A MULHER DE TODOS
(THE WOMAN OF EVERYONE)
Dir. Rogério Sganzerla, 1969
87 mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM

“I switched the wide-angle for a telephoto lens. My new film is a comedy inspired in slapstick, where Helena Ignez is the number one enemy of men.” – Rogério Sganzerla

Not content to allow his voice to be defined by THE RED LIGHT BANDIT, Sganzerla immediately got to filming his follow-up, something of a gender-flipped compliment to that earlier film’s manifesto of flagrancy, violence and garbage. Starring his wife and modern Brazilian cinematic icon Helena Ignez as Angela Carne e Osso (“Angela Meat and Bone”) as a hedonistic, nihilistic sex worker who has deigned herself “the #1 enemy of men.” Much of what follows after this introduction is less a discernible narrative than it is a collection of caricatures that serve as a response to both the historical suppression of the unshackled feminine cinematic image, as well as the hodgepodge of reactionary elements that construct the patriarchal mechanism of said oppression (replete with beach ball nazis!) Sganzerla’s (genuinely) anarchic sense of humor is the guiding force in these early films, and must be appreciated to grasp the political disruption his work was meant to induce. It was after seeing this film that Julio Bressane approached Sganzerla to embark on the Belair enterprise, naming it the best film he had ever seen.