If you take a look at the past of Brazilian cinema, you might see a rather sexist space, where female characters were only used for the image of sexual desire and submission.
It is necessary to remember that women had a huge lack of visibility in the world of cinema, but today we know that their presence in filmmaking roles is important to bring us a different world view, where the female image ceases to be the object of male fetishes and starts gaining actual character and opinions.
According to data obtained through Ancine, Brazil’s National Cinema Agency, from 1995 to 2005 in Brazil, women were only 18% in film production, while men directed 79% of the films, not counting the 3% that represented mixed productions. Long after, in 2017, this inequality had not changed much: the percentage of the presence of women filmmakers fell to 16% of the 160 Brazilian films produced that year.
“I myself am writing a script and driving gradually and I think we have to start from there the fear and difficulties that are appearing (…) funny is that I’ve lived few experiences with female directors, just for you to get a notion only 20% of everything I did was with experience with female directors”
Nash Laila
Says Nash Laila, an actress who began her career from the age of thirteen in a professional theater course and soon after had her acting debut in “Deserto Feliz”. She played an indispensable role in the film, having contributed to its success after giving her opinion on ways to make the script better suited for their target audience.
Nash also participated in “Amor, Plástico e Barulho”, a film for which she was awarded “Best supporting actress” at the Brasília Festival. It is a production that portrays the reality lived in Recife, the city where the actress was born, talking about the living conditions of the place and the various issues that involve female rivalry.
She even participated in the four seasons of the series “Me chama de Bruna”, available on Amazon prime, playing Jessica, a character that allowed her to take to the series the point of view of women as a prostitute, without trying to meet male fetishes.
Check out an exclusive interview with Nash Laila in which she tells Her Campus how was the process of creating characters, what it is to be a woman in the movie industry today and understand a little of its essence.
YOUR FIRST CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE WAS IN “DESERTO FELIZ”, WHEN YOU WERE AROUND 18 YEARS OLD, HOW DID YOU MAKE THIS MOVIE STILL SO YOUNG?
“It was very interesting, I am an actress who was very lucky to have met very special people early in her career. Imagine, I was 18 years old and I went to play a character who was sexually exploited, a girl who was raped by her stepfather and soon after fell into the network of Sex Tourism, I was 18 years old, but the character was about 15 years old. Until then I was a young person who was entering the audiovisual scheme, which was not yet a common thing for me, and I had never imagined in life that I was going to do film. I was still a virgin, so I read the script and said “can I handle it?”, I arrived at the director, who is my friend to this today, and said “man I can’t handle it, I wanted too much, but I won’t be able to handle it!”, it wasn’t just a moral matter but for the sake of knowing in my head. To make a movie that I never made, to play a character that is very difficult, to enter a space of having to tell this story with an aspect of the body and sexuality that I do not have, I was a tomboy! And then he made a very right decision for me, I reviewed today right, because the film in the first version was very explicit and everything had that thing of violence with the girl, so he said “no, I don’t need to show everything, we change, I need to have you” and I think it was a right thing for the movie. And then I felt comfortable playing myself and it was a delight because it’s a super heavy movie, full of reviews and everything, but I lived a very beautiful moment in my life, which was professional partnership and that’s where I understood that I was a protagonist of a movie and I had to take it forward!”
WAS THERE EVER A CHARACTER THAT CHALLENGED YOU TO LEAVE YOUR COMFORT ZONE?
“Always! I’ve done about three or four prostitutes who challenged me in the sense of person because every situation is a different person, I can’t tell the same story, although there are four people in a prostitution situation, they are not the same person. I can’t say that the role of the prostitute overrides that woman’s humanity, that woman existed before she was a prostitute! So, my whole life purpose is to put the humanity of the character in the world, because when a role like this arrives for us usually arrives full of a lot of fetishes, very cliché and especially a female character who has no arc, no beginning, middle, and end, often an unfinished character. All my characters challenged me in the sense that I had to find out who this woman is in the world or in society. I need to find this person, and sometimes that character is in me or someone I know. ”
YOU PARTICIPATED IN THE SERIES “ME CHAMA DE BRUNA” PLAYING JESSICA, HOW WAS IT FOR YOU TO MAKE THIS CHARACTER?
“Jessica was decisive for me, I had to gather the force to be able to provoke a fighting body and a confrontation that I do not have, so for me to find this body of an armed person, who had already been through a lot and is, therefore, a machine gun, I had to try really hard. I suffered a lot during the process, because I didn’t believe in what I was doing, and I always question myself like that at some point, but that’s something that’s part of the process. I had just left the Workshop Theatre and I stopped being in a play for the first time and went to do the character, and from the beginning, it was all very thought-provoking, but Jessica was awesome to me. I did 4 Seasons and spent 4 years doing this same character so there is a game of evolution between you and the character, which ends up being interesting as well.”
DO YOU THINK THAT, OFF SCREEN, SITUATIONS SUCH AS SHELLY’S CHARACTER FROM “AMOR, PLÁSTICO E BARULHO”, HAPPEN?
“I think it still occurs, unfortunately, we live immersed in a patriarchal structure that makes us fight each other all the time! The narrative of Brega puts it very clearly, because in the movie “Amor, Plastico e Barulho” Renata takes the whole narrative of Brega Recife from that moment and turns it into a story, which tackles rivalry, objectification of the female body, and even ambition for success. So I guess, yes, this rivalry exists, but now it is more disguised, but we are a generation that is learning to put an end to it. Now the times are different, so the discussions are different too, we evolved from that reality of Shelly and Jaqueline, but, at the same time, it did not pass completely. If you go today in the peripheries rivalry thing is still very strong! The world is ready to question the girl, not the situation as a whole, so it still exists, indirectly.”
DID YOU GO THROUGH A PROCESS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PREPARATION FOR THE ROLES IN WHICH YOU PLAYED A PROSTITUTE?
“No, the psychological preparation that we do is the preparation of an actress, which is still a psychological preparation, because it is a process that leads you to act like that character. Usually, this process of preparation of cast is great, as in the case of “Me chama de Bruna“, which lasted a couple of intense months. For “Deserto Feliz“, on the other hand, it did not go like that: I said I wouldn’t do it like that, so we changed the script and then I felt at ease and went!”
DO YOU THINK THERE IS MUCH DIFFERENCE IN FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN CINEMA BETWEEN THE PAST AND TODAY?
“Yes, I think we are evolving and that there are more female directors showing up, writing and directing their own films, it changes the landscape and we have to keep up with that because there will be opportunities for us to get into these places. There’s been a struggle for years for women to manage to change that scenario, and we still have a majority of men directing female roles, but I think our discussion is coming to everyone and I think our voice is starting to be heard. I think there’s a lot of work to be done yet, but some results are already starting to show up. It’s quite different from 20 years ago when cinema was taken over by thousands of men and now, we start to see new directors and actresses who are occupying their spaces.”
WHAT’S IT LIKE BEING A WOMAN IN BRAZILIAN CINEMA?
“You deal with your pains daily and face them in the concrete sense because cinema will try to leave you occupying only the place of the muse or will the fetish actress. Men have a space for them to exist with their various facets and social roles, but we do not, a role is only intended for us, so it is a burden! So I think that more and more, being a woman in the Brazilian film industry today is managing the need to find something, showing yourself as a human so that, at some moment, I’ll be the woman who confronts, cries, and in the other, I can be the diva who occupies a wonderful place. It does not diminish who I am and gives me the possibility to come and go”
DO YOU HAVE ANY MESSAGES TO LEAVE FOR FELLOW WOMEN ARTISTS?
“I’m not a very messaging person because I’m also searching for the messages of the world, but maybe it is: allow yourself to be in transformation, to be human and not to charge any of these two roles that are the “cute, beautiful” or the “powerful, combative”, we are a lot and the world will try to tell people that we have to be one thing or the other, but we’re not just one! Man will have room for his humanity in a thousand possible ways, but we don’t have that space. So, to be a woman artist is to dig space of humanity that fits the error of contradiction or even the change of opinion! Go after possibilities to exceed expectations and meditate there!”
The article below was written by Giovanna Moretti and edited by Carolina Azevedo. Liked this type of content? Check out Her Campus Cásper Líbero for more!