In What is it Worth? the Brazilian director tackles one of the greatest taboos of his home country: race relations. His film is loosely based on Machado de Assis’ story Father against Mother. With a polemic tone and dogged persistence, he provides an indictment of the neo-liberal values of contemporary Brazilian society. In separate vignettes, Bianchi provides an insight into how even the most progressive and open encounters between Brazilians from different ethnic backgrounds are filled with painful contradictions. The film compares social practices at the time of slavery with those of the pseudo-generosity of charitable institutions now, and rejects both of these resolutely. Slave-driver Candinho takes the fugitive, pregnant slave Arminda back to her master, after which she has a miscarriage. The director contrasts this with images of a contemporary urban Brazil, in which a marketing consultancy team discusses the donation of computers to a poor city neighbourhood. With this context, the director argues that those without prospects then are still in the same situation now. The only difference is that slavery used to be out in the open, while today charity cloaks the lack of honest relations with a misleading mantle of love. (PvH)
