A road undulates over desert mountains to the sound of the Indian music accompanying us. 'In the beginning, there was a flame and inside of it, life burns,' says the voiceover. Here, there is no sign of life. The automobile goes into a dark tunnel and emerges in the outskirts of a Brazilian town. To the (aggressive) sounds of rock music, we go through the suburb and its 'scenes of human destitution'. We enter a town of fettered humanity.

A woman throws a sheet of paper from the top of an immense, rundown greyish building. We follow its long plunge before the carefully aligned rows of windows, which reveals all the horror of these tower blocks built on top of each other.

'Waiting for a sign which connects us to ancient times,' says the voiceover, a sign which appears to be sought in a scene of voodoo where men move around a fire in a hypnotic trance. But this new magic, this new voodoo which the two artists describe to us are the media images now alternating on the screen. The omnipresent television, where we watch those who live and those who dire, which fascinates the gaze.

Here, the two artists are questioning Brazilian culture and its relationship to the media, as well as the attraction of television. Men filmed as they watch the television news, hypnotised by the images, give way to a child dying of hunger, then a mouth eating a hamburger. All the contradictions of the images impregnating the viewers' unconscious are revealed.

'It is midnight and the civilisation is sleeping. Only the electric sun is shining all around the Earth. No one will live and die in the same place. We are everywhere and we are nowhere. The puzzle is on the television screen', says the voiceover. 'The puzzle is in the flame.'

Two contradictory visions are presented: that of the origins of Brazilian culture, the flame which is still burning, that that conveyed by the media. The people watch the disaster of their life on the screen, the violence in the streets, the poverty.

Elodie Vouille
Translation: Miriam Rosen