Judge-forano director talks about documentary ‘Morcego Negro’ that will be shown at MAMM

The documentary “Black Bat” took 10 years to make. All this time is not for nothing: the film was difficult to make, because it required long-negotiated interviews with various political figures, research into complex documentary sources, and even some historical distance so that the directors could see the facts from new national and international perspectives. . Inspired by the book “Black Bats: PC Farias, Collor, mafias and history”, by journalist Lucas Figueiredo, the documentary is dedicated to telling the story of the businessman and unofficial treasurer of the first electoral campaign after the military dictatorship, who became known nationally after being a key player in the corruption scandal that led to the downfall of the then president. Much is still unknown about this story, and much is also revealed in the documentary, which was directed by Chaim Litewski and foreign judge Cleisson Vidal. The film will have a unique screening this Friday (10), at the Murilo Mendes Art Museum (MAMM), at 5pm, with the presence of the director who is from the city, and will also feature a debate mediated by Carlos Eduardo Couto, researcher and PhD candidate in cinema from the Postgraduate Program in Arts, Culture and Languages, at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF).

Since the directors started the project, they already knew that it would take time, because, as Cleisson highlights, political films seek a different depth than news or reports broadcast at the time. “Documentary has a power of synthesis. We have tools for this and to bring a critical, rigorous view of history, based on documents”, he highlights. To achieve this, extensive research was carried out in archives in Brazil and abroad, in several countries, on the figure of PC Farias, Collor and the Brazilian government. “Nothing is exhaustible, but we wanted to look at this story from different angles. We did a lot of iconographic, documentary research and a list of interesting people to listen to, who had a direct relationship with Paulo César,” he says. The people interviewed, then, lived with PC Farias in different spheres, such as family, business, business and political relationships.

For the director, it is clear that, more than a biography, what they made was a film that “deals with power relations”. The distance, in this case, helps, because the work involves the process of interviewing people who, after the scandal involving PC Farias became public, had never spoken publicly. “Sometimes, things need a little more time so that we can see the shades of gray of what is involved in this big game. The Collor government was already passing under clouds, we didn’t have productions that dealt with this subject in a specific way”, he reflects. For him, it is clear that it is still difficult to address the subject. “Looking from a historical perspective, we still haven’t even taken into account the processes of memory and resignification of the dictatorship, and we have already had civil governments that come and go and that were little looked at in a historical and critical way for the period”, he says .

Despite dealing with complex political themes, the director claims that the film manages to be fun. For him, having dealt with a moment with so many cultural changes, and which involved the main story being told, allows this to be shown even in the details, such as in the film’s soundtrack, which features songs that began to reach the mass culture at the time. “Brazil is a funny country. It’s a good-humored film, with something serialized, because it has drama, crimes, forbidden loves, betrayals. This involves everything that is the Brazilian political world”, he explains.

Understanding PC Farias

Cleisson recalls that, at the time, public opinion completely condemned PC Farias. Paulo César, in fact, was not an easy figure to portray for him, even years later. “The PC, seen from several perspectives, is a cinematically interesting figure. The so-called ‘villains’ are very interesting. He was a figure that was outlined, designed, like a bandit, a brutish person, and he was nothing like that,” he explains. What he sees was a well-educated and intelligent person, but who positioned himself as a businessman in whom anything was possible. That’s why he became limitless. To portray him, it was also necessary to understand a figure who is no longer alive, based on what he said, wrote and shared.

The death of PC Farias, in 1996, is one of those events that still remain unanswered. At the time, he and his girlfriend, Suzana Marcolino, were found with gunshots to the chest. It was thought that she had shot him and then committed suicide. Years later, however, this hypothesis was refuted, and the security guards at the property where he was staying were accused and later acquitted. The perpetrators of the crime were never identified. For Cleisson, it is impossible to have an answer about what happened: “We let the public think about what actually happened. It’s a death that has many problems, several flaws. No one will ever know what happened. But it is important to understand what was at stake in this guy’s life. He was a guy who was excoriated by public opinion, and who would later become a candidate again. It was a politically involved family.

Rethinking time in ‘Black Bat’

Watching “Black Bat” in 2024, 32 years after the scandal, promotes reflection. “Why visit this period? Why look at the Collor government, at PC Farias?”, asks Cleisson. For him, there is an answer: “It was a period of great changes in the world. Perhaps it was the most important period in recent history, 89. Until then, there was a cold war, the world was divided between two imperialist systems. The entire burden of a system, of a government involved in corruption, was marked in the figure of PC Farias. So, it is very easy to find scapegoats so that the system continues to function, in this spurious relationship between private companies and the state. It’s easier to accuse one than to reorganize an entire system,” he says.

The director also adds that there was a vision of what Brazil could have after Collor left the government, and what happened, in this case, still leads to reflections. “Blood begets more blood. Reflecting on that period makes us reflect on yesterday, today and what could be from now on. We have to decode the times, be careful with what we receive and the type of thinking that comes with it,” he says.