Isle of Flowers (1989)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

What an incredible short this one was.It starts being something funny and satirical, combining in a very clever way several visual elements commonly used in documentary films, with some cut-out animations, but as it advances, it turns into something way darker and disturbing (Not for what it is explicitly show on screen, but for what is heavily implied through the situations that take place in this short) The result is something very bitter and very bleak, being able to express in a short format all the cruelty and unfairness of the modern society.That being said, it is masterfully done, with a great visual work and a superb direction. But it is for the message of this short what makes "Ilha das Flores" a masterpiece.

Here's a work that definitely proves how exciting and questioning a short movie picture can be.Acting as a director, writer and producer, Jorge Furtado couragely aims a dazzling machinegun at issues as assorted as religion, Holocaust, Brazilian government, poverty, capitalism, and how human intelligence has been used throughout the ages.Using a dialectical method, and narrating the story in a way that "even a Martian would understand", in the words of the author, the film forges a real cinematographical theorem of Brazilian deplorable situation, borrowing as the stage a neighbourhood in the city of Porto Alegre (one of Brazil's most developed ones, by the way). The degrading scenario, however, would apply to any community on the world in which the effects of money (or its lack) on the lives of its inhabitants are more visible.In the movie's touching final take, Furtado destroys the bourgeois concept of Freedom, quoting a line from one of Brazil's greatest poetesses, Cecilia Meirelles, and leaves us wondering whether modern 'civilisation' is as far as the human intellect can take us.

Funny at first, demolishing in the end. When I saw this movie for the first time I spend the first minutes laughing: the editing is fast paced and the voice over explains one after another different concepts that apparently are barely connected. But in the end all grows into a perfectly mounted description of the economical and political aberrations of our times, all in less than 30 minutes.

Not that I've seen a lot, of course. I caught this short in my documentary film class at the beginning of the semester. Unfortunately, I never saw another film better than this one. If you can find it, definitely check it out. The film says more about the human condition in fifteen minutes than most similarly themed films say in two hours. Devilishly humorous, the film hints along the way that there is more at stake than the running joke about a tomato would indicate. It's crucial to know as little as possible, so if you have a good independent video store nearby, seek it out and don't ask questions.