Country: Brazil
Year: 1981
Duration: 95'


The taste of adventure and the desire of living in isolation and close to nature, don’t prevent Cris from feeling overwhelmed by strange feelings while she is boarding once again with her partner Lucas.
On the ferry with them there’s Barbara: she is the teenage, moody and silent daughter of Lucas’ first marriage.
As they arrive on the deserted island, the two women go settle in a wood house, while Lucas leaves again towards the sea, to meet a cargo and Cris is left alone to face Barbara’s silent rebellion. Her attempts to gain her trust are being rejected and her anxiety increases with a huge storm coming on the island.
The following day, the radio doesn’t work and Lucas is not back. The days pass and Barbara can’t believe she lost her dad, she constantly provokes Cris with her aggressive behavior, making her more and more insecure.
In those hours spent alone in the hut, the tension explodes when Barbara accuses Cris of the disruption of the balance that there was between her father and her, revealing her shut reality, represented by a ceramic doll. Cris, the stepmother, responds to the humiliation with a slap.
Barbara gets ill and during that period she ends up accepting Cris’ attentions: a sort of apparently friendly and tender relationship starts between the two. Time goes by and the thought of Lucas seems to fade away, while Barbara, who’s living a troubled part of life, seems to feel unknown pleasures from the relationship with Cris. The two women celebrate the beginning of a new year with a great joy of life and a natural sensuality.
When another storm occurs, the wind gets into the hut, spreading the papers from Cris’ diary and breaking Barbara’s doll.
But suddenly Lucas comes back: his arrival upsets the atmosphere and seems to bring the situation back to the past, even if the period of time spent together deeply influenced (and unbalanced) the feelings of the two protagonists.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Biography

film director

Uberto Molo

Uberto Molo was born in Turin on the 25th of September 1946. After attending the Faculty of Medicine for two years, he gives up university and starts travelling around the world as a photo reporter. He travels a lot, especially to third world countries and then he settles in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. Here he starts, as autodidact, his first experiences as a documentarian. Together with some friends, he founds the Sky Light Production. From 1974 to 1980 he makes a certain number of films, with a deep anthropological aim, such as Numero ed ecologia, a series of medium-length TV programmes on different racial settlements in Brazil. Between the end of 1980 and the beginning of 1981 he plans and makes Tormenta, his first feature film.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Declaration

film director

The film was shot in 16 mm on the south coast of Brazil and on a beach near Paraty and it was later converted into 35 mm in the USA. A series of accidents during the shooting caused hurdles and delays of every sort: the main actress broke her foot, a boat used by the troupe to move to the set sank and, above all, the unstable meteorology of the tropics. Anyway, this experience convinced me to keep making cinema on an artisan level, with the same attention that artisans put in their work and with the problems involved in it. This means intending cinema as a team’s job, where everyone, from the director to the propman, should be as motivated as possible by the work their doing. About Tormenta I don’t have much left to say: now that it’s done, it belongs to the audience.
Uberto Molo

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Cast

& Credits

Director and plot: Uberto Molo.
Screenplay: Alvaro Ramos.
Fotografia (16mm ingrandito a 35mm, colore): Renato Padovani.
Editor: Walter Goulart.
Music: Lauro Salazar.
Art director: Marcio Hime.
Sound: William O'Dwyer Fogtman.
Cast: Hileana Menczes, Bianca Byington, Renato Coutinho.
Director of Production: Marta Passos.
Produttore esecutivo: Bruno Stroppiana.
Production company: Sky Light Cinema, Rio de Janeiro.
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