Murray State University’s Cinema International is screening the Brazilian political drama "A Bruddah's Mind" – which tackles racism and social justice issues – Thursday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in Faculty Hall Room 208 on the main campus.
The film’s director, Deo Cardoso, was born in the United States from Brazilian parents. He based the film on things he witnessed, telling the story of Saulo – a young man of mixed race in Brazil who wants to do something about racism he experiences in high school. This is met with hostility and great consequence from school leadership and ultimately involves higher authorities.
Associate professor of Spanish Robert Fritz said historical context is key to understanding the treatment of race in the Brazilian film.
“Like our own country, [Brazil] was profoundly marked by slavery when the Portuguese colonists began colonizing Brazil. They also brought with them enslaved peoples from Africa, and, in fact, one of the primary destinations of enslaved people was to Brazil. For that reason, today, in Brazil, you have the largest population of people of African descent in any country outside of the African continent … almost 80 million Afro Brazilians”
A Bruddah’s Mind features many themes, but Fritz think the most important is civil disobedience. Fritz said American viewers could see similarities between the events depicted in the film and the American Civil Rights Movement.
“The initial incident that sets all the events in motion … is the decision to expel the student from the school but, in an act of civil disobedience, he refuses to leave the school. The movie sort of just follows him through the days that he spends sleeping, eating, living in the school, as a citizen,” Fritz said. “You'll see lots of images throughout the movie of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis and lots of Black Panther references.”
Fritz thinks the film will show viewers a different side of Brazilian cinema.
“I hope they'll come away with a deeper understanding of Brazilian society,” he said. “I think that oftentimes, when we think of Brazilian film, we think of movies like City of God…those movies sort of glorify the sort of favela violence and military violence, but this movie takes a different approach.”
