A MARGEM

In a shantytown on the banks of the Tietê River in São Paulo, there are two couples who are living lives unknown to society. They are going through tragic love affairs and they are trying to find themselves. The marginal world in which they live compromises their every effort at affection. One of the characters ends up killed by a prostitute and another is run over by a car.

"A margem was shot in record time and under unprecedented conditions with a very low budget and absolute poverty of technical equipment. In it Candeias uses his intuition with a semplicity like that of a true artist or of primitive or naive artists. He narrates two stories that are parallel and never cross into each other, but are akin in emotion and in unity of filmic action. On the one hand, he chose an innovation: the narration is seen entirely subjectively. This was a technique that he thotight was entirely new. The director, in all his simplicity, asserted that he did not know that Robert Montgomery had shot The Lady of the Lake (1946), a film based entirely on this technique. On the other hand, he narrated a story that walks the line between the naturalistic and the symbolic. He is doubtlessly tied to the most authentic strain of Paulist primitivism. (There is no other definition that can be understood). By entering into the lives of the hoboes, the beggars, and the prostitutes that live on the banks of the Tietê River, Candeias ends up presenting us with a work that turns him into a kind of Brazilian Pasolini, or Paulist Pasolini." (Rubén Biáfora)

Director, screenplay and editor: Ozualdo Candeias.
Director of photography: Belarmino Mancini.
Music: Luiz Chavez, Zimbo Trio.
Sound: Julio Caballas, Eséleio Carlini.
Cast: Mario Benvenuti, Valéria Vidal, Lucy Rangel, Bentinho, Telé, Karé, Paula Ramos, Ana F. Mendonça, Nelson Caspari, Virgilio Sampaio, Dantas Filho, Luiz Alberto, Luciano Pessoas, José Licneraki.
Production company: Ozualdo Candeias, Michael Saddi.