Victor Lopes
Língua: Vidas em Português (Language: Lives in Portuguese ), 2002, by Victor Lopes
Brazil, 90’. Production: TV Zero and Sambascope
Everyday, there are two hundred million people who lead their lives in Portuguese. They make business and write poems. They quarrel in the traffic, they tell jokes and declare their love. Everyday, the Portuguese language is reborn in Brazil, Mozambique, Goa, Angola, Japan, Cape-Verde, Portugal, Guinea. New hybrid languages, flavored by melodies from all continents, inhabited by elder gods that she welcomes as children. A language that was adopted by the colonised peoples and that they give back now as a new language. A language that young and old immigrants take with them to tell certain things that they cannot say in other languages. Every night, two hundred million people dream in Portuguese. And some of them are in this film.
VICTOR LOPES nasceu em Moçambique e reside no Brasil há 31 anos. Estudou cinema na Universidade Federal Fluminense, foi professor da Escola de Artes Visuais do Rio de Janeiro e dirige desde 1987. Em 1990, realizou Vênus de Fogo, média-metragem de ficção exibido pela TV Bandeirantes e Channel Four. O vídeo foi premiado no Brasil e na Itália e integra o acervo do MOMA de Nova Iorque.
Realizou e produziu o curta-metragem de ficção “Bala Perdida”, lançado em 2003 e que ganhou 20 prémios em festivais nacionais e internacionais. Sua primeira longa-metragem, Língua: Vidas em Português, documentário sobre a língua portuguesa, foi premiado pelo BNDES no Brasil e pelo ICAM em Portugal. Filmado em Portugal, Moçambique, Brasil, Índia, França e Japão, o filme conta com a participação de José Saramago, Martinho da Vila, João Ubaldo Ribeiro e do grupo Madredeus. “Língua” ganhou o Grande Prêmio da Lusofonia e inaugurou o primeiro circuito digital do Cinema Brasileiro em Outubro de 2004.
Em 2006, Lopes assina quatro filmes temáticos para a vídeo instalação permanente da Grande Galeria do Museu da Língua Portuguesa em São Paulo. No momento, finaliza Serra Pelada, documentário de longa-metragem sobre a maior corrida do ouro do século XX. Victor Lopes was born in Mozambique and has lived in Brazil for 31 years. He studied cinema at the Fluminense Federal University, lectured at the Visual Arts School of Rio de Janeiro is a director since 1987. In 1990, he directed Venus of Fire, a short fiction that was shown by Bandeirantes TV and Channel Four, won an award in Brazil and Italy and is part of MOMA’s collection (Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has directed and produced the fictional short-film called Bala Perdida (Lost Bullet), in 2003, which received 20 awards in national and international festivals. His first feature film called Língua: Vidas em Português (Language: Lives in Portuguese), a documentary film on the Portuguese language received an award from BNDES in Brazil and from ICAM, in Portugal. Shot in Portugal, Mozambique, Brazil, India, France and Japan, the film has the participation of José Saramago, Martinho da Vila, João Ubaldo Ribeiro and the group Madredeus. Língua won the Lusofonia Great Award and opened the first digital tour of Brazilian cinema, in October 2004.
In 2006, Lopes directed four thematic films for a permanent video installation at the Grande Galeria (Great Gallery) of the Museum of the Portuguese Language, in São Paulo. Currently, Lopes is completing Serra Pelada, a feature film on the greatest gold race of the twentieth century.