Rachel Markus, Director of Kicking & Screening,  sent us interviews with several of the  filmmakers whose work is being shown as part of the Kicking & Screening Soccer Film Fest at MASS MoCA on April 23 & 24. First up is Leonardo Cunha Lima, director of “Mauro Shampoo: Soccer Player Hairdresser and Macho,� screening as part of the Soccer Shorts on April 24.

How did you find out about Mauro Shampoo?

It is an interesting tale because I was borne in Recife, the city where Mauro and the Ibis football team are from. But I had never heard about them while I lived there. During the 80’s when Ibis became famous for loosing during three consecutive years, I was in England where my parents were doing their PhDs. Later I moved to Rio de Janeiro to attend film school, and one night I was telling a friend about what kind of film I would like to make. Tim Burton had just made his Ed Wood film about the worst American filmmaker, and I told this friend that the right thing to do would be to make a film about football as its the only thing that all Brazilians love, but that I would not be keen to make a film about the best Brazilian team or player or the World Cup, like the films that everyone else was making. My football film would be about the worst team ever. My friend then just smiled and said, yeah like making a film about Ibis would be funny. That was the first time I heard about the team. When I urged him to tell me more about Ibis, the story just blew by mind. Here was a perfect subject for a documentary about Brazil and football, a rather funny and at the same time moving picture about the true Brazil and as it would be about football everyone, would be interested in seeing it. I could not believe that no one had ever done a documentary about it yet. At the time I was living in Rio de Janeiro, which was very far from Recife, so I waited for the right time to be able to go back to Recife to make the film. This little wait took around 10 years, and in the meantime I meet Paulo and for whom I worked as an AD in a short film and when I told about the Ibis project we decided to make it together.

We first heard about Mauro Thorp while viewing old Globo News broadcasts about the Ibis as research material for the feature documentary we intended to make about the team. Mauro Shampoo was incredibly funny, and we realized we had our star for the feature. In the end we were not able to lock down the financing to make a feature film. That’s when I told Paulo that we should just go to Recife by ourselves to make the necessary connections and conduct on-site research about the team as we were dealing with an utterly unwritten history. My main idea was actually to make a short film along side the research thereby making the unfinanced trip worthwhile. By shooting a short film about Mauro Shampoo, which later we could use as part of the feature film and the possible subsequent success of the short in international film festivals could be used to get funding for the feature documentary about the Ibis Sport Club. I arrived in Recife and took a borrowed camera to film the preliminary interview with Mauro, just so we would have an audio record of his story to later plan the film around it. But this first interview was so electrifying that we could not recreate that first spark again, so most of the film’s scenes of him in his barber salon talking to the camera were taken from that very first meeting.

Coming from the country of so many football superstars, what drew you to Mauro’s story?

Mauro’s personality is unique, but his story is not. It’s just that most people want to hear the story about the winner, about the superhero. That is the kind of film about soccer that is usually made. I was not so interested in that, mainly because it has been done to death.  Also there is the idealist in me that sees the perpetuation of this myth of the winner in a country of millions of losers as a small ethical crime. I did not want to contribute a verse to that particular quire. Mauro’s story also had something that I find particularly interesting when I see it in documentaries, a sense of the irony of life. After all, this is a film about a man that turned the otherwise catastrophic fact of his failure into a positive thing. And his ultimate goal of becoming famous was accomplished in a completely unexpected upside-down way. And of course there is the fact that I believe that Mauro’s story expresses a love for the game much greater then any love of winning. That is actually the beautiful legacy of the Ibis Sport Clube, it is a living example of pure love of the game. From its players to its supporters it requires a relentless adoration and a profound understanding of football as something that transcends any victory or super stardom. In essence, Brazil is a country that would love football just as much if it had never won any game at the World Cup. The persistence of Ibis is the proof of this love.

Do you see any similarities between football and film? Is there something about the sport, the passion for the sport, that is captured so well on film?

I am not sure that football is captured well on film, though the passion is pretty well shown in films. This may be because film is an emotional media and a sport such as football concentrates people’s passions so overtly that film cannot help but capture it.

I guess many parallels can be made between many sports and films, precisely because it both things deal with emotion and they also have a spectatorship element. To play football can be said to be like shooting a film as it’s a team effort which is only compensated at the moment of the goal. The amount of energy that is related to the ball and the goal is similar to the amount of concentration that is invested in each shot. I can exemplify with a situation in Mauro Shampoo, We were filming Mauro for over 3 weeks and we still did not have a moment that could be considered the emotional peak of the film. Mauro had not once really let us into his merry façade. So we were beyond talking to him about soccer and Ibis, we were interviewing his family members and showing his private life. When we got to interview his mother we knew that that would have been a great opportunity to talk about his father who had deceased many years earlier. So I was holding the camera while Paulo asked him about his time as a street kid. We were waiting for that moment where the tears would come cascading. But it would never come. So Paulo finally asked Mauro what would he say to his father if he could see him now, and that is what triggered the very emotional moment in the end of the film where Mauro narrates in tears how proud he should be. That was a goal for us, the filmmakers, and like in a soccer game there are not too many of them during the mach. It’s different from basketball where points are won every 15 seconds. In football if you have one great goal during the game that is enough for a lifetime. In a way the same goes for film. One great celluloid emotional moment is immortal.

Why do you think Mauro has become so popular?

Well, to be honest Mauro was already kind of popular before we ever got to him. It’s just that after the film he became really quite famous nationwide. I believe that there are a couple of factors that made this so. Fist off, the way we portrayed him in the film was very different than how he used to be treated by the media. While he was shown as a buffoon who played very bad soccer, we showed him in a very different light.

He is peculiarly endowed with heroic underdog characteristics that make him an iconic urban legend and a symbol of Brazil. His personal story serves as the perfect counter balance for success stories like Pele, Zico and the Ronaldinhos out there. After all most Brazilians will become Mauro Shampoos, and only a few will ever see the glories of a Ronaldo. So Mauro is the perfect role model for failing with dignity and pride, but to still succeed in those things that really matter in life. So the film we made was not to mock fun at the loser clown, but a sort of homage to a dream and an upside-down success story that resonates with the reality of so many Brazilians that suffer throughout their lives to have what Mauro has, which is a loving family, his own business and the respect of his community. What more could a man wish for? Also I think he has a very approachable and open personality which makes him impossible not to like. His crazy earnestness is not a con, and I think people can tell that he is sincere.

The other coincidence may be the Lula phenomenon. Since Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won the elections for the Brazilian presidency the whole ideal of the Brazilian underdog has captured the nation’s imagination in a big way. Mauro is a sort of Lula in as much as both have come from Pernambuco’s poor community and have become known throughout the nation by earnestly following their dreams. It is true that one became the nation’s president while the other is known for being the worst football player in the world, but perhaps for the fame crazed television viewer that is only a technicality.

Are you planning to make any more football-themed films?

Actually, my main goal of making a film about Ibis Sport Clube is still a big desire. That would be a feature film about true love of the game, showing the other side of the Brazilian football, the lost dreams and the millions who hope to become an international superstar athlete like Pele, but who rarely make the cut. Mauro is obviously the positive take on this theme, but I think it is important to show that people play football not just for those uber dreams, but also out of a genuine pure love of the game.

Of course, I do have other ideas for films, which do not deal with the Ibis Sport Clube mythology. My cinematographic interest in the game tends to tackle the subject from different angles then have been done before. I think there is a great film to be made about Brazil’s coaches over the years, as opposed to the players. After all football has a great deal of strategy and politics that is hardily discussed in films about the game. A film about referees is also a cool theme, specially discussing the problem of violence against them and corruption; there are many stories to be told about that. These ideas can also be a lot of fun to watch, I really think that such background stories have hardly ever been discussed on film and it is also in the public’s interest.

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