Braço Senhora Pássaro is dedicated to productions that portray the adversities of deep Brazil; team is made up of black women
Producer Ladybird worked almost anonymously for over two years. The activity started just before the start of the pandemic. The idea was to first establish itself in the segment. Gabi Brites, founding partner and stage director, says that she wanted to make sure first and foremost that she wasn’t going to promise something she couldn’t deliver. Giorgia Prates, also a stage director, amends, saying that they wanted to put their feet on the ground and not make false promises. And, today, there is Lady with a lot of work, projects and plans.
They claim that the company is 100% female, plural and composed mostly of black women. “I think we’re doing well,” says Gabi, who believes that the market sees the producer as one that approaches the work from different perspectives. “We are always looking for loopholes. We go where nobody wants to go.” For her, this attracts the advertising market.
Giorgia, for example, directed the award-winning Centaur – The uniform that never existed, a campaign that is a finalist in the Glass category at the Cannes Film Festival. For Gabi, this is an example of a Brazil that can work, since “she is a black woman directing a film that today represents the country”.
For stage directors, Brazil is changing and the work environment reflects this inclination, as professionals in the area and also women themselves have understood and no longer tolerate abusive attitudes on film sets.
Gabi says that they created another face of the production company, called Senhora Pássaro, an entertainment arm, where documentaries and fiction series are on board. One of the films is While my heart beats mercilessly, which shows the raw reality of Cracolância, which became the stage for the collective led by Carmen Lopes (Tem Sentimento), which presents trans women with a welcoming space in downtown São Paulo.
Another project at Senhora Pássaro is “Acabou Saudades”, a five-episode documentary series that will show, through affective relationships, how 5G technology has a positive impact on the Brazilian semi-arid region, often forgotten by the government and by society. They say they like to infiltrate deep Brazil. They also affirm the importance of leaving the Rio-Sao Paulo axis.
The works “O voo da Passarinha”, a documentary that brings a narrative guided by the behavior of birds, with a renowned bird photographer who returns to her quilombola origins in southern Bahia to rescue memories and record the bird’s nest from her childhood, and the fiction series about women’s football developed with actress Bruna Linzmeyer – the director of Ladybird cannot disclose the name yet – are also works within the entertainment area of the production company.
