Let's All Go To The Movies. Pt.10.

Absolutely to be read as a direct continuation of Part 9; https://watchitdie.blogspot.com/2025/10/lets-all-go-to-movies-pt9.html

I'm Still Here (20204) had a strong start to The 2025 Awards Season. It received a host of award nominations including two at The Golden Globes 2025 and three nominations at The Oscars 2025; Best Picture, Best Actress and Best International Feature. Fernanda Torres actually won the Golden Globe for Best Actress (Drama). Making her the first Brazilian to win the award and one of only a handful of actresses to win the award for a non-English speaking role.

However just after The Golden Globes 2025 I'm Still Here was engulfed in scandal. Footage emerged of Fernanda Torres appearing in Blackface in a sketch in the long-running Brazilian TV show; "Fantastico" back in 2008. This was similar to the scandal which engulfed "Emilia Pérez" (2024). Resurfaced Social Media posts by Karla Sofia Gascón in which she criticised Black Lives Matter and George Floyd, amid a number of comments that could well be considered racist. 

I can't help but think the scandals surrounding Emilia Pérez and I'm Still Here were done deliberately by the people behind the movies themselves. A way to break the imaginary Fourth Wall between performance and audience. Allowing the audience to interact with the issues raised by the movies in a way they couldn't do by simply watching the movies.

Obviously both Karla Sofia Gascón's Social Media posts and Fernanda Torres' Blackface performance really highlight the issue of racism. Particularly amongst Democrats you have this narrative in the United States that White people are racists while Hispanics are the victims of White people's racism. However Hispanic people, particularly ones living in Latin American countries such as Mexico and Brazil, are still very racist themselves. Certainly far more racist than you could get away with in the US Entertainment Industry. While it was considered perfectly normal for Fernanda Torres to appear in Blackface on Brazilian TV in 2008 no-one could imagine anyone on "Saturday Night Live" doing it in the same year, or many years before that.

Racism in Brazil is itself an interesting talking point because it is rather unique. While only racists would claim it's compulsory I think we can all agree that people in China tend to be Asian, people in Nigeria tend to be Black while people in European nations like Poland tend to be White. This is something which simply isn't true in Brazil. There is no dominant race. 

The largest racial group are White Europeans, meaning Hispanics. Itself something which challenges the narrative in the US that Hispanics are victims of White racism. However White Hispanics only represent around 45% of Brazil's population, below a majority. As a result of The African Slave Trade around 20% of Brazil's population is Black while a further, roughly, 20% is Indigenous. Brazil is also home to the largest ethnically Japanese population outside of Japan, contributing to the roughly 5% of Brazil's population who are Asian.

Things are complicated further by the fact that Brazil has always not only allowed by often encouraged interracial relationships. What The Hays Code described as; "Miscegenation." So when the first Portuguese settlers arrived many of them married and had children with the Indigenous population. Many of them also married and had children with Black people who had arrived during The African Slave Trade. Both while slavery was in place and after it ended. Whereas interracial marriage was illegal in some US States up until 1967.

So if you ask a lot of Brazilian people what race they are the answer you'll get is; "Yes." They're all of them. 

Brazil hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics/Para-Olympics. During the Olympic Opening Ceremony one of the models they used during the Athletes Parade was a good example of this. She was a woman with White Hispanic skin, very Asian features and Afro hair. With a generally interracial population you would think it would be difficult for racism to exist in Brazil. However it does exist and it's a lot worse than it is in the US Entertainment Industry. Obviously the bulk of the racism is directed to people with Black skin. However Brazilian racism also concentrates much more on hair type. So a darker-skinned person with European, Indigenous or Asian type hair might be less likely to experience racism than a lighter-skinned person with Afro type hair.

Footage from a TV show in 2008 also serves to remind us how old Fernanda Torres is and how long she's been working for. Fernanda Torres began her career as a child actress on Brazilian TV in 1978, aged 13 years old. Her first movie role came at the age of 17 in 1983 and she has worked consistently throughout the 1990's, 2000's, 2010's and is, clearly, still working in the 2020's. Her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, began her career as a teenage actress on Radio in the 1940's during The Third Brazilian Republic.

A big theme of The Oscars 2025 has been Actors as Sex Workers. Particularly how Actors and members of the public are increasingly being forced to become non-consenting Sex Workers through A.I generated DeepFake Porn. It's looked at how the US Entertainment Industry has been regulated, particularly in terms of child actors and sexual content, in the past. What we can learn from those examples to protect people in the A.I era. Although it has fallen out of favour as a politically charged term this regulation is Censorship. 

Depressingly I know there are probably some people in the US, and elsewhere, who would like to turn on their TV and watch hardcore child porn movies in the middle of the day. However they're not able to because child pornography is strictly censored on US TV. However no-one is turning around and claiming that the US is a Totalitarian Dictatorship as a result. We've all agreed that children's right to be protected from being forced to be non-consenting Sex Workers far exceeds other people's desire to watch child pornography. 

How much Censorship is appropriate and what it is applied to is one of those ever shifting compromises that societies must constantly renegotiate. How much can an actor's, or just member of the public's, desire not to be a Sex-Worker encroach on someone with access to generative A.I's right to want to see that peson in pornography? How much can a studio boss' with access to generative AI's desire to boost their profits encroach on the rights of the people who are going to lose their jobs as a result?

Fernanda Torres began her career during the Military Dictatorship of The Fifth Brazilian Republic (1964-1985). Censorship had been introduced under the Dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas during The Third Brazilian Republic (1937-1945) when mass media like movies, radio and TV began to reach the mainstream. It was massively intensified by Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) at the start of The Years of Lead (1969-1954) and then loosened under Ernesto Geisel's "Opening (Abertura)" and Decompression (Distensão)" policies. It would be wrong to say that The Sixth Brazilian Republic (1985-Present) abolished censorship, the Brazilian Entertainment Industry still censors sexual and other content. However The Sixth Brazilian Republic largely did away with the exclusively political censorship of The Fifth Brazilian Republic.

Fernanda Torres worked in the Brazilian Entertainment Industry throughout these different eras of censorship. As a result I suspect she has a lot of knowledge about censorship and regulation issues. Having worked under a range of censorship regimes. 

By being reminded of Fernanda Torres' experience we can have an indepth look at the mechanics of those different censorship regimes. How exactly did Getúlio Vargas' Public Entertainment Censorship Service (Serviço de Censura de Diversões Públicas) differ from Emílio Garrastazu Médici's Department of Public Entertainment Censorship (Divisão de Censura de Diversões Públicas/DCDP)? How exactly do either of them differ from Brazil's current National Telecommuncations Agency (Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações/Anatel)? How exactly the Production Code Authority and the Motion Picture Association differ from each other and their Brazilian counterparts. How exactly do they all differ from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), for movies shown TV?

At around 18:25 on 17/11/25 (UK date) I'm not sure when I'm be able to pick this up again.

Edited at around 18:00 on 19/11/25 (UK date) to add above and copy & paste;

Although I'm not sure how it is handled in the movie, if at all, Rubens Paiva was significantly more than a democratic voice of opposition to Brazil's Military Dictatorship. He was an extreme Communist militant. 

Prior to The 1964 Coup d'état Rubens Paiva was a Brazilian Senator representing the Brazilian Labour Party (Partido Trabalhista Brasilerio/PTB). He dedicated his time Congress to trying to shut down the Institute of Research and Social Studies (Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais/IPÊS) and the Brazil Institute For Democratic Action (Instituto Brasilerio de Açã Democrátia/IBAB), the think-tanks created by the CIA to prevent a Communist takeover of Brazil.

After The 1964 Coup d'état Soviet Czechoslovakia's Intelligence Agency assessed Rubens Paiva to be a key member of the; "Compact Group." This coordinated deposed radical leftwing politicians such as himself with armed guerrilla groups under the banner of the banned Brazilian Communist Party (Partido Communista Brasileiro/PCB). His arrest and disappearance was due to the belief that he was the main courier for Carlos Lamarca, head of the Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard (Vanguarda Armada Revolucionáira Palmares/VAR Palmares). The group which carried out the armed hijacking of the civilian Serviços Aéreos Cruzerio do Sul Flight 114 and conducted the armed kidnapping of Swiss Ambassador to Brazil Giovanni Enrico Bucher. A terrorist group by anyone's definition.

Following her husband’s disappearance Eunice Paiva completed her law degree and used it to continue his activism. Obviously she campaigned heavily on behalf of political prisoners and relatives of the disappeared. However she also focused heavily on and built much of her reputation around Indigenous Rights. Something which is a particularly Brazilian and Latin American flavour of Communism.

When Karl Marx invented Communism he was working in Germany during the later stages of The Industrial Revolution. As such he built his theory around Urbanised Industrial workers, similar to those portrayed in "Metropolis" (1927). When Vladimir Lenin first implemented Communism in Russia he also focused on Urbanised Industrial workers. This Marxist-Leninist form of Communism is the Russian Communism of the Soviet Union.

When China started embracing Communism in the late-1920's it hadn't gone through The Industrial Revolution. Meaning that it didn't really have any Urbanised Industrial workers. So in implementing Communism China's Mao Zedong (Chairman Mao) instead focused on Rural Peasants. The situation in Latin America was pretty similar when it adopted Communism. So the version of Communism that Che Guevara adopted and attempted to spread across Latin America was much closer to the Chinese version; "Maoism." 

In 1935 Communists within the Brazilian Military conducted The Communist Uprising (1935). During The Fourth Brazilian Republic the Brazilian Communist Party established The Peasant Leagues. Armed groups of Rural Peasants who started to expel the Brazilian Government from their local areas. In the hope that these autonomous areas would spread across Brazil, overthrowing the Brazilian Government entirely. As had happened in The Chinese Civil War (1927-1949) and The Cuban Revolution (1959). In the first years of The Fifth Brazilian Republic the Communist Party of Brasil (Partido Comunista do Brasil/PCdoB) led Rural Peasants in a war against the Brazilian Government, The Araguaia Guerrilla War (1966-1975).

As a result any political organisation calling itself Communist or claiming to be fighting for the Peasants were illegal during The Fifth Brazilian Republic. So the Communist parties starting calling themselves Worker's Rights groups and their concern for the plight of the Peasants was replaced by fetishisation of Indigenous Rights. 

The other problem the Communists faced was that The Fifth Brazilian Republic was extremely good at allowing the poor Rural Peasants to choose to become the wealthier Urban Industrial workers. That made the Communists trying to keep them as poor Rural Peasants even more unpopular. By adopting the cause of Indigenous Rights Brazil's Communists were able to portray themselves as anti-Imperial warriors protecting the Indigenous population's traditional culture from Colonial oppressors. The Fifth Brazilian Republic giving the Indigenous population the opportunity to choose to join the wealthier Urban Industrialiased workers would be likened to the forced assimilation of Indigenous Indians by European Settlers in North America, Australia and much of Spanish controlled Latin America.

Two key figures to build their reputations amid this new wave of Brazilian Communism were Dilma Rouseff and Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva, known by the popular nickname; "Lula." The type of nickname which in Portuguese is reserved for very close friends and beloved family members.

Dilma Rouseff doesn't deny that she was an active member of VAR Palmares, having served three years in prison over her membership of the group it would be hard for her to do so. However she denies that she ever handled weapons or was involved in any of the group's violent acts, despite being in possession of a gun when she was arrested. Others claim that Dilma Rouseff was a very senior figure in VAR Palmares, effectively Carlos Lamarca's second-in-command. Planning both the kidnapping of Swiss Ambassador Giovanni Enrico Bucher and a thwarted attempt to kidnap Brazil's Minister of Finance Antônio Delfrim Netto in 1969.

In 1974 Ernesto Geisel became President. His Opening and Decompression policies allowed Trade Unions to operate freely in Brazil again. In 1975 Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva was elected leader of a Brazilian Steelworker's Union, a year after Brazil had held its freest election in a decade. While the National Renewal Alliance (Aliança Renovadora Nacional/ARENA) and the Brazilian Democratic Movement (Movimento Democrático Brasileiro/MDB) were the only two parties to permitted to contest the 1974 Congressional Election they were allowed to do so on an equal footing. The 1976 Congressional Election was conducted under similarly fair conditions. 

In 1978 Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva led Brazil's metalworkers in an illegal strike; The ABC Paulista Strikes (1978-1980). This illegal strike was allowed to drag on for two years before, eventually, Lula was arrested and imprisoned for his role in it. Lula continues to receive a tax-payer funded pension for the month he spent in prison. As does Dilma Rouseff, for her imprisonment as a VAR Palmare's operative.

In 1982 Brazil held its first free and fair Democratic election since 1964. Any party which wanted to contest the election could, on a level playing field. Of the five parties who did contest the election the Democratic Social Party (Partido Democrático Social/PDS), successor to ARENA won a narrow majority over the MDB. In 1984 Lula heroically, according to him, led a campaign for Democratic elections in Brazil.

Under The Fifth Brazilian Republic Lula was allowed to form the Worker's Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores/PT) in 1980, with himself as its leader. In 2003 Lula  led to PT to victory becoming President. This marked the start of a so-called; "Pink Tide" in which similarly quietly Communist, washed out Reds, came to power across much of South and Central America. The countries of Operation Condor and Operation Charly. 

In 2004 the New York Times published a story about Lula's alcoholism. In response Lula expelled the journalist who wrote the story, Larry Rohter, from the country. The first time that a journalist had been exiled from Brazil since The Fifth Brazilian Republic. Lula went on to propose a Federal Council of Journalists to; "Orientate, discipline and monitor journalists in their work." Along with a proposed Cinema and Audiovisual Agency (ANCINAV) to pre-edit and ban movies and TV shows which didn't meet Lula's standards of; "Editorial responsibility."

Under the constitution of The Sixth Brazilian Republic Presidents are able to serve as many terms as they can get themselves elected to. However they cannot serve more than two terms consecutively. So at the end of his second consecutive term in 2011 Lula nominated Dilma Rouseff as PT's next candidate for President. The expectation being that Dilma Rouseff would serve two consecutive terms before returning the Presidency to Lula. A process that would repeat until one of them died. Rather like how René Barrientos and Alfredo Ovando Candía shared Bolivia's Presidency or Victor Paz Estenssoro was forced to alternate his Presidency with Hernán Siles Zuazo, before changing the Constitution. 

Lula's time as President was mired in corruption scandals. Such as The Mensalão Vote Buying Scandal. In which Lula, along with 40 others, was charged with stealing US$50million from Brazilian State Owned Enterprises (SOE's). Then using that money to pay Brazilian politicians to vote for Lula's policies. There was also The Operation Zelotes Scandal in which Lula and five others were criminally indicted for accepting US$1.5million in bribes to pass legislation favourable to the Brazilian franchises of Hyundai and Mitsubishi automotive companies.

In 2014 authorities in Brasília opened an investigation into money laundering at a small car wash. The investigation soon uncovered a massive corruption scandal. Brazil's SOE's, led by Petrobras, were demanding that companies being awarded contracts by them kickback 5% of the value of the contract to Lula's PT. The companies being blackmailed by Lula's PT had formed an illegal cartel, led by the Odebrecht Conglomerate, to not compete with each other for contracts in order to increase their value. Maximising the amount of money being stolen from Brazilian taxpayers by both Lula's PT and the contractors. This scheme had spread across all the Pink Tide countries with governments allied to Lula's PT.

The Operation Car Wash Scandal saw Dilma Rouseff impeached in 2016 with her Vice-President Michel Temer becoming President. Lula was then convicted for his role in the scandal which banned him from holding political office in Brazil ever again. Thwarting his planned return to the Presidency in 2018.

In January 2017 Teori Zavascki, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Federal Court - Brazil's Supreme Court - was killed in a plane crash. Months after rejecting Lula's demands that he not be sent to prison. Suspiciously the former Head Counsel for Lula's PT was travelling alongside Carlos Alberto Fernandes Filgueiras, a senior partner in the BTG Pactual financial services company central to the Operation Car Wash Scandal. Occurring in bad weather the official cause of the plane crash was; "A loss of situational awareness." Which does sound a lot like the improper orientation which affected Larry Rohter and other Brazilian journalists. The death of Teori Zavascki allowed Michael Temer to appoint Alexandre de Moraes as Chief Justice of the Supreme Federal Court.

The 2018 Election was won by Jair Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (Partido Liberal/PL). Just ahead of the 2022 Election Alexandre de Moraes sensationally threw out all of the evidence against Lula, vacating all of his convictions in all of his corruption cases, including the Operation Car Wash Scandal. Suddenly allowing Lula to run in the 2022 Election. 

Alexandre de Moraes justified his decision on the grounds that the Judge in charge of the investigation, Sergio Moro, had overstepped his authority and acted with bias. As evidenced by messages between the Judge and investigators released in the Vaza Jato leaks. He also claimed that the investigation had illegally colluded with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to investigate Odebrecht bribery within the US. Specifically the investigation hadn't notified the Brazilian Government Ministers who were under investigation of the investigation and sought their permission to investigate.

I have not taken the time to read the Vaza Jato messages. I also do not know enough about the role of Judges in the Brazilian legal system to comment on the bounds of their authority. However in legal systems which I am familiar, such as the UK and US, a Judge would only become involved when a charged person is brought to trial. The fact that it is common for Judges in Brazil to become involved in investigations at their earliest stages suggest to me that they operate a system similar to France's system of Investigative Magistrates. That would give them a great deal of authority to guide, direct and advise investigators, as Sergio Moro was accused of doing.  

Even if there is evidence of bias or improper intervention then I would expect that to only justify a new trial. Excluding all evidence, even that corroborated by independent sources, in all cases sounds to me like a Judge acting improperly. Specifically a Judge acting to stage a Coup d'état. Attempting to overthrow an elected President in favour of someone they would prefer to be President. 

At around 18:50 on 19/11/25 (UK date) this is another particularly annoying place to have to stop.

Edited at around 17:15 on 20/11/25 (UK date) to tidy all of the above and copy & paste;

Lula was elected President at the 2022 Election, amid this huge wave of Brazilian Popularism. Everyone joined their favourite uncle Lula in battling the vast conspiracy to oppress them with the hated US Imperialists being central to the conspiracy, just as in 1964. With serious questions over the legitimacy of Lula's election, his eligibility to run in the first place and the impartiality of the Judiciary, Jair Bolsonaro was accused of staging a Coup d'état. The allegations really read like a greatest hits of Brazilian Popularist conspiracy theories.

Central to the accusations was a draft of a Coup plan discovered in the home of Anderson Torres, the Justice Minister in Jair Bolsonaro's government. It was discovered during a search ordered by Alexandre de Moraes while Anderson Torres was not present in his home and had been outside of Brazil for a number of weeks. Despite an extensive search for the printer used to print the document investigators were not able to establish where it had been written or who had written it. Beyond being found inside of his unoccupied house there was no evidence tying it to Anderson Torres. All of which sounds remarkably similar to The Cohen Plan, central to The 1937 Coup d'état which began Getúlio Vargas' dictatorship. While Lula does consider Adolf Hitler to be one of his political idols he's yet to expressly claim that it's a Jewish conspiracy against him.

One of the main allegations of the Coup plot was a plan to assassinate, by poisoning, Lula, his Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin and Alexandre de Moraes. João Goulart, the President deposed in The 1964 Coup d'état, went into exile in Argentina where he died in 1976. It's long been a conspiracy theory promoted by Lula and others that João Goulart was assassinated, by poisoning, as part of Operation Condor, that work of the US Imperialists. Presidents Lula and Rouseff took this to the extent of having João Goulart's body repatriated from Argentina in 2013 so it could be tested for proof of his poisoning. The tests revealed João Goulart hadn't been poisoned, he'd just died of a heart attack.

Two weeks before The Oscars 2025 ceremony, Jair Bolsonaro and his alleged co-conspirators were formally indicated, on February 18th (18/2/25). This led to a trial which stretched throughout the Summer, perhaps unsurprisingly resulting in the conviction of Jair Bolsonaro on September 11th (11/9/25). Jair Bolsonaro's first appeal was rejected just two days ago, November 18th (18/11/25).

The trial of Jair Bolsonaro for attempting to murder Alexandre de Moraes was presided over by Alexandre de Moraes. As was the appeal of Alexandre de Moraes' conviction of Jair Bolsonaro. That is Alexandre de Moraes literally acting as judge of his own cause. I don't know if that it legal under Brazilian law. However it is certainly a clear violation of the Natural Justice Principle; Nemo judex in causa sua, No-one can be judge of their own cause.

As Alexandre de Moraes was leading this investigation of Jair Bolsonaro quite a few people took to criticising his behaviour on Social Media. Including Glenn Greenwald, who published the Vazo Jato articles. Alexandre de Moraes responded by ordering all these Social Media accounts to be censored as criticising him denied him his right to honour and a good image. Twitter, now X, refused this demand for censorship of political debate. So Alexandre de Moraes ordered Twitter/X to be entirely banned in Brazil. Twitter/X attempted to circumvent this ban by shifting its Brazilian operations to Cloudflare's servers.

As a result of his role in vacating Lula's convictions, his role in leading the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro and his banning of Twitter/X Alexandre de Moraes is currently under US sanctions.

Upon its release in Brazil in November 2024 I'm Still Here was boycotted and protested against by opponents of Lula. Presumably they saw it as part of this greatest hits of Brazilian Popularist conspiracy theories. A very biased retelling of a period of history in which Lula built his reputation. While it does acknowledge the kidnapping of Giovanni Enrico Bucher it doesn't seem to mention VAR Palmares, let alone Dilma Rouseff. It also makes a point of not going into the details of Rubens Paiva's political activism. Allowing viewers to assume he was someone who once wrote a strongly worded letter critical of the President to a local newspaper. Rather than someone who was believed to be the main courier for the most dangerous terrorist in Brazil at that time, the Arshad Khan to Osama bin Laden.

So I can't help but think the footage of Fernanda Torres in Blackface was released on purpose by people associated with I'm Still Here. In order to kill off its chances of winning any further awards and allowing it to quietly disappear into the background. It is the act of nomination which qualifies the nominees for membership of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences (AAMPAS). A high honour for a filmmaker but probably poor compensation for being made some of the most hated people in your home country.

Obviously it's one thing for a US  professional association of filmmakers to acknowledge that some Brazilian filmmakers have made a good movie about Brazilian history. It's another thing for that US association to then start interfering in Brazilian current events. Particularly given the history of US interference in the region. 

This has actually been a big topic within Awards Season 2025 with "September 5" (2024) Oscar nominated, allowing for discussion of whether The 2025 Superbowl went too far in its interference in the Genocidal war Hamas imposed on Israel on October 7th 2023 (7/10/23). The Oscars then going too far in interfering in Brazil's politic would, obviously, pre-empt that discussion.

As I find myself finally arriving at my point, following a 100 page, 24,000 word preamble. I think it's fair to say that I'm Still Here allows us to discuss a wide range of very big topics.

Unfortunately at around 18:20 on 20/11/25 (UK date) we've all got to down tools for another three days.