Zózimo Bulbul (1937-2013) was a film director and actor. He played the first Black lead in a Brazilian soap opera. He took part in the Cinema Novo movement, acting in some of the major productions of the time. A pioneer in all the artistic fronts he worked on, he refused to play stereotyped roles, although racism surrounded his career and restricted many of his movements. Possibly the most emblematic case is the film Compasso de espera [Waiting] (1969), by Antunes Filho, in which he played a middle-class Black man who becomes involved with a white woman, maintaining an interracial relationship disapproved of by everyone – including the censors of Brazilian military dictatorship, who did not allow the film to be distributed.

Zózimo is considered the “creator” of Brazilian Black cinema, not because he was the first (other Black directors produced films in Brazil before him), but because of his inaugural gesture and proposition in his short film Alma no olho [Soul in the Eye] (1973). It’s worth mentioning the film’s experimentalism, with the director himself acting, accompanied by the music of John Coltrane, recounting in a performative way the history of Black people on the American continent from the perspective of Blackness. The film laid the foundations for Black auteur cinema in Brazil, based on the concept of Black people directing and scripting their narratives in order to get their points of view and stories into print.

In the midst of the military dictatorship, the film had numerous problems with the censors. The director was made to give evidence and was questioned about scenes in the film that were considered left-wing. For this reason, in 1974, Zózimo decided to leave the country, taking a copy of the film with him and presenting it internationally. He returned to Brazil in 1977. He continued to create works throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mostly producing short films. The best known is the emblematic Abolição [Abolition] (1988), a long narrative that uses research material and testimonies to discuss the end of slavery in Brazil, social exclusion, and the resistance of the Black population.

In 2007, after a trip to Toulouse, France, Zózimo realized that it would be necessary to create his own exhibition spaces so that his films could be seen, since there were no exhibition venues willing to host his work. This led to a concern to collectively articulate ways of promoting and popularizing Black, African, and diasporic audiovisual production. This is how the Centro Afro-Carioca de Cinema [Afro-Carioca Film Center] came about, a place for the presentation and discussion of Black filmmakers.

Following the concerns of its founder and a quilombista becoming, the Center has become a space for memory and the conception of a Black aesthetic in Brazilian cinema, responsible for the Encontros de Cinema Negro – Brasil, África & Caribe [Black Cinema Meetings – Brazil, Africa, & Caribbean], currently in its 17th edition. It is estimated that more than 1.500 works by filmmakers from Africa, the Caribbean, and Brazil have been screened, with a focus on promoting the films rather than competition.