A Rosa Azul de Novalis

A film like an invitation to someone’s house. In his apartment in São Paolo, between making coffee and gay hook-ups, Marcelo’s fetishes and longings are revealed, casually and full of intensity. Marcelo’s closest confidants seem to be books, especially Novalis’ unfinished novel “Heinrich von Ofterdingen”, whose protagonist seeks an elusive blue flower. Marcelo is also looking for something, following the traces of his eventful past. The camera observes him and captures his stories with total concentration, until a simple panning shot initiates the re-enactment of one chapter of his biography. Marcelo’s words only nominally seem to take centre stage, for his physical movements actually divulge more, they are performative reservoirs of memory. Marcelo’s flat thus becomes his life’s stage – shimmering, entertaining, amusing, serious and sincere. The documentary staging employed by directors Vinagre and Carneiro crafts an entire multi-layered universe from the self-contained cosmos of the flat. A rosa azul de Novalis is far more than just an open-hearted and intimate portrait, it’s a film like the petals of the blue flower, at once tender and beguiling.

details

  • Runtime

    70 min
  • Country

    Brazil
  • Year of Presentation

    2019
  • Year of Production

    2019
  • Director

    Gustavo Vinagre, Rodrigo Carneiro
  • Cast

    Marcelo Diorio, Majeca Angelucci, Christian Sedemaka, Marcos Hermanson Pomar, Thais Almeida Prado, Rafael Rudolf, Estela Laponi, Beatriz Pomar
  • Production Company

    Carneiro Verde Filmes
  • Berlinale Section

    Forum
  • Berlinale Category

    Documentary Film

Biography Gustavo Vinagre

Gustavo VINAGRE (1985, Brazil) was educated at the International School of Film and Television in Cuba and in Literature at the University of São Paulo. His documentary Film for Blind Poet was released at IFFR 2013. In his films, Vinagre criticises the lack of love in modern society.

Biography Rodrigo Carneiro

Rodrigo Carneiro was born in 1984. He studied history at the Federal University of Ouro Preto in Brazil and film editing at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (EICTV) in Los Baños, Cuba. In 2013, he was a guest researcher in the film department of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. Following three short films, A rosa azul de Novalis is his first feature-length film.