PAU BRASIL : JE VINDT NIET, WAT JE ZOEKT

’You don’t find what you’re looking for’ is a phrase that can be found on a work of art by Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles. In their work, Meireles and several other contemporary Brazilian artists, continually give expression to the formal and social tension in which Brazilian culture finds itself. How can one describe the cultural identity of a country like Brasil, where that identity is based on a mixture of the most diverse cultures? What are the artists looking for, and what are we looking for? Showing works by, among others, Chico Buarque, Blaise Cendrars, Marcelo Cipis, Lygia Clark and Oswald de Andrade, this documentary by Jef Cornelis and Chris Dercon is an attempt to penetrate into 500 years of Brazilian culture.