Nowhere Synopsis
NOWHERE it’s a film-diary, composed of 8 women’s autobiographies and their points of view on the city they were living in: São Paulo, Algiers, Paris, Berlin, Cologne, London. The film is a poetic testimony of these women’s relationship with their city: being foreigners, discovering their roots, trying to create art, experiencing urban violence, dealing with space, architecture and movement.
About the Filmmakers
Thaís de Almeida Prado is a filmmaker, screenwriter and multidisciplinary artist. Thaís’ work permeates the interdisciplinary boundaries between performance, dance, theatre, visual arts, cinema, music and literature. Filmography: “Empire” (2023 – 4min); “My Part” (2022 – 7min); “With My Dog-Eyes” (2022 – 45min); “Aller/Retour” (2021 – 5 min); B – “There is something wrong with Charlie” (15min, 2021); “Will We All Be Cacti in the Future?” (2021 – 13min); “Threesome” (2020 – 5min); “Nowhere” (2020 – 70min); “About Watching – a witness-film in miniseries” (2015 – 103min); “Os Barcos” (The Boats, 2012 – 23min); “Exercice du Regarde” (2010 – 8min); “Passagens” (Passages, 2011 – 9min); “Disturbios no Vazio” (Noises in the Void, 2009 – 3min).
Flavia Couto
Flavia Couto is a PhD student in the Performing Arts Program in the line “Poetics and Languages of the Scene” at the State University of Campinas, with a Master’s degree (2009) and a degree in Theater Interpretation (2005), both from the University of São Paulo – ECA/USP.
In 2016 she founded Núcleo do Desejo. Her most recent works in cinema are Nowhere as director/creator together with Thaís Almeida Prado and O Amor e a Peste (Love and the Plague) – as screenwriter and actress in partnership with Pedro Guilherme and directed by Marcela Lordy. Filmography: Nowhere (2019); Vagar (2011). Screenplay: Love and the Plague (2021); Desiludidos (2011); Journée (2010); Passagens (2011).
More From the Filmmakers
I think that this film presents the space of the multiple. When people can’t categorize something, they, in general, close their eyes so as not to have to deal with what they don’t understand. There is a resistance in society to deal with what cannot be named. But I think this is also changing with the queer movements, and especially with the idea of non-binarism. It tilt people’s heads, a person being neither one nor the other, and I think these tilts will be positive in the near future. What we intend to do is to open the film for exhibitions in film clubs, schools, universities, where we can then have discussions and dialogues.
I think this will be the best way for it to be seen and thus permeate people. About the feminist audiovisual/artistic production, it is resistance and I believe that more and more it has been taking space to become audiovisual/artistic only, without gender distinction. There is still a long way to go, and I believe that the power of the discussions based on queer theories comes to add and give even more strength. When I started studying, I barely knew about female theater directors or filmmakers. I didn’t have much in- formation about them and this was part of the great movement of silencing these voices.
The most impressive thing is to see more and more that they had been there for a long time and were just not told in the history books. It is “fake news” that they didn’t exist. This is the case of Lou Salome. All people talk about is Freud and Nietzsche, but she has incredible works and was responsible for great tilts in the society of the time, including both of them. And in general, they all become cursed muses, or “jellyfish muses”, as Pagu used to write. Speaking of queer/feminist cinema, of a woman who was known as the muse of Cinema Novo and the muse of “marginal” cinema, the wife of [so-and-so], and of [si- crano], this “medusa muse” who is in full creative activity, terrorizing these old men at her 83 years of age: I speak of Helena Ignez, who is currently directing a new film that deals with the orgasm as a source of knowledge. Voices that tried to be silenced, but are there, resisting and pulsating strongly in the desire for a new society.
