An intriguing film set in Brazil, first shown last year at the CPH:DOX documentary festival in Copenhagen, in which expatriate Danish film-maker Sissel Morell Dargis takes a look at a unique grassroots cultural phenomenon: the baloeiros, the ballooners. These are groups of young men, as secretive and loyal to each other as Freemasons, who (illegally) build and release huge decorated balloons in cities, from where they can travel hundreds of miles. Why? As kind of graffiti, or a community self-expression, or situationist artform, or just a subversive gesture of pure joie de vivre that does not need or admit of any explanation.
The baloeiros are harassed by the police, on the ostensible grounds that they are part of gang culture, and the authorities encourage local people to inform on those they suspect of building and transporting a balloon. But baloeiros are cheerfully committed to their own kind of public-access artistry. The balloons show colossal images of Sly Stallone and Luciano Pavarotti – aspirational role models and pop culture icons. As Dargis says: “A flying balloon belongs to everyone, even the police.”
Perhaps the authorities’ attitude is more irrational and dysfunctional than they will admit; when the police can’t catch the criminals, they criminalise the people they can catch. The Brazilian state could be just collectively and spitefully infuriated by a communal activity which exists outside their control and which consumes their attention while serious criminals continue to ply their trade. The ballooners themselves have something of the ethos of surfers and skateboarders – and even the flâneurs of belle époque Paris. It’s a way of life, a cultivation of pure pleasure.
• Balomania is at Bertha DocHouse, London from 4 April.
