MovieChat Forums > Saudade - Sehnsucht (2003) Discussion > The Meeting of Black Gays in Rio

The Meeting of Black Gays in Rio


One of the most interesting aspects of this movie was the documentary-like scene of the meeting of Black gays in Rio. The speaker--was it Fabio?--raised some fascinating and important points about the sociopolitical and cultural situation of gays and Blacks, and most particularly, Black gay people, in Brazil, and this made me wonder, has this ever been depicted, either in a documentary or feature film before? It almost comes out of left field here, and the arrival of Miguel's boyfriend, the German Erik, not only is ironic dramatically and narratively, but it verges on the absurd given the discussion that's just transpired. Does anyone know what the director Jürgen Brüning based it on? I know there's a very important gay rights group in Bahia, Grupo Gay da Bahia, within which there's a smaller affiliated group that focuses on the issues of Black gay people, Quimbanda Dudu, and Rio has a less prominent group, Arco Íris, I think, but I'm wondering if Rio has a real-world group like this one, where the scene was shot, and if Brüning wrote the text that the beautiful young actor delivers or whether he improvised it. It was like a little lightning bolt, and almost made up for the sentimentality, the horrible acting, the clichéd scenarios, and the exoticism of the rest of the film.

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