in large part, to cheaper devices and equipment, mainly in the last decade of the 1990s (…) Another device that has contributed to the increase in audiovisual production is the incorporation of less complex programs on computers, as well as more practical and faster non-linear tools. Thanks to technical development, a space has been opened up for the democratization of production and in a less professional, but no less relevant way, so that each individual can portray "his/her world". 9 " This new approach to social reality is outlined by the psychoanalyst and essayist Suely Rolnik, who puts into perspective the contributions of both Tropicalism 10 and Marxism without opposing them, and credits the University of Vincennes -Paris 8 for supporting her to conceive of the "poetic and political" together: "In Brazil, I was very involved in the counter-culture, as a student of social sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP). Endowed with a Marxist education since my birth, and, at the same time, a Jewish family formation, I found myself halfway between macro-and micro-politics and the Brazil of that time left no room for this double belonging."

Suely Rolnik adds:
"Traditionally, micro-politics have been confined to artistic practices and macropolitics to activism. In my opinion, this is why the 1960s was the scene of a very powerful, unforgettable collective experience; this is not to make an object of heroism; what matters is the memory of a radical experience which was able to combine the poetic with politics and which is still present in our bodies 11 ." Actually, this logic of counter-culture which includes Tropicalism, was assumed by Gilberto Gil, Minister of Culture of the Lula government between 2003 and 2008, in his declarations and acts on Brazilian culture: "Tropicalism proposed -and to a good extent succeeded -to include in political discussions, everyday issues then considered " bourgeois" and "alienated"; Also on the political agenda were the roles of women in society, sexual freedom, homosexuality and free love 12 ." The artistic renewal of the genre has also played a role with films like Cabra Marcado para Morrer by Eduardo Coutinho, produced in 1984, but initiated long before 13 19 . The distribution remains limited by the decentralization of production processes without the decentralization of diffusion / distribution of products. Audiences' absence of information and the lack of distribution are locked in a vicious circle. In 2008, the documentary films claimed only 1.2% of total receipts. Already quoted, Amir Labaki confirmed the disparity between large regions of Brazil: "The north, the north-east, and the center-west are the regions which receive the least support from the BNDES (O Banco Nacional do Desenvolvimento, the national bank for development) and the Federation. 20 " And the Doc.TV program, an initiative of the Federation which was active from 2003 to 2010, clearly found itself struggling with these problems; we will come back to them later.
What are the strategies for documentary filmmakers? At the source of the profession   23 a personality who trained at the IDHEC in France and later joined Cinema Novo; he was a school of his own for his assistants who have since become directors themselves.
In a country dominated for a long time by private or corporatist interests, the notion of public television remains foreign, despite the 2007 creation of TV Brazil. It is perhaps in Cuba and certainly in France that the notion of public service is most present. Indeed, Karla Holanda regrets that public service broadcasting or that even the very notion of public service is not taught in Brazilian schools and universities where training tends primarily towards the study of the cinematographic and audiovisual market 24 .
Let us now examine the training and modes of socialization of our interviewees: Consuelo Lins studied at the communication school of the Rio de Janeiro Federal University, UFRJ. She is also a graduate of the Rio PUC. She worked for six years as a journalist in Globo, Bandeirantes, and Manchette. She received a PhD from Université de Paris 3 (Sorbonne Nouvelle), having written her dissertation on documentary films, focusing on the work of American filmmaker Robert Kramer. She worked with João Moreira Salles, Cao Guimarães and Eduardo Coutinho. She joined the UFRJ as a teacher in 1996 and started making documentaries with her students 25 .
Sergio Bloch considers himself self-taught. He worked in theatre and then television as a cameraman in the years 1982/1983. He says he could have made a living from it. He has made corporate films and discovered the power of documentaries, notably with the films of American director Barbara Kopple and Mississippi Blues by Bertrand Tavernier and Robert Parrish, set in the southern United States (1984). He spent time in France and watched a lot of documentary films at the Beaubourg Center video library 26 .
Christina Grumbach studied journalism because her parents were against her studying cinema. Its biggest academy: ten years of collaboration with Eduardo Coutinho. She wants to continue her training and above all, find think tanks in which she can describe and compare her work 27 .
Joel Pizzini studied in Cuiabá, capital of Matto Grosso. His grandfather, a dentist, had a projector and films. Pizzini studied engineering but became interested in journalism and social sciences. And the highlight of his studies was the university film club 28 .
Deborah Herszenhut worked at the Rio Film Festival as a volunteer. She lived outside of Brazil, in Portugal and Spain. She took her first film course in Lisbon, mainly for the technical aspects. She returned to Rio and to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) where she worked in productions. She also discovered visual anthropology, through the UFRJ and Varan workshops 29 .
Coming from a medical family, Marcos Pimentel was under great pressure to study medicine. He engaged in law and gave up, then advertising, then psychology (CES-JF) and studied journalism and social communication for a year (Federal University of Juiz da Fora, UFJF). He became a radio / TV producer and participated in the making of clips and fiction films. This was his first contact with the documentary genre. In Rio de Janeiro, he took free courses as an auditor and then joined the Teresa Jessorum was unable to study cinema: "My family wanted me to be a civil servant". She studied history and geography, and also took up photography. For seven years, she has been a script writer and photographer for fifteen feature films. There were very few documentaries at the time. At the Rio Film Festival, the screening of Cabra Mercado para Morrer was a revelation for her. She then worked for sixteen years in programming for TV Globo where she was a production assistant and director 31 .
Belisario Franca studied at the Jesuit school in San Ignacio and then at the Pontifical University of Rio de Janeiro -PUC (photography studies). He opened his first studio in the late 1970s 32 .
In 1997, Eryk Rocha presented himself to the Cuba Film School, in San Antonio de Los Baños in Cuba. He was 19, a year younger than the required age. He stayed there for two years. Even if the experience was not totally what he expected, he did meet a few excellent people there. He studied editing (Eisenstein) and directing, and he describes the main layers of experience of this first journey: encounters of love and friendship; the discovery of a master for sound (French sound engineer Antoine Bonfanti), meeting with an exceptional editor 33 .
Helena Solberg had a catholic education at the French Catholic School in Rio de Janeiro. She studied Romance literature and languages at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC). She wanted to be a writer. In 1971, she had to move to the United States with her first American husband. Based in the United States, she investigated Chile and Nicaragua for American TV. Through these films, she discovered her Latin American identity and the political aspect of her work was greatly enriched 34 .
Born in Paraíba and son of historian José Joffily Bezerra de Mello, José Joffily was a freelance photographer for various magazines -O cruzeiro, Realidade, Placar -before making his own short films. He has a master's degree in Communication from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and was a teacher for twenty years, at the Film and Video Department of the Federal University of Fluminense 35 .
Silvio Tendler created a film club at the age of sixteen, then in 1968, he was elected president of the Federation of Rio film clubs. He organized 16mm screenings in the favelas which inspired him to make political films. In 1972, he visited Chile and later decided to go to study cinema in France. "At that time, France was a place of reference, " he underlines. Unifrance Films presented films at the Maison de France, among others… Godard, Bresson, Lelouch. In France, he studied history and cinema at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. He worked with Chris Marker, Armand Mattelart, Jean Rouch and Joris Ivens. What interested him was exploring the relationship between history and cinema. He also quoted Santiago Alvares Roman, a Cuban filmmaker 36 .
Karla Holanda has worked with cinema and video since 1992, when she moved to Rio de Janeiro to study cinema and audiovisual at Federal Fluminense University (Niteroj, Rio de Janeiro). In 1995, she attended the newly created Dragão do Mar Institute (Dramaturgy and Directing in Cinema and TV) in Fortaleza, and subsequently founded the production company Em Foco Multimídia. In 2003, she started a master's degree in Multimeios, at Unicamp, where she developed research on Northeastern documentary, under the guidance of Professor Fernão Ramos, a survey previously unheard of in the Northeast states. The dissertation resulted in the book Documentário nordestino. Mapeamento, historia e análise, published in 2008 by Annablume, with support from the São Paulo research foundation FAPESP. Since 2008, she has been living in Rio de Janeiro, where she completed a PhD at Federal Fluminense University, developing research on Brazilian documentary (DocTV: independent production on television), under the guidance of Professor Tunico Amancio. Her research has been published under the title: DOCTV: a independente producão na televisão. Um projecto de regionalização do governo Lula. After teaching at UFJF (Juiz da Fora Federal University), she currently teaches at Fluminense University. Given the fact the documentary market is difficult, being a university professor affords a more secure existence, she said. However, Karla Holanda also enjoys writing about cinema and audiovisual, as well as transmitting her knowledge and experience to young people.
With an architect mother who loved cinema and filmed a lot in Super 8, Marilia Rocha studied at the Pontifical University of Belo Horizonte. She was already making films during her master's degree. She completed her studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, Belo Horizonte), in the Department of Communications, Audiovisual and Cinema, which, according to her, has since developed a lot 38 .
Emilio Domingos is of a middle-class upbringing with a guardian father.
"I moved between circles. It was difficult to enter University. I wanted to work with cinema and the social sciences. I like to think about unique situations. I chose anthropology for this reason, he explains 39 ." Lucia Murat studied economics in the 1960s at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Very quickly, she became vice-president of the student movement. She was jailed initially for a week. In December 1968, she joined the armed resistance, and she was imprisoned for three and a half years in Rio (Vila militar) then in Bahia. She was released in 1975 40 .
Susanna Lira studied audiovisual and journalism in the Communications Program of Hélio Alonso Integrated Faculties in Rio de Janeiro, a private university. She also attended international human rights law courses 41 .
In In general, festivals grant 10.000 reais (i.e., 1 500 €) to award-winning films 46 . This is the case of the Tiradentes festival, the Ciné Ope d´Ouro Preto, the International Mostra de Belo Horizonte -which has a national impact 47 . In other regions, the Gramado Festival (Ceara) and Brasilia festival are recognized for their reception of documentary films, the Brasilia festival having a political overtone. The participants also underlined an evolution of the documentary themes and subject matter: from culture in general to music, then the intimate -the lives of people -and a new look at butlers or housekeepers, like in Santiago (João Moreira Salles) or Babas (Consuelo Lins). However, despite some good initiatives, they confirm that it is difficult to make a living from documentary alone.
And this is what our interviewees attest, with some exceptions. Most have set up their own production houses, which allows them both to edit their own films and to produce work by other creators. Others work as teachers, consultants, or screenwriters for various clients.
Marilia Rocha regrets the difficulty of working in Minas Gerais, despite contributions from the State. To overcome this problem, seventeen years ago, she participated in the creation of A Teia (the web), in Belo Horizonte, with the idea of aesthetic convergences, and shared promotion and premises. Today, the idea is rather that everyone go their own way, she emphasizes. There is public and private support (Renault), a Filminas prize. The City of Belo Horizonte offers financial assistance and there is also the Centro de Referência Audiovisual (CRAV), espaço da Fundação Municipal de Cultura de Belo Horizonte. Petrobras finances via the Rouanet law. TV Cultura has played an excellent role for 5/6 years. But funds are never adequate. In 2014, a group of 500 people from Pernambuco, Rio, Bahia, and São Paulo signed a text on this subject. Forum doc -forumdoc.bh.18, is a well-known Festival of documentary and ethnographic films in Belo Horizonte during the month of November. The Tiradentes Film Festival welcomes young independent directors. The Mostra de cine de Ouro Preto is dedicated to education and archives. "Independent production is very separate from the commercial world (even for experimental fiction films)", she emphasizes. One of the major problems is the lack of money for distribution. The film clubs are one of the players -but not very fortunate. There are also the SESC and Banco do Brasil centers which are promoting dissemination strategies. The problem in Minas Gerais is the lack of technical resources. It is complicated and expensive to call on technicians, all based in Rio or São Paulo. Marilia Rocha points out the international possibilities of documentary support: Tribeca Film Institute 48 , Hubert Bals Fund of the Rotterdam Film Festival (Netherlands) 49 and Ibermedia (more difficult to access, she said) 50 .
As for Marcos Pimentel, who also resides in Minas Gerais, he has directed one film per year since 1998. Directed in 2013 his first feature film called Sopro (Breath), was presented at Visions du Réel in Switzerland and will be broadcast in November 2021, at the Festival des Trois Continents, in Nantes (France). His films have been screened at the Gramado, in São Paulo, and the Ceara and Biarritz Latin America festivals in October 2013. According to Marcos Pimentel, certain festivals are key for achieving recognition, which is the case for É Tudo Verdade, which he describes as an international showcase. A poiera eo Viento (Dust and Wind) was presented there in 2011, as well as in Biarritz in 2012. That film was also promoted in Los Angeles Hollywood's Brasilia, in Montreal, in Havana, in Guadalaraja (Mexico), in Bolivia, at the Cinéma du réel (Paris) in Tampere and in Japan.
In 2013, he received support from ICTV -Cuba -to apply for the Ibermedia fund. The Brasilia festival has since opened up more space for the documentary genre, creating a new category in its favor. The first prize amounts to 250.000 reais (about 38.000 €) for fiction and 80.000 reais for documentaries (about 12.000 €).
As of 2014, Marcos Pimentel along with Gabriela Altaf made a re-creation, of a television series called Diarios sobre o Corpo, which addresses the experiences of characters who suffer from not meeting society's beauty standards. The first episode premiered on TV Cultura at 00:30, after which the series aired on 220 other public TV stations, such as TV Brasil, Rede Minas de Televisão and all educational, cultural, university and community channels in the country.
"What I do know is that it was extremely pleasant to create content for all public TV stations in the country. The opening hours are horrible, the signal from these channels is never so clean, the audience is low, but these stations are an incredible space to generate reflections in the public that we don't find on commercial television channels 51 ." For Mariana Ferraz Musse, the calls for proposals are pre-empted by people who are established within the network, which, for a young director is very difficult to break into. Ditto for festivals -in fact, Mariana Ferraz Musse made a film in Ouro Preto, which was not even shown by their own festival. On the other hand, it was presented in an Amazonian festival. Access to festivals is uncertain and unpredictable. "The documentary is 'trendy' but still not considered a movie," she insists. (…) The public sees the documentary as a report. After making four documentaries that she describes as "poetic", and considering herself as a "video artist ", Mariana Ferraz Musse values research more than directing. "The system lacks renewal, we feel a certain discouragement in the long run." In 2012, she directed Corpos celestes with Juliette Triangular, and in 2015, Jonathan. In 1997, Franca opened Giros, a production company that employed a team of two to fifteen people, that combined both musical and lighter productions. The Giros team works on ten projects at the same time, for which Belisario Franca is the artistic director. Every two years or so, he undertakes his own personal project. The team consists of around ten directors.
Belisario Franca produced fifteen programs with Gilberto Gil, 142 rhythms from Brazil, for MTV Brazil. This film was presented at É Tudo Verdade. He also produced a series on religions, Catholicism and violence (twelve programs). He successfully completed Amazonia eterna in 2011. With these documentary series, he notably obtained the Lusophony Prize (IDA) and they were broadcast by TV Brasil.
It took him four years to prepare Menino 23 which was shown theatrically in Rio 54 . Various sources of funding had to be assembled -Multirio acting as a broadcaster 55 ; he also counted with the Audiovisual Sectorial Fund (FSA), Petrobras, BNDES and Riofilme which were the main supports along with Discovery and Canal Brazil. A mining company, Vale, intervened thanks to the audiovisual law.
In 1994, back in Brazil, Sergio Bloch won the first prize for a short film at Riofilme. What interested him was making a series about the world of those who roam the city -on foot or by bicycle -for their work. He devoted two films to them, Olha da rua and Tudos a rodas in 2004, an audiovisual accompaniment for all those who, in the cities, carry their goods on a man's back or by bicycle or moped. The prototype was declined in Latin America, under the title Sobre ruedas, with thirteen twenty-six-minute episodes, a series edited with the support of Ibermedia and Canal Futura 56 . He also collaborated with Video nas Aldeias, as a trainer and event coordinator, the idea being that indigenous youth can make their own films.
Lucia Murat made her first film in Nicaragua (1978), a medium-length documentary which was only completed in 1984. She wanted to meet people of her own generation in Latin America. She was part of the Paissandu generation 57 , very influenced by New Wave. "Cinema and life were strongly intertwined " she underlined. Que bom te ver viva (1989) mixes documentary and fiction, which was rare at the time. She did journalism, because for her, journalism and documentary are very close. In her fiction-documentary films, Lucia Murat constantly comes and goes. It was only from 2004-2006 that she could make a living from her work as a filmmaker. She worked for television, making reports and commercials.
"It's also only fifteen years ago that there has been a policy for sustainable production in Brazil. Young people are not aware of these developments" she stressed in 2016.
She directed Entre os actos -inspired by Simone de Beauvoir -with the support of the FSA (Audiovisual Sectorial Fund) and Petrobras, in co-production with France. And Uma longe viagem in 2011 -a film which also focused on memory. Her films have been distributed in Portugal, Chile, Argentina, and France.
After his audiovisual work for the trade union movement, Joel Zito Araujo directed a short film in 1991-1992, titled Retrato em preto e branco. His first public work, this film was shown in France and New York city (purchased by the Library of Congress), and he received criticism in the press in both Brazil and the United States. In 2000, he directed the film, A negação do Brasil (notably with Ruth de Souzou), about the role of blacks on television. This documentary feature won first prize at É Tudo Verdade and it was screened at many festivals.
In addition to his films, Zito is a curator for festivals like Encontro de cine negro in Rio (during the month of November), a consultant, and a jury member for calls for projects. He is also a teacher and course coordinator at Green Cap, Dakar, in Mozambique and he is a member of the Pan African Cinema Federation (FEPASI). He manages to make a living from his various activities. In Brazil, he has benefited from various supports including The Cinema Sectorial Fund, Globo Filmes, and Petrobras.
In 2016, he was very worried about possible political developments in Brazil: "With Dilma Roussef, it was austerity and a worrying misunderstanding of trade union movements and civil society. (...) With Michel Temer, culture has become the enemy 58 ." While Joel Zito Araujo was a member of the civil society council of TV Brasil, Michel Temer hastened to remove the council. Helena Solberg made her first film in 1967 that dealt with the issue of young women in her community. None wanted to appear on screen, so she had to construct surrogate images. Her film was distributed at the Maison de France and at the Locarno festival. She was a script writer for Cinema Novo, but at the time, she disapproved of the lack of consideration of women's issues. In the 70s, she took up residence in the United States for about 30 years, where she directed several productions, among them: From the Ashes: Nicaragua Today (1982), which won a News & Documentary Emmy Award. From the 80s, she began to direct a series of documentaries for international TV channels such as HBO, PBS, Channel 4, Radio and Television of Portugal, National Geographic Channel, among others. Her work has been shown in many festivals: Center Pompidou (the Cinéma du Réel), Biarritz, Lyon, Toulouse, Sunny Side of the Doc (Marseille). In the USA she would come up with a topic and get paid to complete it by PBS, among others, she underlines. She returned to Brazil every year but 1995 was the date of her lasting return. Bananas is my business, a film about Carmen Miranda, was very well received and allowed her to mark her comeback 59 . She made Vida da meninha, based on the diary of a young girl who wrote aged 13 to 15. The book has been translated into French and English. The film was shot in Diamantinas, the hometown of the girl. She participated in a program in a favela with choreographer Evaldo Mare (on Indian dance). She came back ten years later to film the same people: A alma da gente. To do this, she responded to a call for proposals.
Financially, she can survive on her productions, but nothing more. The problem in the film and documentary economy in particular, is that the distributor does not lend funds and it takes two to three years between the making of each film.
For Silvio Tendler, traditional Brazilian sources of funding do not work: he has never cooperated with Embrafilme, and according to him, Ancine is not that efficient. As a result, he created his own company, Caliban Produções Cinematográficas, through which he works for the whole of Brazil. He "has to go where the money is. 60 " His films were very well received in Cuba, Miami, the Brazilian Film Festival in Paris, MOMA (New York), Berlin, Mexico, and Argentina. He feels no obligation to be tied to a single television network. TV Brasil supported four or five of his projects and TV Cultura has helped one or two. In addition, he made special 50-minute versions for TV Cultura and he shot a miniseries, Anos rebeldes For TV Globo, 61 .
O veneno esta na Mesa (the poison is served) is a film about ecology, released in 2011, which attracted more than 50,700 spectators. Silvio Tendler has made a living from his work for a long time. He is also President of the Brasilia Film Festival, and as such, he helped save the 2019 edition of the festival, delayed due to the Petrobras withdrawal.
Susanna Lira focuses on themes like human rights, politics, and violence. She is known for documentaries like Mataram Nossos Filhos (2016), Legítima Defesa (2017), Torre das Donzelas (2018) and for creating and directing the series Rotas do Ódio (2018), produced by Universal Channel. Susanna Lira won one of the first prizes at the Rio International Festival in 2009, for Positivas. Europe is very important to her. Torre Das Donzelas was broadcast in France. She won several awards, including Best Documentary and Best Directing in the important Rio Festival in 2018, for her film Torre das Donzelas, in which she interviews women who were imprisoned and tortured in the Brazilian military dictatorship -Dilma Roussef among them -while asking them to re-occupy the reconstituted space of their prison. She works a lot for festivals. "On television, we don't know who is watching". Tiradentes shows independent films. The Brasilia festival pays 15.000 reais (more or less 2 300 €). They are small groups with meager resources. The Ford Foundation has few resources. There is also the Rouanet law -and the audiovisual law. In 2018, Michel Temer closed the calls for proposals to companies. Ancine had not been in operation for eight months. Anyway, Susanna Lira believes that "the resources available are very limited for projects with high budgets". For Christina Grumbach, film festivals are interesting in order to meet directors: to dialogue, to see the work of others. But it's more marginal to meet the public. O morro da Conceição spent three months in the theater, with 6000 viewers. Then, she directed As Cartas Psicografadas por Chico Xavier (2010). However, festivals are not a priority, she says.
"You have to understand that the money invested in the film is the initial value of it. If there's more money, it's for me. I sold on cable TV, Netflix (As Cartas Psicografadas por Chico Xavier). 2.500 reais (i.e., 382 €), that is, after commission from the distributor, 1.500 reais (i.e., 230 €). I was able to survive by making films. It's already a miracle." When we met, 100% of resources were spent on survival, she said.
"When I didn't have kids, I worked on my plans. After that, it was impossible. I won a call for proposals, and I will be able to live in October, November and December 2016. 10% of my time is free for my films. 64 " Deborah Herszenhut entered the market through her freelance work. She was a producer of festivals, and exhibitions, where she worked with art and advertising. Then she was assistant director for the documentary. She also worked as a researcher at the university, in the field of anthropology. She did music videos and casting.
She opened several fronts, including a social education project for Video nas aldeias, which was a documentary on Guaranis, with a linguist, a topic on which she was preparing a series. She also worked as a consultant for various organizations. Brazilian legislation obliges companies that produce major works to make an inventory of the regions they want to go, hence they need audiovisual documentation. Public calls for proposals are a complicated world, she said.
"A mature CV is better than all the good ideas of young talent. Cooptation is very strong in the audiovisual milieu. To write a project, it takes two months. The other solution is to be a technician. But I feel more comfortable in the academic world (…) Experience in documentary films, knowledge of the third sector and anthropology, these are my three strengths and I intend to make them flourish, while connecting films with anthropology 65 ." As for Emilio Domingos, he designs projects without support, while working as a researcher for TV Globo. "I cannot live on documentaries. I work for the future new Museum of Image and Sound." He also addressed environmental issues, notably with an order from a specialist company, Hydroelectrica. At the end of the 1990s, calls for documentaries increased because television needed programs. There was also more money: 500 prepaid DVDs on the Internet, 2000 DVDs planned, 55 reais per DVD (8,40 €). "The Rouanet Law, the calls for proposals, are worse than the vestibular 66 ", he was indignant. According to Domingos, the system favors those who write the best. The government wants Brazilian cinema to be known around the world. There is some sort of formatting. Language matters more than the subject.
"I see the possibility of interviewing groups and individuals, to have situations known, to tell different stories. I am not a political filmmaker, I am looking for subjects that interest me. I work with various producers." In terms of distribution, for Joel Pizzini, there is Cine Ceara, Doc em Lisboa, the Amsterdam and Rome festivals. He rented a space and won calls for projects from Itaú cultural 68  Karla Holanda considers the documentary market to be "very closed". In principle, on pay-TV, three and a half hours should be devoted to independent productions. But, she wonders, who can afford to watch pay TV? Anyway, television pays badly. Karla Holanda benefited from Petrobras' call for proposals for her fifteenth film Kátia which won several distinctions in 2012. The production took place in Piauí about Kátia Tapety, the first transvestite in Brazil to be elected to a political office. The film debuted at the 45th Brasília and was selected at the 36th São Paulo International Film Festival and the Brasilia Festival, in addition to receiving the awards for Best Film, Photography and Editing at VI For Rainbow (Fortaleza). It also received a prize in Mix Brasil (São Paulo).
"I think that in Kátia Tapety's daily life she works for human rights and for the tolerance that I call "silent", because she does not use any elaborate speech, nor does she weave theory. She lives as she believes she should live, this is her biggest flag", Karla Holanda said. 71 But would this film have had help from Petrobras in 2019? A Folha de São Paulo on June 13, 2019, reveals that several films and festivals have not received their endowments promised by the company: A torre das donzelas (Suzanna Lira, a promise of 100.,000 reais, about 15,278 €) Meio Irmão by Eliane Coster (200,000 reais promised, about 30,557€), Bixa Travesty by Claudia Priscilla and Kiko Goifman 72 . All delicate subjects for the new government. Jair Bolsonaro declared: "Não é censura, é respeito a população brasileira." ("It's not censorship, it's respect for the Brazilian population.") And what about the festivals deprived of their sponsorships? The São Paulo International Film Exhibition, supported since 2000 by Petrobras, the Rio de Janeiro international film festival, which saw its budget evaporate and must reduce its programming, as well as the Brasilia film festival, fortunately supported by the secretariat of the Culture and Creative Economy of the Brasilia District?
Before this earthquake, Karla Holanda was particularly interested in Doc.TV, a federal attempt from 2003 to 2010, to decentralize the Brazilian production of documentary films and to establish links between public television and independent production, "common em varied paises, but, by deceased, evitada a todo custom no Brasil 73 " ("common in varied countries, but, by deceased, avoided all custom in Brazil").TV Brasil's audience share is only 0.5%, however TV Cultura broadcast 35 films, or 20% of its programming, as part of the third edition of Doc.TV. "The audience isn't significant, but the local impact is." Over the years of the program, the sum granted for the production of documentaries has been 100,000 (i.e., 15,278 €) and then 110,000 reais (about 16,800 €). The television network that broadcasts receives 27 other programs (and in fact twice as much, according to Karla Holanda). Viviane Louise, one of the program's winners for her film Café com pão, manteiga não, acknowledges that Doc.TV has enabled her to mature her desire for directing. Indeed, the program was conceived as a series of poles in each Brazilian state, with local coordination but also tutors, and filmmakers themselves. This set was very suitable for developing the scenarios and understanding how the directors saw their initiatives.
Karla Holanda describes Doc.TV's initiative as a "unique experience" with 131 documentaries produced in the country's 27 federative units 74 . The program matured in 2002, with the National Audiovisual Seminar coordinated by filmmaker Orlando Senna.
For example, the film Raimundo, a quebradeira by Marcelo Silva was sold to the 27 units of the SESC, for a sum of 1,000 reais (more or less 152 €) per copy (shared between author, producer, local program and MinC funds to finance new productions).
The challenge of meeting the public: dissemination / distribution / marketing "What matters", Marcos Pimentel insists, "is reaching the public. In 2009, 6% of the population had access to pay cinema. There was no advertisement for the documentary offering. Exhibitors don't give a film time to exist. 75 " Duy blow one could read in Portal Impresa of June 1, 2009: "The DOCTV Program opens on June 5 (Friday), at 10:40 pm, on TV Cultura, its fourth series of unpublished documentaries. In this edition, there are 55 titles, all coproduced through the Brazilian Documentary Program to Promote Production and Broadcasting. For one year, weekly documentaries made throughout Brazil will be shown based on the association between local public TVs and independent producers. In other states, the documentaries will air on the TV programming grids and alternative circuits of the public institutions participating in the program. (…) The Program is carried out by the Audiovisual Secretariat of the Ministry of Culture, ABEPEC -Brazilian Association of Public Educational and Cultural Broadcasters, TV Cultura -Fundação Padre Anchieta, and TV Brasil -Empresa Brasil de Comunicação, with the support of ABD Nacional -Brazilian Association of Documentarians and Short Filmmakers." In 2011, the program was suspended by the government of Dilma Roussef. Only Doc.TV Latin America and Doc.TV CPLP still operate: "Doctv is a programme to support the production and broadcasting of Latin American documentaries. It is an initiative from Conferencia de Autoridades Cinematográficas de Iberoamérica -CACI -and the Fundación del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano and its aim is to call for applications in the countries that belong to the programme to select projects for documentaries. Doctv, which was inspired in a previous experience in Brazil, is a pioneer model for the coproduction, television broadcasting and distribution of documentaries, systematized with the concept of a network operation. The 19th CACI Meeting was held in the city of Antigua in the Republic of Guatemala on November, 16,2010. It was decided to proceed with a third edition of Doctv, and Instituto del Cine y Audiovisual del Uruguay -ICAU -was designated as the headquarters of the Management Unit in charge of executing the programme. In this edition there are at least 14 documentaries." (Source: Doctv Latinoamérica Fund Executive, 2011).
The idea of a Latin American cultural transfer is interesting, as well as the relay taken by a number of countries. Doc.TV also exists for the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries, as evidenced by these few lines taken from the Doc.TV CPLP program: "The CPLP Audiovisual Program has a budget of approximately three million euros and contributes to cultural exchange, to increase mutual knowledge and to the implementation of integrated public policies to promote the production and broadcasting of audiovisual content in the member states CPLP 76 ." (Source: CPLP, 2016.) Karla Holanda considers these two initiatives as models of "cultural diplomacy" 77 .
The fact remains that Doc.TV Brazil had to close its doors while the program was at its mature stage, with improvements in each edition. The filmmaker and professor Eduardo Escorel, one of the tutors of the program, told Karla Holanda in 2012: "We sin a lot in Brazil by discontinuing projects. We change the Culture Secretariat and the project ends because it came from another. I think the experience was too brief to assess its effects with any more objectivity" 78 .
Regarding distribution, Lucia Murat believes that: "even if public policy has done things for cinema and audiovisual, it has not touched the monopoly of film and audiovisual distribution. VOD poses a lot of problems because it does not generate any revenue. In addition, author's cinema will no longer be distributed in theaters. 79 " According to Deborah Herszenhut, Brazilian festivals should function as showcases for national and international distribution. However, this is rarely the case, with the exception of É Tudo Verdade. Culture points facilitate circulation 80 . But they ask to give up its material free of charge. Films are not supported for distribution.
Emilio Domingos goes through festivals, and film clubs as well as culture points, to disseminate his work.
Yet Eryk Rocha sees cinema as a contribution to the construction of memory. The problem of distribution is global. For him, "there is no cinema without public policy". There are new popular digital circuits, he observed. Ponto Cine Guadalupe networks 80 venues with tickets at 4 reais (0,61 €). Street vendors sell the ticket for 5 reais (0,76 €) 81 . 90% of municipalities do not have a theatre. They broadcast for 200,000 people against 200 customers for a traditional venue.
The funds have evolved and films are shown internationally. It's the number of tickets sold that counts. And the film clubs, international and innovation are not included.
According to Eryk Rocha, the problem of distribution is global. "We have to reinvent the social space of cinema. The market is occupied by American cinema. We need alternatives." Helena Solberg regrets that distributors are withholding funds. It takes two to three years between the making of each film. "Author films are the most difficult to produce. In fact, the market for these films does not exist". This is what she explains to her PUC students. "Technology is changing very quickly. Young people no longer go to the cinema." For Joel Zito Araujo, the Minister of Culture Juca Ferreira already wanted to reform the Rouanet law. If the sponsoring companies pay only 80% of the taxes, they must donate 20%. But often, they manage to get some of the money back from their sponsorship. The corruption is enormous. In addition, companies choose what is the most spectacular: mainstream and southeast of the country only. We must add to these observations the fact that private funds only represent 10% of financing requirements.
According to him, CUFA has energized things, putting the periphery at the center as a source of culture (and not just by facilitating access). The Central Única das Favelas (CUFA) is a Brazilian organization recognized nationally and internationally for 20 years of social work in slum territories and periphery through cultural, artistic and sports projects. (Source: CUFA website, https://www.sympla.com.br/cufa).
There is also Cooperiferia, an organization present in the favelas, in particular through its writers and poets. They broadcast Joel Zito Araujo's films.
Points of culture are useful for Mariana Ferraz Musse, but it's impossible to make a living out of it. Calls for projects are useless for distribution. Movie theaters don't want to host documentaries because the audience is too small.
Coordinator of the Content and Quality Unit of TV Cultura from 2007 to 2010, Gabriel Priolli confirms: "Viewers only accept journalistic documentaries, such as Globo Reporter, in which the narrative is conducted by a presenter and the simple motorbike enjoyment, muti say, enzo requires mental effort. They also accept, albeit less, documentaries with narration on off, like Discovery Channel, which are also easy to assimilate." (Gabriel Priolli, 2011, in an interview by Karla Holanda) 82 .
On this subject, Karla Holanda and Joel Pizzini denounce the production of "commercial documentaries" distributed in theaters -in particular centered on famous figures -and in which the director is "instrumentalized", according to Joel Pizzini's expression: films on Vinicius de Morais, Talking Heads, Woody Allen … One of the problems with Doc.TV has precisely been distribution and return on investment. Eduardo Escorel regrets the program's lack of a long-term vision: "Well, doing a three or four year experiment, where does that take us? (…) You offer an opportunity, the person makes a film, the film is interesting, and this person is again faced with the same difficulty they had, before working for DocTV. 83 " In addition, Doc.TV's efforts to export the films were called into question by its discontinued presence in television markets. And this is due to lack of means.
Directors working for Doc.TV cannot sell a single DVD or post their documentary on the Internet. The natural way would be to free all the economic rights for the authors, for the producers, according to Paulo Alcoforado (interviewed by Karla Holanda in 2012) 84 .
Karla Holanda underlines: The commercialization of national DocTVs to other stations and in other windows is the main negative point of the Program highlighted by the directors. The fact is that the results achieved were very timid, restricted to isolated sales and to a few commercialized DVDs. (...) However, in order to work, it would be necessary for the MinC (ministry of Culture), which holds most of the rights to the films, to find mechanisms for continuing the process, even when management changes. The same goes for public TV, a minority co-producer, but with a greater structure to find buyers for its products." There remains the problem of piracy, which is significant in Brazil. To this question, Silvio Tendler responds with humor that may not be appreciated by everyone: "It's the Americans who always want money. It's an honour to be hacked. We are in good company! 85 "

Conclusion
The directors we have met all stress the level of difficulty in producing their films, marketing them and of benefiting from a return on investment which would allow them to continue their work. Moreover, in public agencies, management remains a challenge. As an example, in 2011, Ancine succeeded in convincing the public authorities to strengthen support for the film industry, with the creation of a new tax on television services (which particularly affects telephone and cable television operators). Thus, in 2012, CONDECINE 86 87 .
In addition, unlike the French system among others, at the federal level there is very little automatic support for production and distribution. The Audiovisual Sectorial Fund of the Federation has a marketing line for Brazilian feature-length works (action line D), but only for distribution in cinemas in the country, and for works "in the finalization phase or completed" and awarded at festivals (Source: Ancine, FSA, ministry of Citizenship, 2020).
"Today, automatic aid represents only 3.6% of the aid granted. While it is obviously not a question of renouncing the selective aid which ensures the diversity of national production and ideas, the establishment of automatic aid would make it possible to lighten administrative procedures and shorten the financing periods of a film 88 , to interest producers in the success of the film, to promote the emergence of a greater number of films with strong commercial potential, Emmanuel Rufi suggests." Among all the data provided by Ancine, three figures caught our attention: from 2004 to 2008, the cinema audience for Brazilian films went from 16,410,957 to 9,143,052. As for foreign films, they were screened in front of 80,322,112 people in 2008. (Source: Ancine, 2009). This also means alternative sources need to be put in place throughout the cinema and audiovisual value chain. Even though Canal Brasil broadcasts a majority of Brazilian works in terms of airtime, its audience remains low. Likewise for TV Cultura, despite the promotional efforts made during the four editions of Doc.TV. And above all, the revenue increases are too low.
In addition, recent political changes in the country make the prospect of a Brazil open to all directions and to the multiplicity of social and intimate adventures even more distant. At the same time, the festivals of Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, Gothenburg and others have mobilized since 2019 to welcome and reward quality Brazilian films, and which have won an international audience, whether it is fiction or documentary. Paradoxically, the confinement in which the government of Jair Bolsonaro intends to lock up his country, increases interest in Brazil and its stories, as does the distribution on certain platforms including Netflix, such as Democracia em vertigem by Petra Costa 89 , nominated for the 2020 Oscars, even if another Netflix jewel won the day: American Factory by Stephen Bognar and Julia Reichart 90 .
The international relays handled by Doc.TV Latin America and Doc.TV LPLP demonstrate the exemplary nature of certain Brazilian cultural initiatives, just as how the Culture Points have been implemented in Latin America and Europe. These breakthroughs in the glass ceiling of a Brazilian system dominated by private interests, herald new opportunities for Brazilian designers. But they remain cautious in the presentation of themselves: most of the documentary filmmakers encountered present themselves as filmmakers, either because the documentary is not their only horizon (Marilia Rocha), or because the public does not understand the term and risks confusing "documentarista" with "documentalista", as Christina Grumbach jokingly puts it. With the film Samba which was the starting point for increased visibility, Theresa Jessorum began to "see herself as a documentary filmmaker". Susanna Lira is categorical on the question: "It is an important political act to claim to be a documentary filmmaker. We work from reality." Karla Holanda considers herself a director working like a craftsman. Sergio Bloch doesn't see himself as a filmmaker, but this is how he describes himself, "because people don't understand what a documentary filmmaker is." As for Lucia Murat, given her history, she sees herself more as "a survivor " 91 . 42 See pp. 3-4 in this article. Interview of August 16, 2013, Juiz da Fora. 43 TV Cultura is a free Brazilian television network headquartered in São Paulo and a part of Fundação Padre Anchieta. It focuses on educational and cultural subjects but also has sports as entertainment options. 44 Regarding Videa nas aldeias, the editing is done by external contributors. The Indians began to direct their own films. O Mestre e o Divino by Tiago Campos, was presented in 2013 at the 46th Brasilia Film Festival where a documentary category was created. He won the first prize, tied with Exilados do Vulcão by Paula Gaitán. Video nas aldeias is coordinated by Vincent Carelli. 2014 interview with Joel Pizzini, Ibid. 45 "The SESC (Social Service of Commerce) entity in São Paulo arose at the heart of the industrialization process of the late 1940s, from which the bases of an internal consumer market developed, alongside the urbanization reforms underway in various Brazilian federated capitals. The expansion of the internal market then required skilled labor and improved living conditions for workers living in cities, and the initiative was partly taken by entrepreneurs in commerce and industry. (Source: Danilo Santos de Miranda, regional director of the São Paulo SESC, "Culture in the urban context: the experience of the São Paulo SESC", in Culture Europe International, Special Brazil, 2012). 46 2012 figures. Let us precise that in Brazil, the minimum wage/month is 1039 reais/158,14 € and that in France, it is 1521,22 € (figures of 2020 for Brazil and 2019 for France). 47 A film festival was also created in Juiz da Fora in 2011, Primeiros planos, dedicated to young directors. 48 The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) was a year-round non-profit arts organization founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff in the wake of September 11, 2001. TFI's mission was to empower filmmakers through grants and professional development and train the media-makers of the future by bringing film into the classroom, developing young audiences for independent film, and promoting career development. TFI suspended its activities in 2020 (Source: www.tribecafilminstitute.org). 49 The Hubert Bals Fund is a curatorial fund dedicated to supporting filmmakers from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe in every stage of the filmmaking process -from script development to post-production. (source: https://iffr.com/en/hubert-bals-fund). 50 Created in 1998, Ibermedia is an inter-governmental program to stimulate the co-production of fictional films and documentaries made up of twenty-one countries. Ibermedia's mission is to work towards the creation of an Ibero-American audiovisual space through financial aid and through calls that are open to all independent film producers from the member countries of Latin America, Spain, Portugal and the recently incorporated Italy. In 2020, Ibermedia has opened an application for series. (Source : www.programmaibermedia.com). 51 Email of September 15, 2014. 52 2016 Interview, Ibidem. 53 Michel Kolpa Koupol was a French journalist and DJ specializing in music with international connections. In particular, he established lasting links with Brazilian professionals. He died in 2015. 54 In homage to the historian Sydney Aguilar, the film is devoted to the "eugenic" experience of a wealthy family near São Paulo, close to the theme of Nazism in the 1930s. Black children were held in one of their haciendas, as test subjects. 55 Since its creation, on October 18, 1993, MultiRio -Municipal Multimedia Company has been linked to the Municipal Education Secretariat of the City of Rio de Janeiro. Through its digital platform, MultiRio offered more than 7,000 titles. (source: http://multirio.rio.rj.gov.br).