Clarice

Scenes of the childhood of a girl, living in a small Brazilian town.

G.H., a well-to-do Rio sculptress, enters her maid’s room, sees a cockroach crawling out of the wardrobe, and, panicking, slams the door on it. But the sight of the dying insect provokes a mystical crisis.

Teresa is a black woman who suffers a racist insult from her boss, affected by the comment, she is unable to go to work. While Teresa remembers her past, a cockroach emerges from the bottom of her closet. From that moment on, Teresa will rethink her decisions and the things she left behind.

Documentary essay made from several cuts of interviews with Clarice Lispector and her family and friends in a visual poetic seam of adapted excerpts from her work.

The post-war guilt and horrific secrets of Nazi Germany serve as a backdrop to a disturbing mind game between a young anatomist and a prostitute in a small hotel room the first Christmas following the war.

Chronically unable to meet the right man, Flora Fairbanks falls in love with John Markham, a young artist, while vacationing in France, and believes that her run of bad luck has ended. The Countess Olga Tcherny, however, also loves John, and, as she spies on the couple, plots her revenge on Flora.

Susanne arranges a surprise party for her husband, and the guests are waiting back at the apartment. From their hiding places they hear Peter walking into the hall, and they await the signal from the party blower so they can jump out and cheer. But no signal comes. Because Peter is not alone.

Gubernatorial candidate Walter Croyden is in love with Beatrice, but he acts obnoxiously when he drinks, so she flees to Europe to re-evaluate the relationship.

The quiet life style of Ruth Heck and her brother Lem, who belong to a religious sect called the Seekers, is disrupted when a judge imprisons Lem for a crime he did not commit.

Jim Crosby, the product of a broken home, becomes a gangster and goes to prison. Meanwhile, Ann Payton, an heiress, converts a saloon into a mission. She is engaged to her father's secretary, Temple Vaughn, a gambler. Jim is released from prison and seeks shelter at the mission. Temple becomes indebted to gambler Phil Johnson and is forced to arrange a crooked poker game involving some of his wealthy friends. Jim overhears the plot and, realizing that Temple is Ann's fiancé, robs the poker game and puts a check Temple forged into Temple's own pocket.

Just before a big bout, Jimmie, a New York prize fighter, gets a lucky medal from his friend Billy. Herman Marlex, a chronic teller of tall tales informs Jimmie that the medal is really a royal one, worn by the infant Prince of Magonia when he was kidnapped years before. Then, on fight night, Jimmie is knocked senseless. On his way home, Magonian emissaries see him wearing the medal, and so haul him back to the "homeland." Despite his insisting that he is merely a boxer, Jimmie is hailed as the returning prince.

Author Max Zorn, now in his early 60s, is on a promotional book tour in New York when he encounters the woman he could never forget. They spend a weekend together, seventeen years have passed. Can there be a future for their past?

The story of a friendship in a city on the verge of substantial change. Miguel dreams of settling in New York while he waits for a visa that never seems to arrive, and Diego, a HIV-positive homosexual man, puts his dreams and cheerfulness to good use in his struggle to carry on enjoying every single day of his life from a rickety old bed in his small bedroom.

Brazil 1821. Upon his return to the imposing farmhouse, Antonio, a rich cattle herder, finds out that his wife dies in labor. Forced to live in the property with numerous African slaves, he marries his wife's niece. A restless soul, he returns to droving, leaving his young wife behind alone with the slaves.