Paraty Literary Festival Pays Tribute to Brazilian Writer and Journalist Millôr Fernandes

07/31/2014 - 08h56

Wednesday (30) marked the start of the 12th annual Paraty International Literary Festival (FLIP, in its Portuguese acronym).

This year, the festival pays homage to Millôr Fernandes (1923-2012), a prominent name in Brazilian journalism and arts.

The festival runs until August 3, and brings together some of the biggest names in both Brazilian and world culture.

As well as literature, there is comedy, music, art, architecture and political discussion.

There are also unofficial events occurring simultaneously in Paraty, offering alternatives to the official program.

MILLÔR FERNANDES

Fernandes was born in Rio de Janeiro on August 23, 1923. Multi-talented, he wrote poetry, prose and plays, drew cartoons and translated a range of works from Shakespeare to Arthur Miller.

He worked at several newspapers, and published more than 50 books from 1946.

He was one of the founders of the magazine Pif-Paf. Although only eight issues were published, it is considered a key influence on the Brazilian alternative media.

He also collaborated on O Pasquim, a magazine known for its opposition to the military dictatorship.

He wrote plays such as Liberdade, Liberdade (1950), in partnership with Flávio Rangel, an example of protest theatre which criticized the repressive measures imposed by the military regime. Indeed, his satire was to land him in trouble with the authorities on more than one occasion.

President Juscelino Kubitschek was offended by a joke about the First Lady on Fernandes' Treze Lições de um Ignorante on TV Tupi Rio, and censored the show. Likewise, the military government was enraged by O Pasquim.

He wrote a weekly column for Folha between July 2000 and August 2001. During this time he was sued by the congressman Aldo Rebelo (Communist Party of Brazil), who was incensed by an article Fernandes wrote about his proposal to limit the use of foreign expressions in Portuguese.

Fernandes wrote that Rebelo's idea was an "idioletice", a play on the Portuguese words 'idioleto' (in English, idiolect: an individual's distinctive and unique use of language) and "idiotice", meaning something characteristic of an idiot.

Translated by TOM GATEHOUSE

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