Rua dos Anjos: Secrecy and self- revelation

Renata Ferraz's intention to make a documentary film in which she would learn about the experience of sex-work led to challenging situations. Advertising free sex in exchange for a photograph got no takers; in contrast Maria and Renata did accept the challenge of revealing personal issues in a film, and audiences responded sympathetically.

Secrecy was a major social issue. Her attempt to recruit men willing to exchange a shoot of their faces instead of cash as payment for a sexual service drew many replies. Married men would be risking conflict with their wife, as well as embarrassing their family and if their children's school friends somehow found out it would be a big scandal with the risk of social services investigating. But not one person accepted the offer, married or not.

Instead, Renata agreed that Maria would teach her the techniques of sex-work, what services to offer and how to seduce and arouse a client - in exchange for learning about film-camera techniques. This process was intense, and at one point in the film Maria challenged Renata to reveal something genuinely personal and serious that almost no-one else knew about. On the other hand, Renata was pleasantly surprised by the openness of film audiences to asking insightful and sympathetic questions.

The relations between love, sex and money, and the personal issuesof people who perhaps had been clients and felt they had betrayed their partners, are hovering around the questions.Watching a film in a cinema offers a collective intimacy in which one could imagine the film being followed by a workshop on social and personal issues.

The interview was first published in The Prisma Multicultural Newspaper and can be read in full with links and film stills here: https://theprisma.co.uk/2022/05/30/rua-dos-anjos-secrecy-and-self-revelation/