Fabiano Grendene de Souza

Notes on Writing a Screenplay for a Film Essay: A Brazilian Experience

Pontifical University Catholic of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

In Brazil, there is a tradition of publishing books on fiction screenplays, ranging from canonical manuals (Syd Field, Robert Mckee…), to studies developed by Brazilian screenwriters (Doc Comparato, Flavio de Campos…). On the other hand, when thinking about the relationship between scripts and non-fiction projects, there is practically no bibliography published in the country, except for Sérgio Puccini’s book, Documentário: Da pós-produção à pós-produção (Documentary Screenplay: from pre-production to post-production, 2009). As a precursor work, the book points out the differences between fiction and documentary scripts and highlights the work-in-progress nature of the non-fiction script (which generally takes its final form in editing).
In this context, I started writing the script for an Essay Film, based on archive footage. In 2011, I wrote a letter and sent it to 12 Brazilian directors. Later I received 12 epistolary films, 12 different short films. So, ten years later, in 2021, I started writing a script for the film that brings together these answers, called O Amor dos Filmes Nunca Feitos (The Love of Never Made Films, currently in production).

More than script manuals, this journey was guided by other sources: documentaries that use archival footage; reflections on the Essay Film made by Timothy Corrigan; other examples of Essay Film (such as the works of Chris Marker and Agnès Varda) and the screenplay of the most internationally awarded Brazilian short film, Ilha das Flores (Island of Flowers, Jorge Furtado, 1989).
In this paper, I will not only develop this conceptual path, but also show examples of the construction of certain characteristics of the “documentary” The Love of Never Made Films: the reflexive voice over, the search for a narrative that articulates all epistolary films, and the presence of fictional procedures (such as the use of actors).

Fabiano Grendene de Souza is professor of the Audiovisual Production Technology Undergraduate Program of Pontifical University Catholic of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS – Brazil). He wrote and directed eight short films: Five Suits (Cinco Naipes, 2004) received more than 20 awards in Brazil and abroad. He wrote and directed three feature films: The Last Road to the Beach (A Última Estrada da Praia, 2010), Change (Mudança, 2020) and Two Girls Descending the Stairs (Nós Duas Descendo a Escada, 2015). The process of writing of the screenplay of this last film was presented in 8th SRN International Conference (London). At the moment, he is developing the research project “Intense Ghosts: The Use of Archival Footage in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema”.