Aliiiiiiive
Synopsis
Aliiiiiiive is a documentary about a survivor. Rute Bianca is a trans woman who is about to turn 60. As opposed to many of her friends, her times of glory stayed in the past and she is back to the village where she was born to look after her sick mother. Between the daily life and her memories, the film plunges in a moment in which a woman, who always lived for the present, seeks to understand the old age.
Bio-filmography of the director
Thiago Carvalhaes has a degree in Social Sciences from Unicamp in Brazil, with a specialization in Anthropology and a Master in the European Erasmus Joint Master Doc Nomads in Documentary, in Lusófona (Portugal), SZFE (Hungary) and LUCA School of Arts (Belgium). During his masters, he made a short film A Gis (2016) about Gisberta Salce, a Brazilian transsexual woman who moved to Porto, Portugal in the 1980s - and where she was brutally murdered in 2006. The film, spoken in European Portuguese, was very well received in Brazil: it has received 15 awards, including Best Short Film at Gramado Festival, three public prizes (Gramado Festival, MixBrasil Festival and Short Film Festival of São Paulo), as well as two international prizes (Best Short at FESTin / Portugal and Special Mention at 14th Documenta Madrid / Spain) and two acquisitions: Canal Brasil and SescTV. The film was selected for more than 20 festivals, among them the 40th Clermont-Ferrand Festival / France and the 57th FICCI / Colombia. Carvalhaes premiered his second short film Socialist Monopoly, filmed in Budapest / Hungary, at the Visions du Réel festival in 2019 in the competitive Opening Scenes.
Director's note
Rute Bianca had an intense life - "times of glory," as she defines it. Working as a stripper, she traveled to Europe, loved hundreds of men and some women and was the first trans woman to give interviews to Portuguese TV. Her stories, of immersive literary richness, touch the extremes of fame and deep depression, presenting an intense woman in every decision she made. Today, however, at the age of 59, she is back in Campanhã, in the city of Porto, where she was born. Her life is now a repetitive routine - taking care of home and her mother, taking her to the doctor, taking care of the parrot, the family. Her circulation space is restricted to the neighborhood, the neighbors and the family. It is my intention to capture Ruth's daily routine. At the same time, in order to create a dialogue with her past, fiction scenes based on the real situations from her previous life will be re-enacted by Rute. Thus, creating a dialectical process that will present the memory, its relation with the present and the questions that will emerge during this process.
Cast
Rute Bianca.
Crew
Director:
Thiago Carvalhaes
Producers:
Filmes do Gajo (Portugal); Alice Fanny Riff Produções Audiovisuais e Culturais (Brasil).
Datasheet
90 minutos / Image: 16x9 / Sound: Stereo / Format: HD / Feature documentary