Filmmaker Fernanda Faya explores a lost part of her family’s past in Neirud
NEIRUD (Fernanda Faya, 2023)
Available online through November 26
Festival runs November 8-26 at IFC Center, SVA Theatre, Village East by Angelika, and Bar Veloce, $13-$30
www.docnyc.net
www.neirudfilm.com
“Who was Neirud?” Brazilian filmmaker Fernanda Faya asks in her poignant documentary, Neirud, making its international premiere at DOC NYC.
When Fernanda was an infant, her father, Edgard, bought a camcorder, taking lots of home movies of her. When she got older, Faya because curious about the woman she knew as her aunt, Élida Neirud dos Santos, who was best friends with Edgard’s mother, Grandma Nely. Faya’s mother was Jewish, and her father came from a nomadic Roma circus clan; Neirud was Black.
One afternoon, long after Nely’s death, Faya starts asking Neirud about her life. Neirud, was born in 1935 in São Francisco de Assis in Rio Grande do Sul, what Faya describes as Brazil’s whitest region, then raised in Livramento. Her parents sent her to live with a white family, where she was responsible for all the chores.
Neirud ran away when she was eight and became a nanny in Porto Alegre. When she was twelve, she joined the Great Circus Real Palassius. Fascinated by what she has learned in just a few minutes, Faya tells Neirud that she wants to conduct a more in-depth interview. Unfortunately, Neirud passed away a few months later, in 2014.
Neirud had left nothing behind; her apartment was empty: no clothes, no photos, no notebooks or journals. So Faya began a nearly ten-year-journey to find out everything she could about Nely, Neirud, and the circus, where the two women had met and where Neirud developed into an intimidating circus wrestler known as Mulher Gorila.
“I never really understood what they did, so in my mind, Aunt Neirud became a superhero, and Gorilla Woman, her circus persona, was her secret identity,” Faya says in voice-over narration. “Aunt Neirud became the only living memory of this circus history.”
The more Faya digs, the more she uncovers, unraveling the mystery of her aunt and grandmother. The story involves homosexuality, a military coup, racism, the church, and colorful balls on the beach.
Featuring a score by Brazilian guitarist and composer Chico Pinheiro, Neirud is a bittersweet documentary. Because of the whitewashing of history and selective memory, Faya (One for the Road) only knew so much about her family, and it’s a shame that she didn’t know more about her grandmother and aunt while they were still alive. At the same time, it is exciting to follow her as the truths slowly emerge and their beautiful, complicated, and important stories are told at last.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]