Executive Order: Director’s Journal

In Medida provisória: Diário do diretor Executive Order: Director’s Journal, Lázaro Ramos describes the backstage of his first work behind the cameras, as a film director: Executive Order. Sharing challenges, creative choices and discoveries, Lázaro talks about his involvement with the project since he first learned about Aldri Anunciação’s play, Namíbia, não!, and decided to adapt it into a movie. “We soon realized there was a very original idea there, bringing forth important debates, particularly in the historic moment we’re living, a moment when Brazil’s Black population has been intensely discussing its space for identity, rights and duties,” he writes.

In addition to showcasing the steps to creating a movie, Lázaro shares his doubts about narrative and aesthetic decisions, as well as the production and distribution obstacles faced by Executive Order, acclaimed in national and international film festivals. The film’s plot centers on a dystopian near-future Brazil, when the government puts in motion an executive order to send Black people — “high-melanin citizens” — back to Africa, as reparation for their ancestors’ enslavement.

The book features a QR Code to view over 300 images of the making of Executive Order.

Excerpts:

“I never thought I’d have so many lessons, joys and fears in a single work. Now, I most passionately desire telling more stories in the director’s chair. Some people see directors as all-seeing Gods, and I disagreed, or at least tried to be a director who works differently. I want to be enamored, to feel the thrill of each of the cast’s achievements, who’s able to be moved and get involved with each frame in the editing room, and particularly someone who’s able to open up new understandings of the world through an artistic work, igniting in the audience the certainty that it’s possible to improve the world, even if just a bit.”

“We came together in the room [the Afrobunker] and offered everyone a character: lawyer, Christian, Candomblé practitioner, teenager, fireman, YouTuber, street vendor… So we built an environment where there was diversity. The idea was conducting a one-day creative laboratory with these actors, imagining what would happen if the executive order was really installed and this neoquilombo really existed. How would each character behave in this environment, in this hideout?”

About the author
Actor, TV host, director and writer Lázaro Ramos has accumulated over 30 movies, 30 plays and another 15 important television characters in more than 20 years of work. As a writer, he became a national best-seller with Na minha pele (2017), and has also published children’s books. He’s currently working as a showrunner with the Amazon Prime streaming service, conducting various projects as a director, host and actor, once again proving he’s one of the most plural and important names in Brazilian art.

Specifications
Title Medida provisória: Diário do diretor (Executive Order: Director’s Journal)
Author Lázaro Ramos
Language Portuguese
Pagecount 104
ISBN 978-65-5691-064-2
Cover Daniel Trench
Size 14 x 21 cm
Format Softcover
Year 2022
CDD 791.430233