Niterói: Art, History, and Guanabara Bay

Just a short walk from here is UFF's Gragoatá campus. It was at the Fluminense Federal University that Nelson Pereira dos Santos founded the university's Film Studies program, one of the first in Brazil. Nelson wasn't just a professor with his name on a plaque. He was one of the central figures of Cinema Novo, the movement that took the camera to the streets and basically said: maybe the real Brazil also deserves to be on screen.

The largest hall here is named after him. It has 490 seats and is used for cinema, theater, music, dance, and conventions. It's a hall big enough for a city that sometimes seems to underestimate its own cultural life.

In the late afternoon, when students leave class and make their way through Cantareira and Reserva Cultural, the building finally finds the audience it seemed to be waiting for.

There's also the project for the Brazilian Cinema Museum, connected to this complex and to the transformation of Cantareira into a hub for culture, innovation, and the creative economy. It's another attempt by Niterói to do what it often does: take a somewhat forgotten area and say, wait, this can still become something else.

Before you move on, if the café is open, head upstairs and take in the view. Guanabara Bay on one side, Cantareira Square just below, and UFF on the other. It's the perfect vantage point to understand the city after 1975, when Niterói lost its status as state capital and had to reinvent its image.

It could have chosen therapy. It chose Niemeyer.