Olá a todos! Hello everyone!

Como vai o dezembro de vocês? How is your december going?

Today’s post will take no more than dez (10) minutes of your time: our topic is the short-movie Ilha das Flores (Island of Flowers), written and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Jorge Furtado. As an award-winning, highly-acclaimed work, it is regarded by Brazilian movie experts as one of the 100 best movies ever made in Brazil and by European critics as one of the most important short films of all time. As such, it should be watched by anyone interested in learning more about Brazilian culture or improving their language skills

Palavras-chave | keywords: filme (movie), curta-metragem (short), assistir (watch)

Using a tomate (tomato) as a point of departure, Ilha das Flores traces the journey of the legume (vegetable) from harvesting to dumping, with the help of a fast-paced, documentary-like style voice-over narration. Although it may sound simple at first, the movie reveals itself to be increasingly complex in the way it narrates the chain of ideas.

The tomato starts its way from the plantação (garden), then to the supermarket aisles where it is picked up by a woman who intends to use it as an ingredient for a sauce in a pork dish she will cozinhar (cook) for her family. She discards it after deeming it inedible, and the tomato is then taken to a landfill to be fed to porcos (pigs). The pigs also reject it, so a group of individuals living under miserable conditions is allowed to enter to rumage through the piles of lixo (garbage) in order to find something to comer (eat).

By providing definitions of concepts such as dinheiro (money), seres humanos (human beings), porcos (pigs), flores (flowers), judeus (jews) and lixo (garbage), Ilha das Flores adopts a didactic and satirical tone to talk about our unequal system of production and consumption and its impact on social relations. Definitely food for your thoughts, this stunning, impressive film is worth the watch!

Ficou curioso? Are you curious? Here is the full movie (with subtitles in English to guide you through it):

After you watch the movie, you can the script and full-text in Portuguese here:

http://www.casacinepoa.com.br/os-filmes/roteiros/ilha-das-flores-texto-original

O que acharam? Espero que tenham gostado!

What did you think? Hope you enjoyed it!