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Trailer Watch: Adirley Queirós and Joana Pimenta’s Dry Ground Burning
Another trailer drops today for a film featured in our most recent issue, this time for the docu-fiction hybrid Dry Ground Burning from directors Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós. This is the first film that Pimenta and Queirós have co-directed together, but the duo previously collaborated on Queirós’s 2017 film Once There Was Brasilia, which employed Pimenta as the cinematographer.
Vadim Rizov wrote about the film during TIFF back in September:
The plot revolves around two half-sisters who get involved in manufacturing and distributing gas illegally, and its title is a description, not a metaphor—the fuel’s potency is demonstrated to potential buyers by being thrown on dirt and set aflame. One of Burning‘s main settings is the ad hoc refinery (seen in the still above), where the industrial and sculptural meet as the overwhelmingly huge tools and the defamiliarizingly loud, confusing and sometimes literally partially on fire facility adds to the sci-fi feeling of the narrative. The gas is distributed by a network of motorcyclists who ride at night through flames into darkness, creating both spectacular images (building on Brasilia‘s look, these blue-and-gold nightscapes will be very appealing to digital Michael Mann-heads) and enveloping soundscapes; between the equipment and the bikers, this is invigoratingly loud and carefully mixed with a level of detail regular ambient/electronic listeners will appreciate.
Rizov also interviewed Pimenta and Queirós for the Spring Issue, which is currently paywalled. Subscribers can read the piece here. Dry Ground Burning opens via Grasshopper Film at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago on April 14 and BAM in Brooklyn on April 21, with more cities to follow.
