Jom Tob Azulay

Jom Tob Azulay[1] Filmmaker and diplomat, born in Rio de Janeiro (1941). From 1971 to 1974 serves as deputy-consul of Brazil in Los Angeles while attending courses in film technique, history and aesthetics at University of Southern California (UCS), UCLA and California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts). Becomes familiar with the technique and aesthetics of direct-cinema in 16mm, which at the time became dominant in the production of the Documentary and which he considers appropriate for the development of an independent cinema in Brazil, including fiction. In 1972 takes a course with Hollywood’s highly influential Slavko Vorkapich on Film as a Visual Art. In 1973, the experience of filming with Brazilian director of photography Fernando Duarte the recording of the LP Tom & Ellis will be decisive for the outcome of his future projects of musical documentaries in Brazil. In Los Angeles he is acquainted with the film Brazil: Report on Torture, a documentary about torture during the Brazilian military regime made in Chile by Haskell Wexler and Saul Landau (1971), which he helps to publicize clandestinely in Brazil and in the US. In 1975 he resigns for political reasons from the Ministry of Foreign Relations. Still in Los Angeles, he meets the Brazilian world-known filmmaker Alberto Cavalcanti (1897-1982) with whom he would later work influencing him in his conception of cinema. Returning to Brazil in 1974, he produces with the support of state-owned Embrafilme Um Homem e o Cinema (A Man and the Cinema, 1976), Cavalcanti`s last work, and makes his first films as photographer-director: the medium-length documentary Exu Mangueira (1975) and the short Euphrasia (1975). Both point to his future aesthetic and thematic inclinations: the immediate rouchian apprehension of reality of direct-cinema and the reconstitution of the historical past. In 1975, he is one of the first to use portable-video equipment (Portapak - ½ ") in Brazil, photographing video-art works by Rio de Janeiro's prominent plastic artists, as Annabela Geiger and Fernando Cochiaralli. His first feature films, The Sweet Barbarians (1978, included in ABRACINE's Hundred Best Documentaries of Brazilian Cinema) about famed Caetano Velloso, Maria Bethania, Gilberto Gil and Gal Costa and Heart Pounding Beat (1983), are musicals about pop music using direct-cinema technique. Heart Pounding Beat uses direct-cinema technique in a fictional comedy language in which two actors (Joel Barcellos and Regina Casé) improvise their dialogues as the real action - a Gilberto Gil tour from north to south of the country – takes place. The sound of the film in Dolby-Stereo, processed in Los Angeles, introduces this vital audio technology for the first time in Brazilian cinema. In 1993, he is the Brazilian producer of the ending of It's All True, unfinished film by Orson Welles, shot in 1942 in Brazil. In 1995, he releases O Judeu (The Jew), a historical film (18th Century), filmed in Portugal, first Portuguese-Brazilian official coproduction which he produces and directs with an international cast and technical crew. The Jew wins among others the prize of Best Movie at the 1995 Brasilia Film Festival and the HBO/Brazil (1996) award, as well as other national and international awards. Launched commercially in New York receives a positive review in the New York Times which critic Stephen Holden compares its photography, by the renowned Portuguese DP Eduardo Serra, to the painting of Caravaggio. This experience leads him to dedicate himself to the Portuguese-Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage as the thematic source for his future film projects, such as the film Estorvo by Ruy Guerra (1998), a Portuguese-Cuban-Brazilian coproduction of which he was delegate-producer. From 1999 to 2001, he works in public television (TVE and Multi-Rio) as director of programs and documentaries, while also teaches cinema at Estácio de Sá University. From 2002 to 2007, acts as Head of Strategic Affairs at the recently created National Agency of Cinema (ANCINE), in which he contributes significantly to the formulation and execution of the agency's international policy. He publishes texts and gives lectures in Brazil and abroad on cinematographic politics and culture, such as the article For a Cinematographic Policy for the 21st Century in The World Film Industry, organized by Alessandra Meleiro (Encontros Editora). He acts also as audiovisual thesis examiner for the course of the Rio-Branco Institute / MRE (2006). In 2010, he is reinstated in the diplomatic career by the Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Justice and assigned as cultural and audiovisual attaché to the Brazilian embassy in New Delhi, India.[2] In his works, Azulay seeks to convey critical thematic objectivity with an aesthetic audiovisual look such as in: Aide-Memoire - Paths of Brazilian Diplomacy (52 mins, 1997), first documentary on Brazilian diplomacy and foreign policy; Debret - A Watercolor of Brazil (29 min, 2000),ocumentary about the French painter Jean Baptiste Debret, BNDES Selection award using puppet characters mixed with sophisticated digital special effects; Portrait of Cavalcanti (25 min, 2010), documentary for Canal Brasil about Alberto Cavalcanti; Five Times Machado, tv series based on Brazil’s top writer Machado de Assis` short-stories of which he was producer and director apart from directing one of the episodes (Some Arms). This work used modern high-definition (HD) digital technology technique to attain a direct-cinema approach in the reconstitution of a 19th. Century historical time piece. Nowadays he is dedicated to the streaming production of the series Cartas Bahianas, once again a historical co-production with Portugal with screenplay by Millor Fernandes, Geraldo Carneiro and Ruy Guerra apart from also organizing reviews and preservation projects of his work and texts.