Another pioneer from Italy, Paulo Benedetti (1863-1944) arrived in Brazil at the same time as cinema, and eight years later established himself in São Paulo, where he installed a film theatre and the first film processing laboratory in the city. He toured the southern region of Minas Gerais as a travelling showman, leaving a lasting impression on Barbacena. As the inventor of an apparatus to synchronize sound with the film on the screen, he was one of the precursors of sound film in Brazil. The film Uma Transformista Original (an Original Character Actor), directed by him in Barbacena in 1915, was entirely sung and more than half of it synchronized with a gramophone and an orchestra.
Returning to Rio de Janeiro, he diversified his activities as director, producer and chief cameraman. As head of Benedetti Films, in whose laboratories he processed and copied films by other producers, he developed a recording process and a sound system with which he produced dozens of short talking and singing films, with popular music and radio artists. From 1935 on, he dedicated his curiosity to the discovery of a new colour film process.