Leon Cakoff, creator of São Paulo International Film Festival (Mostra), dies at 63

One of the most important Brazilian personalities to promote cultural resistance during the national dictatorship in the 60s and 70s, Leon Cakoff, founder of the São Paulo International Film Festival (Mostra Internacional de Cinema), died this Friday, October, 14th due to complications after a melanoma diagnosis – a cancer that compromises the epithelial tissue. He was interned for almost two weeks at Hospital São José, in São Paulo.




Leon Cakoff was born Leon Chadarevian in Alepo, Syria, on June, 25 th, 1948. He immigrated to Brazil with his family when he was eight, and he graduated at the Politics and Sociology School in São Paulo. Due to a problem with the military government, he adopted the pseudonym Cakoff, which he never left.



Leon was married for 22 to Renata de Almeida, current Mostra’s director. She’s been running the festival by his side since its 13th edition. He leaves her two kids, Jonas and Thiago, in addition to his elder children, Pedro and Laura.



He started his career in 1969 as a journalist and later cinema critic at the Diários Associados newspaper. In 1974, he started directing the Cinema Department at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) and began programming exhibitions and movie cycles in the museum.



In order to celebrate the museum’s 30th anniversary, in 1977 Leon created the 1st São Paulo International Film Festival, with 16 features and 7 Brazilian and foreign short movies. In this first year one of the festival landmarks was created, the Audience award, which went to Lúcio Flávio, the Passenger of the Agony, by Hector Babenco. An issue from Jornal do Brasil registered that the festival was “The only place one could vote in the country” at that time.Since its first edition, Leon struggled against the censorship imposed by the Brazilian military government, bringing films into the country using the diplomatic luggage with the help from embassies and consulates. That’s how the festival exhibited featured movies all the way from China, Cuba, Soviet Union, France and the farthest lands.




From 1984 on, Leon left MASP and carried the event with him The 8th Mostra was marked by the strongest clashes against the censorship. Then the historical exhibition of Wim Wenders’ The State of Things happened at Cine Metrópole, on which ending he got onto stage to announce the Federal Order to close the cinema hall and the festival’s interruption. The fact reflected on several foreign newspapers and Leon was able to resume the projections four days later.



Great  moviemakers



During his 35 years at Mostra, Leon introduced in Brazil great authors’ movies, who otherwise wouldn’t ever be shown to the Brazilian audience. All these directors became his personal friends. One of them is Manoel de Oliveira, the oldest movie maker still working, at the age of 102, whose movies the festival regularly presents, since Doomed Love (3rd Mostra); the Iranian Abbas Kiarostami, who directed Taste of Cherry and Certified Copy and the Israeli Amos Gitai, director of Kadosh and Alila. All of them came to the festival for many times as special guests or for taking part as International Jury members.





Other great directors that were at the festival as special guests were Quentin Tarantino – presenting his first movie Reservoir Dogs (1992, 16th Mostra), the Spanish Pedro Almodóvar, who opened the 19th Mostra in 1995 with La Flor de mi Secreto; Dennis Hopper, American, who came to São Paulo in 1984 to present The Last Movie; Wim Wenders, who came to São Paulo for the 32nd and 34th Mostra; the Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, who worked with John Huston and Luís Buñuel – a special guest in 1995, 19th Mostra; the Iranian Jafar Panahi, who is kept in house arrestment by the Iranian government; the Serbian Emir Kusturica and the Finnish Aki Kaurismaki, among so many others.





Producer, director and writer





Leon Cakoff also produced important projects which great filmmakers. In 2004 he organized and released during the 28th Mostra the film Welcome to São Paulo, formed by short movies about the city, directed by 12 filmmakers – such as Caetano Veloso, Phillip Noyce, Maria de Medeiros, Daniela Thomas, Amos Gitai and Tsai Ming-Liang. He was also the producer for The Invisible World, feature film with short movies by Manoel de Oliveira, Wim Wenders and Atom Egoyan, among others, which will premiere at the 35th Mostra.





Leon also directed the short movies Volte Sempre Abbas (1999) and Dead Nature (2004), codirected with Renata de Almeida, and Waiting for Abbas (2004).

He wrote the books Gabriel Figueroa – O Mestre do Olhar, interviewing the Mexican cinematographer; We Still Have Time, telling travelling cinema chronicles; Cinema Without an Ending, telling the stories of the festivals’ 30 years and Manoel de Oliveira, a great interview with the Portuguese master.



Distribution and exhibition



Besides being a programmer and producer, Leon also worked on the pther side of the movies’ market. In the year 2000, with his partners Adhemar Oliveira, Patricia Durães and Renata de Almeida, he opened the distribution company Mais Filmes, specialized in authorial cinema. During the last years, he also ran Filmes da Mostra, with Renata de Almeida, releasing feature films (As Uncle Boonmee, Who Remembers His Past Life, winner of the Cannes Golden Palm) and also DVD collections in a partnership with Livraria Cultura.

He was also Adhemar’s partner at the movie halls Unibanco Arteplex, the first Brazilian exhibition hall to have art films on its programming.



STATEMENTS



“The story of the São Paulo International Film Festival is a report of a constant battle against censorship, arbitrary laws and the cultural neglect. It is, at least, a struggle for creating and preserving a collective memory” – Walter Salles, director of Cental Station and Motorcycle Diaries.
“I admire visionary people, who have a dream, the courage and determination to not only fulfilling it but not letting it vanish. It’s Leon’s case, who was the first of us to travel to the Cannes Festival (…), where the ideals of putting up a film festival in the city of São Paulo was first germinated – Rubens Ewald Filho, cinema critic.



“Continents and oceans are crossed to realize that, in a strange way, in the depths of the planet, a friend who belongs to a radically different culture than ours and speaks our language and speech at ease, even more than our countrymen. At Leon’s house (…) I’m surprised to see landscapes as familiar as those in my own country” - Abbas Kiarostami, Iranian Director, Taste of Cherry and Certified Copy.