Paraty International Literary Festival starts, in Rio de Janeiro

Starting today (Jul 26), the city of Paraty, in Rio de Janeiro state, is hosting the 15th edition of the Paraty International Literary Festival (Flip). For five days, writers, actors, and scholars will meet to debate and interpret the work of Brazilian writer Lima Barret, the honoree his year. The round table “Lima Barreto: a Sad Visionary” marks the kickoff of the event.

At the opening ceremony, pianist André Mehmari is to execute Suíte Policarpo, a piece composed for the event, inspired in the world of Policarpo Quaresma, a character from one of Barreto's novels.

To the judgment of Paraty's Secretary for Culture Cristina Maseda, Flip is “of the utmost importance. It's been 15 years since the city started hosting the literary festival. The impact on the cultural life and the acknowledgment of Paraty as a major destination for culture—a city where culture is stands out among the other sectors—is remarkable,” she said.

Maseda noted that, in addition to Flip, Paraty hosts music, photography festivals, as well as other celebrations that bring the historic city on the coast of Rio de Janeiro under the spotlight among the Brazilian cities with fewer than 50 thousand inhabitants.

Part of the festival's legacy are Flipinha, which focuses on children and teenagers, and Flipzona, which aims to encourage reading and cultural production on new media, makes a significant impact on the population's reading rate, Maseda declared.

Today, all local schools have high-quality literature archives for children and adolescents. “Children have been reading more, there's reading time in schools, and literature in the city has been given a special value.” There was not a single book for children in the city before Flip, she said.

Honoree

Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto was born in Rio de Janeiro, on May 13, 1881. According to Flip 2017 curator Joselia Aguiar, his oeuvre and life make a number of debates on Brazilian society.

“My one big wish is to see Flip contributing to bringing to the limelight the great author he is. In addition to major issues about the country he helps bring up, he has an inventive and interesting literary expression, ahead of his time in formal terms, and capable of inspiring a whole literary generation in Portuguese-language literature,” Aguiar writes on Flip's website.

The festival is slated to end on Sunday, July 30. The program is available on www.flip.org.br.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira