In the first minutes of Copan, by Brazilian director Carine Wallauer, we watch her observe her prior empty apartment. Letters on the screen explain where she is. The Copan building in downtown São Paulo is a monument of Brazilian modern architecture. Designed by the legendary Oscar Niemeyer, it is a celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of São Paulo. The building has thirty-five floors, a thousand and a hundred sixty apartments, and five thousand people living there. Besides being an icon in the city’s architecture with its concrete curves, the building works as a commercial center. Restaurants, stores, coffee shops, bookstores, and others are also in the building. Consequently, Wallauer uses her personal story as a starting point for investigating the multiple histories in the building. The director, who only directs her discourse to the audience in the opening scene, states how she got expelled from the apartment she had lived in for years. Hence, she dives into telling a few of those histories.
In the following scene, when the director enters a room in an open shot, we enter a large apartment with plenty of vinyl records and music equipment. It is the home of KL Jay, the legendary producer, DJ, and member of Racionais MCs, Brazil’s most influential rap group. He remixes urban music styles, such as Hip-Hop, in a vintage DJing deck, using two vinyls to mix the tracks. The scene teases us with the remainder of the project. The director is telling us micro-stories of multiple people living there. It is not a traditional storytelling with clear development in acts: beginning, middle, and ending. Instead, she offers glimpses of a couple of different interactions in the immense environment of Copan. Therefore, it focuses on political discussions, emphasizing the class disputes, such as the power held by the building administrator.
The observational style displayed in the film does not have room for direct interference. Other than the introductory moment, the director expresses herself through the camera. Wallauer is interested in the working-class on the copan: janitors, receptionists, and cleaning staff. We observe their daily conversations in tiring and poorly paid labor. Also, the documentary was filmed around the last presidential election in the country. Hence, the film captures the emotional heights of a polarized and close voting between the Labor Party (PT) and the Liberal Party (PL). The director’s cameras capture the class’s interest in maintaining their societal position. The lower class, represented by the working individuals, is campaigning for the return of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, a former president popular during his terms. It contrasts with the conservative residents who are voting for the fascist far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. It is a perspective that paints a grander picture of the diversity of the building, which is almost a city of its own.
The director also studies the harsh relationship between the residents and the administrative figure. He is an authoritarian and sees the Copan as a powerful project, once it has five thousand residents and high financial capability. In the most heated segment of the film, the director combines her filming in the room and Microsoft Teams footage to create a sense of the mood in the edifice meetings. It is a combative environment where inhabitants and their leadership clash. It is probably the most thrilling observation in the kaleidoscope of life that Wallauer documents. She provides a vivid remark on the living trait of the building. Hence, she looks for framing a political, mundane, and humanistic approach concerning the people there. The director films a sex worker while filming erotic content in one of the rooms of the one thousand apartments there. It is solely a representation of the diversity of histories in the Copan. In this sense, there is an inconsistency in the subjects. It is not all of them that appeal and provide much to her kaleidoscopic view of the concrete entity within the biggest metropolis of Latin America.
In her debut feature as a director, Carine Wallauer leaves her home, but films a memory piece on the monumental building in the heart of São Paulo. Copan is indeed flawed and does not land all of the subjects in engaging with different singular histories. However, it is still a compelling homage to the physical space where thousands of inhabitants had their life histories. The edifice hosts different professions, ideologies, and talents. More significantly, the Copan is an ideal building model, where residents have public spaces to sell, buy, and share experiences with others. Wallauer shares why she loved living in that space and documents it.
Copan recently screened at the It’s All True Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the official website for the title.
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