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19/6/1898: Brazil's First Films
Brazil's first moving pictures were filmed on the 19th June 1898, at Guanabara Bay by an Italian immigrant named Afonso Segreto. Segreto was born in San Martino de Cileno and arrived in Rio de Janeiro with his brother Paschoal in 1897. The brothers brought with them films of their country which Paschoal had exhibited at the Hall of Novelties in Paris. On the 31st of July 1897, Paschoal opened Brazil's first film house in Rio de Janeiro; it was to be the first of many he would own in Rio and, to a smaller degree, in Sao Paulo.
In 1898, Afonso embarked on an expedition to Europe to purchase new equipment and shoot further scenes of his homeland for exhibition. On the 19th June he returned with a Lumiere Cinematographe, with which he shot the first images of Brazil, mostly scenes of the warships and fortresses in the bay as the ship he was on, the French Brésil, pulled into port.
Ten days later, on the 29th, Afonso captured on film the third anniversary commemoration of Marshal Floriano Peixoto and, six days after that, the arrival of Presidente Prudente de Morais at the Maine Arsenal. These films were to be the first of a huge number of actualities filmed by Afonso over the next few years, which helped to consolidate the Segreto brothers' position as the country's most prominent film pioneers.
Sources: Embassy of Brazil website.; Who's Who of Victorian Cinema.
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