Bárbara Balaclava is a metanarrative based on existing stories in the work of Thiago Martins de Melo and read in the tarot. Cosmogonic, baroque, hybrid and cyclical, it tells the trajectory of an anonymous martyr, from the expropriation and massacre of her village and her death under police torture to her experience as an "enchanted" finding herself in a previous incarnation and culminating in her baptism in the heart of Pindorama.
Animation made from more than a thousand drawings in stop motion, inspired by the owl “Suindara” – a well-known folktale in Northern Brazil – to address the socio-political urgencies of the country.
Juxtaposing two distinct modes of storytelling, one restrained and reverent, another energetic and dissimulated, seeking to recapitulate the plans of conspiracy and coup plotted by the former governor of Guanabara Carlos Lacerda in the backstage of the official history of Brazil using not only the archival images , but the sound of narration and incidental sound effects to characterize the change of focus and tension, as well as establishing the identities of the characters involved, namely Getúlio Vargas, Jânio Quadros, João Goulart, JK, foreign forces, Brazilian military, etc. In honoring the famous passage of the false newsreel in Glauber Rocha's "Terra in Transe" (1967), we will present the trajectory of Carlos Lacerda who, like the dictator Porfirio Diaz, from the fictional city of Eldorado, began his public life in communism but, within a few years, he became a notorious coup and conservative leader.
