Elemental World Cinema Book Launch & ScreeningCinematic Entanglements of Earth, Fire, Water and Air with book’s co-editor & film scholar Tiago de Luca
3 October 2025 | UCL, One Pool Street
To mark the publication of Elemental World Cinema: Cinematic Entanglements of Earth, Fire, Water and Air (Brill), Cinema Mentiré invites you to a programme of contemporary Latin American short films exploring the four classical elements. An edited collection, Elemental World Cinema is the first book-length study to examine the relationship between cinema and the elemental. Rejecting the abstract and overused concept of ‘nature’, the volume centres instead on earth, fire, water and air to offer more concrete and specific perspectives on the intersection of film and the nonhuman in a time of climate emergency.
Hailing from Chile, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, the selected shorts span fiction, documentary and experimental film. In them, earth, fire, water and air emerge not only as visually enticing forms but also as powerful lenses through which to reflect critically on some of the most pressing issues of our time, including Indigenous land displacement, resource extraction, and the ongoing legacies of slavery and colonialism. Together, the films offer a rich meditation on the entanglement of the human and the nonhuman, social and physical environments, and the cosmic and the geological.
The screenings will be preceded by a conversation with the book’s co-editor, Dr Tiago de Luca. This event is supported by the University of Warwick.
3 October 2025 | UCL, One Pool Street
ROAD TO CRIME
NA SENDA DO CRIME
Dir. Flamínio Bollini Cerri, Brazil, 1954, 71 min.
Sergio works as a mere employee at his rich uncle’s bank, leading a wasteful life in nightclubs and dating the sophisticated starlet Margot. Greedy and unhappy with this situation, he joins a trio of burglars to rob wealthy homes, later becoming the gang’s leader.
Road to Crime stands out as the one-of-a-kind noir entry into Brazilian cinema, which makes this notable work even more special with its tale of inferiority complex, pettiness and ambition that leads to criminality and consequent decay. Produced by Vera Cruz Cinema Company, an attempt to copy the Hollywood studio system in the burgeoning São Paulo as the upcoming biggest and richest city in South America, the film displays the faster growth of the metropolis at its time on several skyscrapers under construction, including the iconic final scene.
This was also the first film by Flamínio Bollini, an incredibly young theatre director from Italy, who was joined by fellow countryman screenwriter Fábio Carpi (a future Dino Risi collaborator) and the accomplished British cinematographer Chick Fowle in this Brazilian cinema landmark.
