About me

I’m K.

Annoying cinephile. Chaotically eclectic music curator. Sell-out iconoclast.

Sharing imperfect thoughts with sincerity.

Punished for Sincerity is a collection of my class-conscious reflections on art - mainly film, sometimes music. I dedicate myself to experiencing works by artists across various historical periods, countries and stylistic approaches.

I’m a Brazilian immigrant (expect to see Brasil spelled with an S here), and the proud son of a domestic worker. A black kid from Carapicuíba, São Paulo, who ended up in the UK thanks to the lifelong sacrifices of a working class mother.

You should subscribe!

Otherwise you’ll really hurt my feelings.

There’s other reasons too, of course - like having new posts emailed to you, and getting full access to the newsletter and archives. The Substack app is quite nice as well, so you can read while you’re in the loo, and truly experience the human condition as nature intended.

But again, you should mainly subscribe to not hurt my feelings.

But before you do…

You should know I have zero (0) tolerance for both fascistic ideology and ‘apolitical’ stances that disregard worker struggles and ultimately benefit the status quo. Statements that require minimum human decency apply here - free Palestine, trans rights are human rights, etc. Intersectionality and class consciousness, or fuck off. I am, indeed, part of the intolerant left.

I should also disclose:

My stance on piracy

I wholeheartedly believe that it is materially impossible to simultaneously be a cinephile and to be against piracy. Online piracy is a crucial form of collective cultural preservation. It protects the memory of cinema, serving as the people’s unofficial archiving tool, and it would be functionally impossible to truly study the art form without it.

Countless film would be lost forever without piracy - from 1900s artefacts to foreign films never officially distributed even within their own countries (particularly common in Brasil). Online torrenting communities, shared cloud folders and obscure YouTube channels have safeguarded thousands of films from becoming lost media, all without profit incentive.

Physical distribution isn’t enough either, since the lifespan of physical media is as finite as our own. Accidents such as fires present existential risks, as recently proved by recent fires in Brazilian public film archives.

Meanwhile, streaming services not only gatekeep films behind increasingly higher paywalls, but actively harm the art. By removing films from their catalogues, private companies can effectively erase from history any films that never received physical releases.

Even if you were wealthy enough to own every Criterion release or pay for every niche streaming platform available, you’d still miss precious gems and auteurs that aren’t available through official venues. If you are truly satisfied with only the films you can legally acquire, you’re either financially privileged, exclusively watching anglocentric cinema, or both.

While you should support the artists you admire (if financially able), I believe it is materially impossible to be a cinephile and to be against piracy.

I just want to make that position clear.