Humberto Mauro

The first great master of the silent screen. From Volta Grande in Minas Gerais, Humberto Mauro (1897-1983) spent his youth in Cataguases, where he was a self-employed mechanic, practised as a radio amateur and started an artistic career, first in theatre as an amateur actor and then as author of a comic short feature, Valadião, o Cratera (1925), shot with a Baby-Pathé 9.5mm camera.

In partnership with an Italian immigrant well-versed in photography, Pedro Comello, he founded the Sul América Film company, and subsequently, aided by two local traders, created Febo Filme, which marked the entry of cinema into the vanguard movement of Cataguases. Influenced by the American filmmakers David W. Griffith and Henry King, he invented the Brazilian lyric cinema. His first feature length films – Na Primavera da Vida (In the Springtime of Life, 1926), Tesouro Perdido (Lost Treasure, 1927), Brasa Dormida (Sleeping Ember, 1928) and Sangue Mineiro (Blood of Minas, 1929) – are pastoral works shaped and dramatized by valleys, brooks and waterfalls, elements which also mark the hundreds of documentaries which he would make between 1936 and 1964, for the Institute of Educational Cinema, of the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Attracted to Rio de Janeiro by Adhemar Gonzaga, he shot three feature length films in the Cinédia: Lábios Sem Beijos (Lips Without Kisses, 1930), Ganga Bruta (1931-32) and A Voz do Carnaval (The Voice of the Carnival, co-directed by Gonzaga, 1933). The second one is considered the first indisputable masterpiece of Brazilian cinema. Mauro’s sound film début, it deals with all the tensions arising from the contradictions between the city and the countryside, the imitation and the authentic, the traditional and the modern, subjects only touched upon in his previous works.

Three films resulted from his connection with the actress / producer Carmen Santos: Favela dos Meu Amores (Shanty-town of My Love, the first movie filmed in a real shanty-town, 1935), Cidade-Mulher (City-Woman, 1936), and Argila (Clay, 1940). In 1937 Mauro, with a relatively low budget, reconstructed the arrival of Pedro Álvares Cabral, in O Descobrimento do Brasil (The Discovery of Brazil, with music by Heitor Villa-Lobos). His last feature-length film, O Canto da Saudade (The Song of Yearning), filmed in 1950 in his native city, was a return to the pastoral cinema of the 20s.

José Medina

The first big name in the cinema of São Paulo. In 1910, José Medina (from Sorocaba, 1894 – 1980) was just a projectionist in the Votorantim works in his native city. In association with photographer Gilberto Rossi, he founded Rossi Filme in São Paulo in 1919, specialising at first in newsreels and documentaries. With Rossi taking care of the technical side, Medina made a series of short features which were simple in concept but ingenious as narrative and visually expressive. Two of them, perhaps because they were still physically in existence at the time, were commonly cited as being amongst the best made in Brazil during the period of the silent film: Exemplo Regenerador (Example of Renewal, 1919) and Fragmentos da Vida (Fragments of Life, based on a tale by the American O. Henry, 1929). During this period, he directed three feature-length films: Perversidade (Perverseness, written and filmed during a week in 1920), Do Rio a São Paulo Para Casar (From Rio to São Paulo for Marriage, 1922) and Gigi (1925).

Alberto Botelho

A press photographer who exchanged the press for the cinema in 1906. After travelling almost the whole of Brazil, Alberto Botelho, from Rio de Janeiro (1885-1973), set up a film theatre in São Paulo. However, it was as producer and cinematographer of current events and documentaries that he became famous in the first decades of the century. Hardly any event went by without being filmed by his cameras. He also dedicated himself to filming happenings at the Carnival, and sporting events – sometimes for the French newsreel Pathé Films. His versatility was shown by his combining the functions of chief cameraman and scriptwriter in feature films of Luiz de Barros and by he himself directing four films, three of which openly glorified the qualities of Brazil: Brasil Grandioso (The Grandeur of Brazil, 1923), Dêem Asas ao Brazil (Brazil was given Wings, 1924), and Brasil, Potência Militar (Brazil, Military Power, 1925).

Júlio Ferrez

Son of the photographer Marc Ferrez, he set up with his father the second film theatre to be built in Rio de Janeiro, the Cine Pathé, inaugurated in 1907. Júlio Ferrez (1881-1946), linked with the French cinema groups Pathé and Gaumont, expanded his activities, producing and photographing films about various events to do with the police, operetas and comedies – amongst which Nhô Anastácio Chegou de Viagem, (Mr. Anastácio has arrived from his travels, 1908), is held to be the first to be made in Brazil.

Antônio Leal

The first job that the Portuguese Antônio Leal (1876-1946) had in Brazil was as studio photographer, in the Rua do Ouvidor, in the centre of Rio de Janeiro. During the first years of this century, he became a press photographer (on the newspaper O Malho) and, with the Italian Guiseppe Labanca, set up a cinema (the Palace) and a production company (Foto-Cinematográfica Brasileira). He directed and photographed more than 50 films between 1905 and 1910, without restricting himself to any particular genre. He filmed political, social and sporting events in newsreels, and on top of this became noted as producer of comedies and adaptations of famous texts from the literature (A Moreninha – the Brown Girl – by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, 1915) and from the theatre (Rosa que se Desfolha – Rose which Wilts, by Gastão Tojeiro, 1917).