Brazil’s Nicho54 Institute to Launch Black Brazilian Cinematheque With Over a Thousand Films by Black Brazilian Filmmakers (EXCLUSIVE)

Brazil’s Nicho54 Institute is launching Cinemateca Negra (Black Brazilian Cinematheque in literal translation), an original publication that consolidates data about Black films in Brazil. Launching globally from the Marché du Film in Cannes, the publication maps over a thousand films made by Black filmmakers between 1949 and 2022, featuring a wealth of criticism, interviews, and data aimed at combating the historical erasure of Black creatives in the country, as well as incentivizing public policies to support Black filmmakers. 

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“Despite still facing deep historical inequalities when it comes to investment and visibility, the research [we conducted] demonstrates the strength of Black creativity over seven decades,” said Fernanda Lomba, filmmaker and founder of Nicho 54, a collective organization dedicated to strategically strengthening the presence of Black people in the Brazilian audiovisual industry through talent development, research and institutional support. “Our hope is to establish partnerships that can help us promote the preservation of this memory and these films, as well as stimulate healthier business for the next generations of Black filmmakers,” Lomba added.  

Lomba will attend the Marché alongside curator Bethania Maia and producer Rubian Melo. Nicho54 is also at Cannes to amplify its internationalization efforts and will launch the fifth edition of Sala 54, a digital platform restricted to the international industry and exclusively dedicated to promoting arthouse films directed by Black Brazilian filmmakers. The announcement of the latest edition of Sala 54 will mark a first-time partnership between Nicho 54 and the Pavillion Afronova at Cannes, dedicated to promoting creatives from the African continent and diaspora. 

“Since the beginning of Nicho54, we anxiously wanted to establish cooperation with African initiatives,” said Lomba. “Working alongside the Pavillion Afronova in Cannes this year is a strategic move that has been developed for years and places a bet on cooperation beyond the obvious shared sense of identity. We now have a commercial and artistic drive to strengthen cultural and economic bonds between Black Brazil, Africa and the diasporic Europe.” 

Last month, Lomba reinforced Nicho54’s desire to continue to expand on international collaborations with African filmmakers as she met with “My Father’s Shadow” director Akinola Davies Jr at the Projeto Paradiso National Talent Network gathering in Recife. “‘My Father’s Shadow’ brings such a poetic and honest experience about masculinity, and particularly Black masculinity, to Brazil. Akinola bravely and generously weaves a fabulous patchwork of memory, private life, and Nigeria’s history. We have a lot to learn from this filmmaker’s gentle radicality [in Brazil],” she added at the time. 

Nicho54 describes its Sala54 initiative as a “convergence between the rising international demand for narratives from the Brazilian diaspora with a select curation.” Initially conceived as a streaming platform for films selected for the Nicho Film Festival, the platform now looks towards the global stage. 

Maia, a curator at Nicho54, said that launching Sala54 at the Cannes Film Festival “celebrates Nicho’s international bridge-building.” “The platform aims to competitively position Black Brazilian cinema in the international audiovisual industry through an understanding of the importance of endorsing the global circulation of Black stories. The curatorial politics of Sala54 was constructed in a collaborative way, understanding Black thinking as multiple and in motion. When establishing curation as the main criteria for selection, the platform aims to creatively emancipate Black creatives in building their narratives and create an environment that reflects the diversity of Black points of view in the Brazilian audiovisual industry,” she concluded.