This thread is a denunciation

[Captain Video]

I really believe that people from around the world should know what kind of a job the “administration” of the most important Latin American country is doing on the preservation of the country’s audiovisual History.

The first Brazilian and South American TV station was the TV Tupi channel 3 of São Paulo, which went on the air on September 18, 1950. The station went off the air on July, 18, 1980 along with several other stations that were part of the network it started. Since them the station archives – the cans of films and videotapes – were under the responsibility of “Cinemateca Brasileira” , an Institution that exists since 1946 and whose function is the preservation of motion picture and – in the particular case of TV Tupi – television History in Brazil. The “Cinemateca” is under the management of the Brazilian Federal Government.

This last Thursday, July 29, 2021, one of the Cinamateca’s warehouses caught fire and burned. Several, maybe thousands of itens burned, among them, as some preliminary reports indicate, are the files of the TV Tupi of São Paulo.

THIS WAS NOT AN UNAVOIDABLE TRAGEDY – For months now the employees of the Cinemateca have been denouncing the mismanagement of the Federal Government, it’s lack of interest in allocating the financial resources necessary for the proper care of the audiovisual files. Actually, since July of 2020 that specific warehouse was ABANDONED, and left without proper care and maintenance, even though the Federal Administration was warned to the risk to the files by institutions such as the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.

The government doesn’t care at all. The Secretary of Culture, mister Mario Frias, goes everyday to work with a firearm visibly tucked in his belt, something that brings back memories of Joseph Goebbels. Which is not surprising, since the President of Brazil himself, Jair Bolsonaro, a few days ago, warmly received in his office a congresswoman from the fascist German party Alternative fuer Deutschland. Bolsonaro and his cronies are more interested in doing far right politics than on effectively manage the country and it’s needs. Almost every day he threatens to tear the Constitution and cancel next year’s Presidential election. He and the people around him are fascists who feel extreme contempt for the Arts, Culture and preservation of the Historical past. And now, thanks to this, Brazilian and South American television memory suffered an irrecoverable loss.