Film Forum

(1969, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade) Adaptation of Mário de Andrade’s (no relation) 1927 modernist rhapsody, drawing on popular literature, folklore, indigenous legends and Afro-Brazilian religion. Joaquim Pedro de Andrade updates the novels for modern Brazil, transforming Ci, “Mother of the Forest,” into an urban guerrilla, the cannibalistic giant into a wealthy industrialist, and the novel’s various fantastic creatures into the outcasts of Brazilian society. In Portuguese, with English subtitles. 35mm. Approx. 110 min.

Reviews

“The first Cinema Novo film to be formally innovative, politically radical, and immensely popular with the Brazilian masses… fuses symbols, satire, and free fantasy and melds the real and the fantastic into a unified fictional universe.”
– Randal Johnson, Brazilian Cinema