Rio

Sarah Morris
Rio
2012
HD Digital
88.33 mins

Sarah Morris’ eleventh film continues her investigation into urban psychological landscapes, this time moving her focus to Rio de Janeiro, a vast and contradictory metropolis. Tracing the culture and the undercurrents of the city, Morris captures individuals and sites as varied as the office of architect Oscar Niemeyer, the Mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes and his core group, a dance party of children in the ‘City of God’. the famed talk show host, Regina Casé on a visit to a favela, the apartment of Bossa Nova muse, Danuza Leão, the largest assembly line in South America – Brahma beer factory and the production lines of the Duloren underwear company, infamous for its controversial advertisements. The film concludes with the Carnival Winner’s Parade, depicting the presentation of Brazilian life at its most dazzling and spectacular. ‘Rio’ is a dark but celebratory tale involving the history of Twentieth Century architecture, communism, and the ubiquitous eroticism in which has entered every arena – even the industrial. One of Morris’s starting points was the unfinished work of Orson Welles’ “It’s All True” – his unfinished documentary about Rio’s Carnival, but instead of making the participatory spectacle the main focus, Morris levels it out making it just one of a series of events transpiring in the city. The Carnival’s filter and effect is seen refracted everywhere and nowhere.