The Cinema Novo movement of the early '60s first put Brazil on the map of world cinema. Working on low budgets, the Cinema Novo directors made a virtue of poverty, rejecting the slickness of, for example, 1958's Black Orpheus (a French... [more]
The Cinema Novo movement of the early '60s first put Brazil on the map of world cinema. Working on low budgets, the Cinema Novo directors made a virtue of poverty, rejecting the slickness of, for example, 1958's Black Orpheus (a French production) in favor of a jagged expressiveness that matched the preferred settings of the Novo films: urban slums and the drought-plagued serto, or northeastern backlands. According to Glauber Rocha, the most famous of the Cinema Novo directors, "these sad, ugly films, these screaming, desperate films where reason does not always prevail," reflected political, aesthetic, and ethical necessity. [show less]