Cinema Nôvo and Brazilian Film Today

by John Moses

In the early 1960s, a group of young leftist filmmakers from Brazil gave birth to a movement they christened Cinema Nôvo, "New Cinema." Inspired by the artistic successes of both Italian neorealism and the French New Wave, they boldly applied those European methods of low-budget production and avant-garde experimentation to local issues of underdevelopment and exploitation. Stylistically diverse, the films of Cinema Nova ranged from gritty documentary realism to highly stylized and theatrical allegory, yet most of the early productions shared a similar setting-that of the desolate Brazilian Northeast, where the social inequities between peasants and landowners were indeed dramatic. In Black God, White Devil (1964) and Antonio das Mortes (1969), Glauber Rocha (1938-1981), the leading practitioner and most radical theorist of the group, created a uniquely Brazilian folk art based on local myth and balladry.

With the right-wing military coup of 1964 and the even more repressive military regime that seized power in 1968, it became necessary for Rocha and his fellow Cinema Nova directors to conceal their political critiques in mythological allegories, like Antonio das Mortes; ironic ethnographic histories, like How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1971); and carnivalesque road musicals, like Bye Bye Brazil (Carlos Diegues, 1979).

Eventually, the concentrated energy of the Cinema Nôvo directors was diluted, either absorbed into the mainstream film industry in Brazil or diminished through exile. By 1985, after two decades of military rule and state censorship, Cinema Nôvo had all but disappeared from the scene. Still, at least one of original group has continued to produce internationally-recognized films-Carlos Diegues (now 62), with Xica da Silva (1976) and Orfeu (1999). And younger filmmakers influenced by their iconoclastic predecessors not only dramatize progressive themes for a new generation of Brazilians but also draw from the well of Cinema Nôvo style, from naturalistic depictions of the underclass in urban slums or the rural Northeast to comic celebrations of the working poor, complete with popular dance and song. These heirs of Cinema Nôvo include Hector Babenco, with Pixote (1981); Walter Salles, with Central Station (1998); Andrucha Waddington (assistant to Diegues, Babenco, and Salles on various film projects), with Me You Them (2000); and Fernando Meirelles, with City of God (2002).

Except for the films of Glauber Rocha (most of which are out-of-print and existing copies scarce) and City of God (which has just begun its U.S. theatrical run), all of the other titles referred to above are available for video rental at "The Movies," 1435 N. Van Ness.

February 2003