Paulo Francis

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Franz Paul Trannin da Matta Heilborn, also know as Paulo Francis (Rio de Janeiro, september 2, 1930 — New York, february 4, 1997), was a Brazilian journalist, political pundit, novelist and critic of theater, cinema, literature.

He always was appreciated for his very colloquial style which was tempered with irony and sarcasm.

Paulo Francis was educated in traditional Catholic colleges of Rio de Janeiro, and he studied in National School of Philosophy at the University of Brazil in the fifties. As an amateur actor, still at University of Brazil, he travalled to the states of North and Northeast of Brazil, and he was impressed and shocked with misery in these Brazilian states. Until his death he spoke with emotion on that travel.

After that travel, Paulo Francis went to University of Columbia in New York to take a course of post-graduate in Dramatic Literature. In that university, he had as Professor Eric Bentley, a famous specialist in Bertolt Brecht. He didn’t complete the course, but he acquired cultural knowledge and intellectual self-confidence, two personal qualities that always characterized his texts.

In 1957, Paulo Francis started to write in Brazilian media, as a theater critic, in Diário Carioca. He soon became famous by his verbal aggressiveness, irony and intelligence. In 1963, he was invited to sign a political column in Ultima Hora. At that time, Paulo Francis supported the far Left.

In 1964 Brazilian leftist President João Goulart was deposed by the Brazilian Armed Forces, and many Brazilian leftists were persecuted. Paulo Francis lost space in the Brazilian media and began writing to marginal newspapers and magazines. He was arrested several times, for political reasons.

In 1971, Paulo Francis was living in New York to escape from political persecution, and he became an international correspondent. A few years later, Francis became a celebrity again, and worked for Folha de São Paulo, one of the major Brazilian newspapers.

In 1977 Paulo Francis tried to be a novelist and published a novel named Paper Head (Cabeça de Papel). In 1979 he published Blackman Head (Cabeça de Negro). His novels, although of pleasant reading, didn’t enable him to live as a famous writer, and he withdrew from his career as fiction writer.

Living in a developed country and adiquiring matureness, bit by bit Paulo Francis abandoned his former radicalism. He was considered too conservative by many Brazilian intellectuals, but his views were closer to the Centrism than to the far Right, in the American context. The Americans wouldn’t consider "conservative" an atheist pro globalism, person who was against the censorship of pornography and pro-abortion in some cases. In Brazil, however, Paulo Francis was considered a far-right extremist, what shows the intensity of leftism in the Brazilian culture.

Paulo Francis was attacked by many of his former comrades, and he was involved in many controversies and acquired fame as the most polemic Brazilian journalist. The last polemic act which Paulo Francis was involved in was to attack Petrobras’ management as dishonest. After Francis’ statements Petrobras’ management sued Paulo Francis, what provoked the heart attack that killed Francis. He died in New York, on February 4, 1997, and he was buried in Rio de Janeiro, a few days later.


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