Marcelo Taranto

Marcelo Taranto was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 20th, 1956. He has been living in Flamengo, the same neighborhood since he was a child. Marcelo's mother Maria do Carmo was a painter, and his father Orlando Azevedo, an architect whose most famous work was the Maracanã soccer stadium, once the biggest in the world. Among the other four siblings, Marcelo grew up in a matriarchal family, having his grandmother as a role model. As a young boy, he was into sports like tennis, soccer and car racing. At the age of 17, Marcelo took car-racing classes with the Hollywood Cigarette team. Once his eldest brother, Francisco, traveled as a diplomat to the United States, Marcelo asked for a kart helmet as a present. However, his mother was concerned with the dangerous sport and secretly told Francisco not to buy it, and bring something else instead. When his brother came back, the present was a Super 8 camera. Despite being disappointed at first, Marcelo starts to film family events like his first contact with his future profession. In 1975, his grandmother Maria da Soledade, head of his family, passes away. This moment shifts the way Marcelo sees some aspects of life. From this moment on, these new perspectives become part of an artistic search. In his family's mountain house's garden, Marcelo would film the women statues covered by dark veils. Instinctively, he started capturing what would soon become his work's trademark: the search for meaning in death. A year later, at the age of 20, Marcelo met his wife Patricia Canepa through mutual friends. They have been living together since 1980 and have a daughter named Luisa Taranto. Patricia is an engineer. As for Luisa, she is a journalist who works with video editing and has already worked with her father a few times. 1976 was also the year Marcelo wrote his first screenplay, called "The Crisis" which discussed capitalism's decay. To join him in the project he invited a young movie director called Luciano Antonucci. In this first contact with the cinema community, Marcelo worked as a photographer and producer, and later he would focus on directing. After that, he enrolls in a Cinematographic Language course at the National Historic Museum in Rio, which encouraged him to apply for Social Communication college. The Social Communication faculty at the Catholic University of Rio covered other licenses beside Cinema, such as Journalism, Advertising, and Public Relations. While in college, Marcelo participated in a Direction and Photography for Cinema workshop with an American writer and director named Roy Carlson. What was a weekend workshop became a long-term course when Mr. Carlson decided to live in Rio de Janeiro. This was one of the most fundamental teachings Marcelo had about filmmaking. In 1977, Taranto was visiting Globo TV's journalism buildings with a friend, when both of them were invited to apply for a Camera Assistant course. A few months later, Taranto was hired for the position. Although he was working with news broadcasting, filmmaking was never left behind. In this same year, Taranto directed his first short film, "Circo das Ilusões" ("Circus of Illusions") which was selected for the Brasilia Film Festival and two years later for the San Sebastian Film Festival competitive in Spain. As a guest of the Festival, Taranto travels to Europe for the first time. Back in Brazil, and still working as a news cinematographer, he produced and directed his second short film, called "Sinal Vermelho" ("Red Light"). A bit more experienced, Taranto got together a team of well-known actors and shot "Red Light" in the streets of downtown Rio. A few years later, in 1983, Taranto had his first experiences in documentary working as a freelance correspondent for BBC in Brazil. In '84, he traveled to Los Angeles to cover the Olympic Games for Globo TV. After that, he left the Brazilian broadcast company to establish himself as a BBC producer and photographer correspondent. For a few years, he also freelanced for several foreign networks such as CBS News, ABC Australian, and PBS/National Geographic Explorer Series. For ten years, he eye-witnessed many historical moments of Brazil and filming in different locations all over the country, Taranto portrayed for the world crucial aspects of the Brazilian culture. In 1987, he registered his own company called MT Filmes and started directing and producing documentaries and TV commercials. After the massacres of Vigário Geral and Candelária that shocked the world, Marcelo Taranto directed a short film called "Ressurreição Brasil" ("Resurrection Brazil") to express his country's critical moment. Using the figure of Pietá to represent mother homeland and her children he paid a tribute to the victims of both tragedies. With this short film, he won his first award, the Margarida de Prata (Silver Daisy) given by the Bishops from Brazil National Confederation (CNBB). "Resurrection Brazil" participated in the 5th International Short Film Festival of São Paulo and the 16th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Cuba. In the early '90s, Taranto became interested in theatrical directing. He participated in a New Play Directors workshop and learned actors directing skills which he realized were useful for movies. In 1996, he directed Edward Albee's play, Zoo Story. Still, in the '90s, the well-known producer Alberto Graça (MPC Filmes) invited Taranto to direct a drama-documentary about Spiritism and its founder, Allan Kardec. The film has been seen throughout the world at religious conferences and translated to eight languages, including Esperanto. Despite being one of the first films about the doctrine, "The Spiritism" continues to be a reference for people interested in the matter. Finally, in 1998, Taranto wrote, produced, and directed his first feature film called "A Hora Marcada" ("Dealing with Death"). "Dealing with Death" was part of a cultural movement known as the Resumption of the Brazilian Cinema. The feature film was selected for the competition at Rio's International Film Festival in 2000. After years of work, it was time to pass on some knowledge. While working on the script of another feature film, the Catholic University, where Marcelo graduated, invited him to be a professor of the new Cinema faculty that was being created. Now, he has been teaching Film Directing and Cinematography for more than 10 years and has oriented more than 100 short fiction films produced by his students. In 2009 he was able to shoot his second feature film "Ponto Final" ("Full Stop') which he adapted from the play "Tudo Passageiro" written by his older brother Francisco Azevedo (the diplomat who later would become a writer). "Full Stop" was selected for the competition of the Gramado International Film Festival in 2011. In 2010, the producer Roberto Faissal Jr. (Cinemar) invited Marcelo Taranto to direct the shooting of the musical performance from a documentary about the famous Brazilian composer Noel Rosa. The film participated in many festivals and won several awards. Always concerned with social issues, Taranto makes the last moments of a dying drug dealer the story of his most recent short film. Reflecting on death and life in Rio's slums the film called "Esgoto a Céu Aberto ("Open Sewage") premiered in 2014's Rio International Film Festival. Despite having written all his films' screenplays, Taranto wanted to get deeper into this kind of writing. For that, he completed a Master's Degree in Screenplay by the Universidad de La Laguna, Spain, in 2015. In 2020, he was invited to be part of a film project that celebrates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which resulted in the production of "9876543210". At the present moment (2020), he is working on his third feature film "Leaves of Life".