PIXOTE

Brazil, 1981, 119 minutes, Colour.
Fernando Ramos da Silva.
Directed by Hector Babenco.

Pixote was a powerful film from Brazil in the early 1980s, a portrait of a ten-year-old boy on the streets of San Paolo, arrested by the police, put in a detention centre where he is subjected to all kinds of degradation and torture. Some of the runaways are murdered in the detention centre. A seven-year-old transvestite is framed by them for the murders. Pixote helps Lilica, the transvestite, and other boys to escape where they take up life on the streets, scrounging a living.

The central character of the film is similar to that of the boy who portrayed him – and who was later to die in the streets.

Direction is by Hector Babenco (Ironweed, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, At Play in the Fields of the Lord). In 2003 he directed a powerful prison film, Carandiru which seems to show what happened to the Pixotes who were in prison twenty years later.

1. The strong impact of the film? Difficulties in censorship throughout the world? Meriting awards?

2. The Brazilian film industry? The director and his taking actors from the locations and situations portrayed? Delineation of character, drama, streets and squalor, reformatories, the capital cities, the clubs and brothels? Colour photography, atmosphere? Authenticity? The score and its mood? For the dramatics? The insertion of songs, especially by Roberto?

3. The quality of the performances? How persuasive? How sympathetic? Especially the actor playing Pixote himself?

4. The picture of the streets of San Paolo and Rio? The portrayal of the facts? A fictional story based on facts? The invitation to the audience to observe, recoil, be shocked, understand? The children and their background, attitudes, harsh experience? The limitation of their horizons? Violence, power games, money, sexuality, exploitation? The role of the police and their inability to handle situations? Corrupt police? The media and the exposes? The concern of public groups? The audience being immersed in the situation?

5. The basic message of the film: careful assembling of data, the ugliness of the Brazilian underworld, human nature, sinfulness, the ability and inability to cope? The human implications of the film? Reform? Social care, social work? Preventative methods? Implication for politics, concern, reform, reformation of corrupt officials?

6. Background to the murder of the judge? The rounding up of the boys? The police station and its hustle and squalor? The range of children? Their being interviewed and questioned? introduction to them? The rough way of life? Their watching television, questioned, herded on the trucks? The reformatory and the supervisor and his demands, his sleazy appearance, his being in league with the police, the cover ups? The ugliness of the dining room, the dormitories, the courtyards for sport? The background of medical attention, the doctors, the teachers and the illiterate boys? The women officials and their help? The role of the authorities in maintaining the status quo? Visiting days and the hostility of the boys, welcoming their visitors? Roberto and his entertaining the visitors? The good and bad within the reformatories? Opportunities lost?

7. The picturing of abuses: the boys shoving one another, power games, hierarchy in the reformatory, the night rapes, the boys turning a blind eye, interrogations, refusing to 'rat'? The power games in the dining room, spitting in the drink and the food and the boys having to eat (and the effect of Pixote)? The interrogations, the beatings? Lilica and the homosexual dance and provocation? The taking of groups out in the night, boys being shot, naked boys in the jail cells, the solitary confinement? The inevitable lies? Resistance to investigations? Keeping the boys quiet?

8. The boys themselves: age, background, parents abandoning them, lack of interest and care, lack of love, hatred, the pathos of visiting days, playing games imitating crimes and getaways, the bonds between the boys? Possibilities of friendship? Pixote and his youthfulness, seeming innocence? Friendship with Dito? the games? Fumaca and his being unconscious, his death in the infirmary? Lilica and the hold over the others, the lover and his being chosen to be the scapegoat, his death? The interrogation of all the boys and Lilica's breakdown?

9. The film focussing on Pixote: the streets, the police station, the dormitory rape, participation in the games, growing friends, the counsellor, classes, his grandfather on visiting day, the collection of boys for the truck and the killings, the ugly sequence of his cleaning the toilets, the sniffing glue and his becoming ill, witnessing Fumaca's death and the cover-up? The inspection by the board?

10. The authorities and their brutality, the possibilities of care, cover up? The journalists and the mothers? The judges? The anger of the authorities after the riot in the dining room? The escape and the television interview and the repercussions on the authorities, the beating of Lilica's lover and killing him?

11. Lilica and his background, age, place in the reformatory, contacts, the dance, the murder of his lover, the interrogation and his breakdown. the handcuffs, the escape?

12. The contrast with the outside world and the inside world? The trip to Rio? The encounter with Cristal and his wealth, the drug deals, taking Lilica for sex? The decision to work in Rio? The bag snatching and the intrusion of the kids onto the ordinary citizens in Rio? (And the background of the beaches, the affluent shops etc., the well-dressed people?) Dito and his friendship with Pixote. the sexual encounter with Lilica, Lilica feeling that he had betrayed him? The encounter with Deborah, her double dealing, the club and the violence of Pixote's killing her? The contrast of this violence with their innocent enjoying the time on the beach?

13. Crime in the city, the clubs, the robberies? The irony of the Salvation Army group singing hymns about Christ across from the club?

14. The group and their encounter with Sueli? Her being sold to them? Their setting up a system to rob her clients. the comic touch with their methods ? but the brutality of their success? Sueli and her abortion ? and the ugliness of the foetus in the garbage tin? Dito's attraction to her and the sexual encounter, the effect on Lilica, on Pixote? The television set playing? Lilica's jealousy and leaving? The robbery and Pixote's accidental killing of Dito? The death of the client? Sueli's cradling Pixote ? with the echoes of the Pieta? The mother and child ? the child she didn't have, the mother he didn't have? Her turning on him and sending him away? Her inability to cope? The possible mother (Brazil?) sending the child off into the world again? The pathos of Pixote's finally wandering the train lines - and their stretching into the uncertain future?

15. The credibility of the situations, characterisation? The squalor and the feel of the Brazilian cities? Justice and injustice? The law? Punishment and reform? The background of religion - the importance of Pixote's looking at the gaudily-decorated statue of the Madonna and his childlike smile at this mother-figure, the symbol of the crib in the round ball with the snow, the religious lyrics of the hymns sung outside the club? Exploitation, violence? Destruction? The importance of this kind of social film?