"A Curva do Rio" (The River Bend") presents a brief history on the importance of the city of Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro, best know for the implementation of the
CSN (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional), one of the largest mettalurigic in Latin America, providing thousands of jobs in the area and becoming one of the major steel
export in the world.
The short documentary shows a little about the story of the place, that expaned in a great manner during World War II when U. S. helped Brazil in financing several
industrial complexes after Vargas government declaring support to the Allied forces, and the Americans helped us build this steel facility in the early 1940's and also
planned the housing distribution for workers of the place which had a very Americanized pattern - yet the early houses didn't even had a bathroom inside. Many workers
from all regions of Brazil came to Volta Redonda in search of work and better life conditions, and the place evolved from then on.
While the information given is quite alright, the presentation is quite boring and ineffective - I fell asleep in two attempts and this only has like
10 minutes of running time. Since the Volta Redonda city hall and the director and researcher were all involved in this project along with three others revolving around
the metallurgical company and the city (which includes the 1984 and 1988 strikes at the CSN), the whole thing should be made into just one so viewers could get a wide
and better view of the city's importance in the nation as an economic source. But since it was split into four short films, all of them got weary presentations that are
quite hard to engage viewers (the one about the "accidental" death of a popular mayor was the best of the bunch). Still gets a thumbs up from me, since the slide-show
was interesting - the interviews were boring and there's a couple of workers who kept cutting each other off every time. Very distracting). 6/10.