His camera trained itself on Brazil's most difficult histories
Com a morte de Silvio Da-Rin aos setenta e sete anos, o cinema brasileiro perde uma das vozes que se recusou a desviar o olhar das feridas mais profundas da nação. Ao longo de mais de cinco décadas, ele transitou entre a técnica, a direção e a política cultural, deixando em cada papel a marca de quem acreditava que a memória é um ato de resistência. Seu trabalho mais célebre, Hércules 56, transformou o sequestro de um embaixador em 1969 numa meditação sobre o preço da luta — e sobre o que um povo escolhe lembrar.
- Após meses de hospitalização, Silvio Da-Rin morreu na quinta-feira sem que a família revelasse a causa, deixando um vazio no coração do cinema documental brasileiro.
- Sua trajetória — de técnico de som nos anos 1970 a secretário de audiovisual do governo Lula — revela a tensão entre criar arte e construir as estruturas que permitem que ela exista.
- Hércules 56, lançado quando ele tinha sessenta e oito anos, reabriu uma das cicatrizes mais vivas da ditadura militar, dando voz tanto aos guerrilheiros quanto aos presos políticos libertados em troca do embaixador americano.
- Seu funeral no cemitério São Francisco de Paula, no Rio, marca o encerramento de uma vida que tocou mais de 150 filmes — mas a continuidade dessa missão já vive na obra de sua filha, a cineasta Maya Da-Rin.
Silvio Da-Rin morreu na quinta-feira, aos setenta e sete anos, depois de meses hospitalizado. Sua filha, a cineasta Maya Da-Rin, confirmou a morte; a causa não foi divulgada. Nascido no Rio de Janeiro, ele dedicou mais de cinco décadas ao cinema brasileiro em quase todas as funções que a profissão oferece.
Começou nos anos 1970 como técnico de som e só dirigiu seu primeiro filme em 1980 — Fênix, um curta sobre a resistência à ditadura militar. Nos anos seguintes vieram O Príncipe do Fogo, premiado em Gramado, e Igreja da Libertação, sobre a teologia da libertação no Brasil. Durante os anos 1990, continuou moldando o cinema nacional como engenheiro de som em produções de Sandra Werneck, Domingos Oliveira, Sergio Rezende e Zelito Viana.
Sua obra mais importante chegou tarde: em 2007, aos sessenta e oito anos, lançou Hércules 56, longa-metragem sobre o sequestro do embaixador americano Charles Burke Elbrick em 1969. Ao entrevistar os guerrilheiros que planejaram o sequestro e os presos políticos libertados em troca, Da-Rin transformou um episódio histórico numa reflexão sobre memória e resistência.
Fora das câmeras, presidiu a Federação dos Cineclubes e atuou como secretário do audiovisual no Ministério da Cultura de Gilberto Gil entre 2007 e 2010, influenciando a política cultural durante a expansão do governo Lula. Ao longo da vida, passou por mais de 150 filmes. Seu velório foi marcado para sexta-feira, 30 de janeiro, no cemitério São Francisco de Paula, no Rio.
Silvio Da-Rin, a filmmaker whose camera had trained itself on Brazil's most difficult histories, died on Thursday at seventy-seven. He had been hospitalized for months. His daughter, the filmmaker Maya Da-Rin, confirmed the death to journalists; the family did not disclose the cause.
He was born in Rio de Janeiro and spent more than five decades moving through Brazilian cinema in nearly every capacity it offered. He began in the 1970s as a sound technician, a role that would define much of his early work. In 1980, at forty-one, he directed his first film—a short called Fênix about resistance to the military dictatorship that had gripped the country. Four years later came O Príncipe do Fogo, a documentary about Febronio Índio do Brasil, a man convicted of multiple murders in the 1920s. The film won recognition at the Festival de Gramado. That same year, 1985, he made Igreja da Libertação, examining liberation theology as it took root in Brazil.
Throughout the 1990s, Da-Rin worked as a sound engineer on some of the decade's most significant Brazilian films. He shaped the audio landscape of Sandra Werneck's Pequeno Dicionário Amoroso, Domingos Oliveira's Amores, Sergio Rezende's Mauá - O Imperador e o Rei, and Zelito Viana's Villa-Lobos, Uma Vida de Paixão. But his defining work came late in his career. In 2007, at sixty-eight, he released Hércules 56, his first feature-length documentary. The film returned to one of Brazil's most searing moments: the 1969 kidnapping of American ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick by revolutionary guerrillas. Da-Rin interviewed the men who had orchestrated the abduction and the political prisoners who were freed in exchange for the diplomat's release. The film became his masterwork, a meditation on memory and the cost of resistance.
Beyond the camera, Da-Rin held significant institutional power in Brazilian cinema. He served as president of the Federation of Film Clubs and, between 2007 and 2010, as secretary of audiovisual affairs in the Culture Ministry under Gilberto Gil. In that role, he shaped policy for the nation's film and media sectors during a period of cultural expansion under the Lula administration. He had touched more than 150 films across his lifetime—as technician, director, documentarian, and advocate.
His funeral was scheduled for Friday, January 30th, at São Francisco de Paula cemetery in Rio de Janeiro. He leaves behind a body of work that insisted on looking directly at what Brazil had lived through, and a daughter who continues that work in her own films.
Citações Notáveis
Da-Rin's daughter Maya Da-Rin confirmed his death to journalists; the family did not disclose the cause— Family statement
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does a sound technician become a documentarian? What draws someone to that shift?
Sound is about listening. You're trained to hear what's really there beneath the surface. When you move to directing, you're still listening—but now you're asking the questions too. Da-Rin spent decades in that listening position before he started asking.
His first film was about resistance to dictatorship. Was that a political choice, or just the story he needed to tell?
Both, probably. You don't make a film about military resistance in 1980 unless you've been shaped by it. Brazil was still raw. He was forty-one years old. That wasn't a young artist's provocation—it was someone who had lived through it speaking.
Hércules 56 came when he was already in his late sixties. Why wait so long for a feature?
Maybe because that particular story needed time. The ambassador's kidnapping happened in 1969. By 2007, enough distance had passed that the people involved could speak. And by then Da-Rin had the authority—the technical mastery, the institutional position—to make people listen.
He worked in government under Lula while still making films. How do you hold both?
You don't, really. You choose which one matters more in each moment. Da-Rin chose to use his government position to protect and expand space for filmmakers. That's a different kind of filmmaking—institutional, slower, less visible. But it shapes what gets made.
What does Brazil lose when someone like that dies?
A witness. Someone who had been there, who had listened carefully, who had the skill and the access to make others listen too. That's not easily replaced.