The construction of the new capital of Brazil, Brasília, was marked by the exaltation of the performance of President Juscelino Kubitschek (JK), the architects Oscar Niemeyer, Lúcio Costa, and Burle Marx, and the candangos (construction workers), all men. Rarely have women been remembered or mentioned at this historic moment. Our documentary film project, titled Dust and Lipstick, began with the intention to interview fifty women who arrived in the early days of the city, between 1956 and 1960, recovering their memories while they were still alive. These women came from different social classes and cultural contexts, including migrants from different Brazilian regions as well as other countries (Japan, Syria, Spain, and Germany). They worked in various trades, as laundresses, teachers, cooks, sex workers, engineers, midwives, construction office administrators, and housewives, among other professions. They laboured in precarious conditions, and lived in wooden houses or improvised camps, often without water and light. By evoking the memories of the pioneering women who arrived for the construction of Brasília, we intend to contribute to reversing the historiographic silence practiced on the feminine role in the initial phase of the city. Their testimonies help to compose the image of the everyday life of those who collaborated in the construction of Brasília.

This project began with many questions. Why, in publications about Brasília, have women never been mentioned? How were the women who arrived in these “distant and dusty lands” of the Brazilian Central Plateau perceived? What would it be like to portray the history of Brasília from the women’s point of view? What would a woman’s life be like in a city under construction? What were the greatest difficulties faced? Did the fact of “being a woman,” in a city where the majority of the population was composed of working men who came in the thousands to build the new capital, impact their daily lives?

Women’s accounts of the discomfort and precariousness of life in this early phase of the city are often evoked in the interviews. Architect Helena Maria Viveiros de Sousa Carvalho, merchant Salam Kouzak, teacher Teresinha Carvalho, and merchant Marta Cintra narrate their memories when they arrived in the Free City¹:

Through their memories, these women narrate the genesis of Brasília in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They recall the day-to-day life of the first improvised dwellings in the construction companies’ sites or the cities that were created close to the construction works of Brasília. They use many terms in their narratives that offer insight into the realities of the city’s early days: “new life,” “dreams come true,” “few women,” “dust,” “everything is missing,” “emptiness,” “solidarity saved me,” “self-denial,” “suffering does not kill,” “courage to win,” “loneliness,” “communion of all,” “hope,” “mutual help,” “Brasília the capital of hope.”

Dust and Lipstick presents, in its fifty-eight minutes, a new and feminine look at the history of the new Brazilian capital city. The film represents a shift in the way we look at the history of Brasília by showing women’s impressive testimonies about a time when everything was yet to be built. It was a time of dust and solidarity, when idealism helped to build an entire new city in the center of Brazil.