I watch to the end, utterly captured by it. The midcentury dystopia of it. Those baby masks. I’m at art college at the time, doing a foundation course which I’m not loving. I am doing well with the essays about art history though. And I need to pick my degree. 2/5
After watching Brazil on an interference-fuzzy TV screen, I look again at the UCAS guide. And I think about how much I enjoyed working at a cinema when I was at sixth form college. Watching how people reacted, en masse, to films. How films *made* people react. 3/5
Just two polytechnics offer degrees in the history of art *and* film. And both courses also ask you to study the history of design. I apply. I get a place. I plan to focus on art and film. 4/5
I discover I love studying the history of design, way more than history of art. (I did my thesis in film history though). Several decades on, and I’m a writer. I’m even writing about modernist architecture. Other choices led me here: but Brazil was the film that diverted me onto this path. 5/5