Due Process: a Conversation with Maria Augusta Ramos
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INTERVIEWS DUE PROCESS: A CONVERSATION WITH MARIA AUGUSTA RAMOS Nilo Couret In August 2016, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil was for- mally removed from office by the Brazilian Senate following a protracted legal process that began with a petition in the lower Chamber of Deputies the preceding winter. The peti- tion accused President Rousseff of pedaladas fiscais—an ac- counting practice that transfers fiscal obligations into the future to pump up the economy and disguise public deficits. More particularly, opponents alleged that the president used state-run banks to temporarily fund the government’sregu- lar expenses, in violation of the country’s Fiscal Responsibil- ity Law. This accusation reflected a power grab that must be un- derstood in the context of the era, including the contested 2014 elections of in which Rousseff eked out a win, and the Maria Augusta Ramos. toxic climate around Operação Lava Jato (“Operation Car Wash”), an ongoing criminal investigation into the largest memory of Colonel Carlos Brilhante Ustra, who was a noto- corruption scandal in Latin America. To date, it that has im- rious torturer under the dictatorship during which Dilma plicated forty-eight current and former legislators, including Rousseff was a political prisoner. O Processo then delves into former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the former the next step in the impeachment process: the trial in the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha. Senate. In the spirit of Robert Drew’s Primary (1960), and us- Before being suspended for allegedly taking bribes himself, ing an observational approach, Ramos follows the senators Cunha led the movement to impeach Rousseff and presided through a veritable courtroom drama. After its festival pre- over the session at which a two-thirds majority in the Cham- miere in Berlin in February 2018, the film opened to much ber of Deputies voted to allow the impeachment proceedings acclaim and commercial success in Brazil. OProcessodeb- to move to the next stage: a trial and a final decision in the uted in the top ten at the domestic box office in May 2018 Senate. and has been one of the highest-grossing national films of The recent documentary by Brazilian filmmaker Maria the year. 2018 Augusta Ramos, OProcesso(The Trial, ), opens on that In O Processo, the filmmaker engages with enduring 11 2016 fateful day, April , , when the Chamber of Deputies themes and subjects from her twenty-year career. Ramos re- voted in favor of impeachment. Along with drone shots of turns to Brasília, the site of her first documentary feature, the Palácio do Congresso, Ramos uses footage broadcast on Brasília, Um Dia em Fevereiro (Brasília, One Day in February, public television to piece together some of the theatrics of 1995). OProcessocannot help but recall her earlier film, be- the deputies. Her prologue ends with now-president Jair cause they share a soundscape: the voices echoing inside the ’ Bolsonaro s notorious peroration dedicating his vote to the city’s famous concrete buildings and, outside, the signature droning of cigarras (cicadas) of Brasília. Film Quarterly, Vol. 72, Number 3, pp. 52–58, ISSN 0015-1386, electronic ISSN 1533-8630. In the spirit of the traditional city symphony, Brasília de- © 2019 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through picted a day in the life in the capital city through the rhyth- the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www. mic montage of its landscape and its residents’ itineraries. ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/FQ.2019.72.3.52. O Processo shares this concern for the everyday; some of its 52 SPRING 2019 Crowds gather outside Brasilia’s Palácio do Congresso Nacional, the location of Rousseff’strial,inOProcesso. more remarkable moments occur outside the courtroom, departs from the autobiographical and archival turn of con- when defense attorney José Eduardo Cardozo stands for a temporary Brazilian documentary, as in the works of Eryk photograph or prosecutor Janaína Paschoal drinks from a Rocha and Lúcia Murat, preferring a reflective study of the carton of chocolate milk. Both films slowly populate the present that recalls the immediacy of the vintage Cinema landmarks with their characters as Ramos uses ambient Novo work of such luminaries as Leon Hirszman and sound and stolen snippets of conversation to make spectators Vladimir Carvalho. into eavesdroppers. The meticulous account of judicial proceedings in OProc- Beyond sharing a setting, both films show the influence of esso resonates with Ramos’s well-known “Justice Trilogy,” Ramos’s training at the Netherlands Film and Television which delved into the criminal justice system through the Academy. However, unlike her Brazilian documentary uncompromising observation of its institutions. Notably, Jus- contemporaries, from João Moreira Salles to Carlos Nader tiça (Justice, 2004) follows a very different sort of trial—that and Eduardo Coutinho, Ramos avoids nondiegetic music, of accused car thief Carlos Eduardo. Each segment in Justiça voice-over narration, interviews, and testimonies. She also follows a different character in the drama—the accused, the FILM QUARTERLY 53 A worker in Ramos’s 2013 documentary Futuro Junho. judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney—to slowly ex- of Amarildo de Souza from the Rocinha favela exposed the pose an overextended criminal justice system. police brutality and underfunded social programs that con- Like Frederick Wiseman, Ramos uses institutions to re- tributed to the so-called Brazilian Spring—an unprece- veal the workings of power behind the surfaces of everyday dented wave of street protests that erupted in June 2013. life. The second film in the trilogy, Juízo (Behave, 2007), re- More than one million Brazilians protested a variety of enacts juvenile criminal proceedings in order to survey the grievances, including rising public-transportation costs, juvenile justice system. Although the staged reenactments crumbling infrastructure, corruption scandals, and govern- were partly a function of necessity—Brazilian law protects ment spending on the upcoming mega-events, setting off the the identity of juveniles—the director uses the conceit to ex- chain of events that contributed to Rousseff’simpeachment plore what she calls the “theater of justice.” OProcessoshares and perhaps even the results of the 2018 presidential election. this interest in the performative dimensions of institutional These political developments led Ramos to depart from power, although in Rousseff’s case the theater of justice can- her analyses of institutions. Her follow-up to the trilogy, not be disarticulated from the theater of politics. Futuro Junho (Future June, 2013), follows four residents of In recent years, Ramos left the courtroom but retained São Paulo from different socioeconomic classes during the her focus, visiting the communities most affected by the weeks leading up to the World Cup in order to explore the criminal justice system, especially during the years of prepa- lasting impact of the Brazilian commodities boom of the ration for the World Cup and the Olympic Games. For the 2000s. Futuro Junho thus anticipates OProcesso, since both final film in the “Justice Trilogy,” Morro dos Prazeres (Hill of films delve into the consequences of the country’s economic Pleasures, 2013), she examines how the eponymous favela boom, the thwarted promise of the Brazilian Spring, and the coped with the introduction of what was called the Pacifying subsequent decline of Brazilian economics and democracy. Police Unit, a cadre of police officers that sought to reclaim O Processo chronicles the “parliamentary coup” against a territories controlled by the drug trade. This controversial sitting president and provides a historical account in the same community policing program was a cornerstone of the city’s vein as Patricio Guzman’s La batalla de Chile (The Battle of Olympics bid, but its early successes were short-lived. The Chile, 1975–78), which documented in real time the military looming economic crisis and the disappearance and torture coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in 1973. Unlike the 54 SPRING 2019 militancy of her New Latin American Cinema precursor, politics. They have caused such a deep change in Brazilian however, Ramos’s political engagement combines an observa- politics, but their emergence has its origins in the impeach- tional approach with institutional analyses in order to medi- ment process. I wanted to look at these political transforma- tate on the forms of power that have shaped Brazil since its tions and what these new players had to say—not only their return to democracy in the 1980s and the implementation of language and rhetoric, but also their gestures and appeals. the Plano Real in 1994. Theirs is a fascist appeal, a nationalistic patriotic appeal, a “A atividade do processo penal é uma atividade de busca xenophobic appeal, and I was trying to understand how they da verdade.” (“The work of the judicial process is the pursuit rework these old ideologies. of truth.”)Ramos’s documentary ethos seems guided by this imperative, spoken by a progressive judge in Justiça. Docu- COURET: The concept of theater, be it the theater of mentary shares an affinity with forensic discourse when its justice or the theater of politics, is something that you explore in many of your documentaries. In O purpose is truth-telling in the service of justice. In a contem- Processo, how did you go about discovering and porary moment when fake news affects political campaigns, building the players in this courtroom drama? OProcessofeelsallthemoreurgent.(Meredaysbeforethe second round of the presidential elections in Brazil, Folha de RAMOS: The films are very much based on their personalities, São Paulo published a special report on business leaders who what happens to them in their everyday lives, how they paid large sums to digital marketing agencies to send mis- interact with their families, their environments, and their leading messages on social media in support of Bolsonaro.) social institutions.