DISPONIBLE SUR NOWNESS

Era Uma Vez Agora 
On a sci-fi journey through the streets of São Paulo, a group arrive on Earth, discovering the alien movements of their human bodies

Imagining how we might experience the human body and its movements for the first time, short film Era Uma Vez Agora (Once Upon a Time Now) takes a sci-fi journey through a parallel Sao Paulo, observing the landscape from an outside perspective.

Co-directed by cinematographer Augustin Losserand and writer Patrick Muroni, the movement-led piece centers a group of not-quite-human beings, transplanted from another galaxy, exploring their attempts to understand their bodies on Earth. Connecting with its capabilities for a mysterious training programme, the group enters imagined situations, movements and scenes together, depicting the body as powerful as it is fragile.

“The strolls, gigantic leaps, moments of dance, the camera so close to the bodies, gave the film this nebulous nature, as if it were impossible to understand these people. Questioning the point of view of an alien consciousness by trying to understand its own codes, can perhaps help us look at what we are, at our future.”

Starting its journey before it became a film, Era Uma Vez Agora evolved from a video essay shot by Augustin Losserand in 2016, documenting a group of artists for the multidisciplinary Futura Brasil project. Seeing narrative potential in its sequences, Patrick Muroni developed a surreal story to frame the near-alien movements captured by the footage, letting the disconnected choreography and panoramic landscapes guide a voyage into understanding, told through the idiosyncrasies of bodies in motion. 

Nowness, October, 2024