Vaz’s first film, made as a student at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Sacris Pulso deconstructs the personally intertwined myths of origins of the foundation of her native city Brasília and her own birth. Vaz had not consciously set out to be a filmmaker; Sacris Pulso developed from her studies on Australian experimental cinema, in particular the films by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill and Dirk de Bruyn’s work on trauma. In the process, Vaz found herself making a found footage film inhabited by the presences of her mother and father, who met during the making of Brasiliários (1986) by Zuleika Porto and Sérgio Bazi. Sacris Pulso starts by quoting Euripides’ Medea — “I will begin at the beginning”– and reappropriates scenes from Brasiliários.
