Rocha que Voa (2002) Movie Script
"ST0NES IN THE SKY"
...during the 60's...
in the cultural colonization,
the cultural underdevelopment...
But, in fact,
Latin American intellectuals...
are still colonized because
they keep...
obeying to the colonizing
bourgeoisie...
as their own action instrument.
They weren't able to be revolutionary
in face of the colonizing action...
and that was clear through
a colonizing language.
Not because they learned
to read French and English...
they learned the European
and American thinking...
that they applied this thinking
to study their own reality...
they were in contradiction,
paralyzed.
Because there wasn't a political
practice, because there wasn't...
a social and political revolution,
they couldn't envisin...
a new language
nor detach themselves...
from all this rationality
by the bourgeois culture.
...broadcast from America...
HAVANA - CUBA
from Havana, Cuba...
the first free territory
in America.
...of America...
Let's raise our heads...
because there is a lot
we must fight for...
a lot to do!
S0ME DAY IN N0VEMBER 1971
...free in America...
Latin American cinema...
reflects the Latin American
political situation.
The first two main Latin American
movements were:
Cuban cinema, which emerged
with the revolution...
and Brazilian Cinema Novo,
which came after Cuban cinema...
in 1962, 1963.
Working under different
conditions...
because Cuba is a socialist country
and Brazil is a capitalist country...
but these two cinemas related
in several aspects.
They had cultural independency...
from the imperialist system,
dealing...
directly with the social,
political and cultural problems...
in Latin America.
Also because...
they faced the same problems to gain
the market controlled by imperialism...
technical deficiency problems...
caused by technical
underdevelopment.
Both have problems,
but they are very organized.
A spontaneous organization,
because Latin American filmmakers...
are very united,
although with few differences...
aesthetical and ideological ones...
as to the situation of each country,
but they are united...
in the common ideal
to conquer...
Latin American market and free it
from the American occupation.
And this is related to the economical
liberation of the peoples...
and the substitution
of the imperialist language...
of the colonizer,
for a new language...
of Latin American cinema.
In the early 70's...
Cuba was diplomatically
isolated as a country.
But at the same time that
Cuba suffered...
these sanctions,
the country started to receive...
personalities from
the Latin American culture.
A Brazilian filmmaker,
Glauber Rocha...
To Latin Americans
it means that...
except for Cinema Novo,
which is extinct...
because it's filmmakers
are either in Brazil...
or out of Brazil,
secretly trying...
to keep fighting both
politically and in films...
and wanting this victory.
So, Latin American cinema...
will be in a few years,
a new phenomenon...
and a very important one,
politically speaking...
because it will be the first
cultural movement...
The first art movement
to unify culture and politics...
...in Latin America.
- Cinema?
Cinema.
As an artist,
he was a revolutionary...
CUBAN FILMMAKERS Because he
innovated the cinema language.
And he also was...
an essential revolutionary.
Glauber started his Cuban phase
just like one of us.
And his name was growing,
and Cuban cinema was surfacing.
"LATIN AMERICAN NEWSPAPER
ICAIC"
And we, from the start...
set our destiny together
with that of Latin America.
That is, we set our destiny...
more with Latin American cinema
than with socialist cinema.
Cuba, that is, Cuban cinema...
was the foundation...
of Latin American cinema,
economically speaking.
Latin American filmmakers
didn't have any money or support.
So, what they did was
they brought the film...
and edited it here,
because we had a lab...
a sound studio and so on.
All the post-production was done here.
NATl0NAL AND INTERNATl0NAL NEWS
It was like...
brothers helping each other.
And some of our films...
seem to have been influenced
by Cinema Novo.
They had a similar attitude...
You're asking me why I make films?
As a matter of fact, I make films
because of imperialism.
If there was no imperialism,
I wouldn't make films.
We weren't fighting just
to conquer socialism...
we were fighting
to conquer a system...
that was more independent from
the interests of the United States...
was it capitalist or socialist...
but what we really
wanted to achieve...
was the true independency
of our continent.
Stories of the revolution...
from which we have an epopee
of a whole people...
in the final days of the fight
against the long nights of pain.
Since the start
we were conscious...
that we couldn't compete
with a cinema...
that had all the resources
in the worid.
And we didn't have that.
We just had a very rich reality.
I have no problem with your business,
but we're trying to work...
We hoped we had enough creativity
and essential elements...
to make films that
were interesting...
and that were
in a different level...
...of the American cinema.
- It's hard to get him out of there!
I don't want anything with you!
So get lost! Get lost!
Don't make me lose my temper!
...nor the buses parked
here on the street. Nothing.
In 1968, Cuban cinema
was out in the worid.
It was discovered in many places.
There is a prestige,
a history and a tradition...
that I think we owe it
basically to documentaries.
IF
THE BLACKS
H0W? THE BLACKS? The disintegration
of American imperialism.
The vanguard rebellion,
the total revolution.
The political revolution,
the human revolution.
The Third Word revolution.
We all, in a certain way,
came from Italian neorealism...
thanks to the strength that,
in the 40's and 50's...
neorealism had in cinema
woridwide, specially...
in Latin America.
I think that, in that time...
we were looking...
our own authenticity,
our own way...
to express our feelings...
our thoughts and our reality.
Glauber filmed
"Black God, White Devil" in 1964.
That meant he was ahead of us...
in regard to...
to Italian neorealism.
And I can remember...
Glauber as one of the first
to exteriorize...
his disavowal and make
a moral contribution.
To meet Glauber was like...
to see the light
at the end of the tunnel.
He was a pioneer.
He was a storm, a cyclone.
He theorized, because it was not
just his films...
it was also his sense of aesthetics.
The "aesthetics of hunger" moved...
many filmmakers
and really contributed...
so that we saw cinema
in a more objective way...
in face of the
Latin American needs.
And Glauber was the one
who did that, in my opinion.
He was very important.
It was a wave of feelings...
and affirmation...
of the authenticity, of the
authenticity of each country...
of the authenticity
of each country's culture.
Each was looking
for its own image.
We didn't want to see
a mirror that reflected...
our most external side...
we wanted to see ourselves
in a poetic mirror...
one that reflected the deepest
side of ourselves.
That was our thesis,
mine and Glauber's.
The vanguard intellectuals
of today...
they don't want to be called...
intellectuals.
Not that they feel guilt...
for being intellectuals
or for not deserving it...
not because they think
their function is useless...
to engage in philosophical
and artistic speculations...
or in scientific research.
No, on the contrary.
It's, above all,
because they value more...
this capacity that man has
to produce for the collectivity...
which is what intellectuals
don't want to be anymore...
an elite character.
And "elite" in quotes...
because he was always
submissive...
economically or morally
to the interests of aristocracy...
or of bourgeoisie.
So the intellectual...
is no longer that and...
became a man integrated
to society...
like a working man
or any other man.
And when he gives up
this position...
and identify socially
with the other classes...
of men who...
work in the society,
he identifies and penetrates...
more deeply into these problems...
and produce an art that,
for example...
does not talk about the people,
but be the voice of people.
That is, it's no longer
the artist's work...
where art is revolutionary...
where social science
is revolutionary...
where philosophy is revolutionary.
There's a ideological and
professional community...
that justifies my presence
in Cuba...
because I've come to Cuba
to work for a while...
with my friends here.
I feel at home here...
because I feel there's
no difference...
either ideologically
nor technically...
nor professionally
or culturally in my work...
or in the dialogue
with Cuban filmmakers.
The performing arts...
like, for instance,
cinema, theater...
and music are kinds of art
which can only develop...
with the collective creation.
That is, it's impossible...
to make a theater about
the people, for example...
or for the people,
without the people...
having an effective
participation in it.
Because the artist always
approach reality...
without the scientific knowledge.
And this lack of scientific
knowledge prevent him from...
it's true, it prevents him from having
a rigorous knowledge of society...
and because he lacks
this knowledge...
he can have a further intuition...
and conscience about
certain problems.
Art today is backwards.
Art must transform itself...
into a simple synthetic and
dialectic expressin...
of all this knowledge.
C0MMITTEE F0R THE DEFENSE
0F THE REV0LUTl0N
Art is individual.
If art is enlightened,
it enlightens some people...
or all the people.
But I can't think
of cinema or art...
which I think is a sacred,
divine activity...
I think you cannot think about
money with art.
I would love if people
saw my foreign work...
which is a work of
"cultural de-colonization"...
HAVANA, 1971
a Brazilian moviemaker...
filming abroad the great apocalypse
of Cinema Novo...
the fatal and final beheading
of colonizing cinema...
so, just for this mystic activity.
Since my cinema is clearly
a revolutionary cinema...
which was tested
in many screens...
and by many audiences
around the worid...
I am an independent filmmaker.
I am neither led nor patrolled...
neither am I a patroller, I'm minding
my own business, doing my job.
I have accepted that
the Brazilian audience...
don't know my work,
let alone the critics.
I mean, just a few people...
know my films here in Brazil...
which are far
more famous abroad...
unfortunately for me
and for Brazilians...
but we are far more known...
seriously known...
He walked around talking
with everyone in Havana.
He saw the film with the audience,
to feel their reaction.
He'd be standing by the door.
Everybody knew him.
Then he stayed for two hours...
discussing the film
with many people.
Glauber Rocha became
a Havana character.
He's very much admired here.
At least by those who know
a little about cinema, because...
it was a cinema that was...
First of all, it was new for us.
Besides, this cinema
portrayed...
a very problematic character,
one of difficult presentation...
but who was very likable:
the "cangaceiro" killer.
And I say the character
was complex because...
"cangaceiros" were thieves,
but they were also peasants...
who fought against...
the exploration of countrymen,
in a way.
And it was surprising how he...
was able to make this character,
who was a hit man...
to be so likeable.
Beyond the rebellions
driven by religion...
by the end of last century...
the first groups of "cangaceiros"
appeared on the countryside.
They came to build the Northeast
with heroism and kindness.
But what was the origin
of "cangaceiro"?
Here in Cuba some Brazilian
novels were published...
like "Cangaceiro", which
explained a little that character...
very cruel and wild...
who was typical in Brazil
at a certain time.
A CRITIC REVIEW
0F BRAZILIAN CINEMA
So, "Cangaceiro" was known here.
Not only because of cinema,
but also thanks to literature.
In my case,
in film critic reviews...
and in cultural magazines
I have access to...
every time they talk
about our cinema...
or mention our history
or make some reference to Titn...
or any other Argentine filmmaker,
I notice...
Glauber Rocha's omnipresence.
He set a new path for
Latin American cinema.
With the strength of his characters...
with the combination,
with the music...
the way he presented that film
that was so violent.
I saw him some 20 years ago,
I think.
Then I never saw him again.
I remember it because of the name
and the impressin he caused me.
It was very good cinema.
Unfortunately...
he disappeared.
We never heard or saw
anything by him again.
In fact, I haven't filmed
in Brazil for ten years.
Eleven years, because the last
film I made in Brazil...
was "Antonio das Mortes"
in 1968...
which was awarded Best Direction
at Cannes Festival in 69.
Then I went to Africa...
where I filmed
"The Lion Has Seven Heads"...
and then on to Spain,
where I filmed "Cutting Heads".
I came back to Brazil,
"Cutting Heads" was prohibited...
and I realized that
it was not possible...
to keep on working here.
0r else my head would be cut.
Then I went abroad and filmed
partly in Havana, Cuba,
partly in Italy.
I filmed "Claro", in Italy...
and completed the edition
of "Cncer".
The negatives of "Black God,
White Devil", "Anguished Land"...
"Antonio das Mortes"...
and "Claro"...
all my work is abroad! I had
to take them away from Brazil...
because they were threatening
to destroy it, burn it!
It was in Rio de Janeiro,
August 1968.
There was a commotion, students
and workingmen on the streets...
There were workers occupying
factories in Minas Gerais...
workers occupying factories
in So Paulo and students...
It was Costa e Silva's dictatorship,
he was the second dictator...
after Castelo Branco, he had
put president Jango down...
he who was doing
the revolution in 64.
I mean, president Jango was doing
the revolution in 64...
it wasn't Marechal Castelo Branco...
who was a reactionary marshal.
So it was a big mess,
the students on the streets.
The leader was Vladimir Palmeira.
There was Marcos Medeiros...
Elinor Brito, psychoanalyst
Hlio Pellegrino...
Franklin Martins,
all the heavyweight guys.
But it wasn't a revolution,
it was just a commotion...
there was this French too,
it was a big mess.
People used to say that
it was a revolution...
but of the radical middle class,
the liberal, reformist bourgeoisie.
And the workers, there were peasants
starving in the Northeast...
and they're still starving today.
They've been starving for 400 years.
And the intellectuals were there
at Museu de Arte Moderna...
that night, discussing art...
revolutionary art...
because it was the start
of Tropicalism, that big wave.
Then I got to Havana, at ICAIC...
the synchronization was done
by Raul Garcia...
and I edited it with
Tineca and Mireta.
It took me four days to shoot
and four hours to edit...
and synchronize. The title
I chose was "Cncer".
I would love to see that film...
after so many years.
I've never seen it edited.
I remember parts of it.
In 1971, the director at ICAIC,
Alfredo...
asked me to help him
with a film...
that had sound problems.
He had the film rolls...
and the original recordings.
He had been in Italy
and England...
trying to synchronize the sound...
but he wasn't able to do it
in those studios.
I got a take from a person
talking in the foreground.
I rolled the tape
in a different speed...
like that...
and I told him,
"It's a different speed.
It's too slow. It's in sync,
but it's too slow".
And Glauber did like this.
He loved it that it was in sync
but with a different speed.
The quality of Glauber
and the work...
we were working on
had some kind of magic...
nobody would let go of.
The work was feasible,
it was within the idea.
What happens in cinema
is this:
making a movie is a process
both theoretical and practical.
It's an intellectual and technical
production process...
because the technique is also
a form of intellectual production.
Electricity was discovered
by Edison...
cinema was invented
by a working man.
So, Lumire is as important
to cinema...
for having developed its technique
as Eisenstein...
for having created its aesthetics.
So technique and aesthetics...
for instance,
they go hand in hand.
So, when you make a film,
they talk a lot about the director...
but they practically forget...
all the other people
who participated in it.
That in a film where
200 or 300 people participated...
people who will keep anonymous.
You need cameramen,
set designers, editors...
grips, gaffers...
In this process where intellectuals
are servile to the powerful...
the issue of reason...
was also put as something created
by the bourgeoisie society...
to justify its own class ideology.
For this reason,
which is determined...
by a political, a aesthetic
or a philosophical behavior...
the same thing happened
in the cinema.
The cameras were created
and then...
a whole production structure
was created...
a film dramaturgy and a
distribution system was created...
according to this reason.
The whole cinema dramaturgy
was created by imperialism...
it was conventional, according
to the interests of the bourgeoisie.
With a whole psychological,
dramatic scheme...
a behavior... The film
directors were like...
matres d'htel. They just said,
"You sit on the right...
You sit on the left".
So cinema became something
mechanic, boring, useless...
with dramatic conversions,
"I love you" in close-ups...
and something completely absurd
that does not reflect...
the true behavior of men.
People always say that
I film irrational scenes.
And I say they are irrational
in relation...
to the rationalism
of bourgeoisie culture.
For me, the bourgeoisie reason
is what's irrational.
If you give a camera
to a peasant...
or to a worker and tell him
to film his life...
he'll make something different
than an imperialist film.
He'll make a different
kind of film.
Specially if he doesn't have...
the education of bourgeoisie
cinema in his head.
I am doing this
as an intermediary...
because the moment
hasn't come yet...
people haven't had the opportunity
to make cinema.
So, the strange
form of the film...
is due to a closer
interpretation...
of what normal people
would really do.
I think Cuban audiences can
understand the film very well...
because the Cuban people is connected
to the African traditions...
and to the simplicity
of things as well.
Maybe something that might be strange
to a civilized white person...
to a civilized intellectual...
may not seem strange
to a sensitive person...
who is more used to it.
Your film "The Lion Has Seven Heads"
is being shown.
Could you tell us...
what kind of film it is?
It's my first film in Africa...
where you really see
the African political struggle...
from the point of view
of a Latin American man...
coming from the Third Worid,
like me, with African blood.
"The Lion Has Seven Heads"
is a film about...
colonialism in Africa
and the African revolution.
Anyone who has a notion...
about Marxism and
the dialectical method...
will see that the film
is a dialectical discussin...
on the African reality,
based on solid facts...
which provokes new qualities.
And new qualities are
a new kind of language.
So in this film I placed
a camera and a white canvas...
so the people could
express themselves.
So it's a kind of film
where people really...
mark their own scene,
do their dialogues...
which is different than imperialist
cinema, bourgeoisie cinema...
where the director determines,
in his mind...
how people should behave.
The film was improvised.
All the scenes where
the Africans participate...
were created by them.
I explained to them...
the themes, we also
worked with actors...
of different political
inclinations...
and they improvised
the political discussin.
There's no difference
between theater and cinema.
In theater, the representation
happens onstage...
in cinema, it's onscreen. People
judge if it's cinema or not...
because imperialist cinema
created a kind of narrative...
and said that
that was cinema.
But I think you can
switch the camera on...
facing a stage
a let people act.
I was accused of making
an intellectual film...
but who accused me
of being "intellectual"...
were the intellectuals
connected to the bourgeoisie art.
The film is a complete
liberation...
of a dramatic system,
and I think...
that, in this film, I broke
away with the language...
of European cinema
and imperialist cinema.
- No to colonialism!
- No to colonialism!
- No to colonialism!
- No to colonialism!
- No to colonialism!
- No to colonialism!
I thought it was the best way...
to propose the revolutionary cinema
to the Third Worid.
IS A BLACK REV0LUTl0NARY
MYTH IN BRAZIL
I PUT THE NAME
0N THE AFRICAN LEADER
T0 MAKE A CULTURAL RELATl0N
Because Guinea-Bissau
is a new state...
Mozambique is a new state,
Angola, all Africa is new.
I filmed in Africa
because of the African problem...
but I could have filmed in Bolivia,
about the Bolivian problems...
or in Brazil.
The Afro-Latin problems
interest me a lot...
and I thought I had
to go to Africa...
also as a political and cultural
act of collaboration...
to the notion of
intercontinental fight.
History is implacable.
When the intellectuals
themselves revealed...
all the political contradictions
in Latin America...
the solutions to the problems
in Latin America...
could not be limited
to criticism...
they needed a historical
transformation. So...
the first thing the Latin
American intellectual...
has to do is demystify himself
in his role...
of interpreter and critic
of History...
without actually participating
in the politics of this History.
This contradiction was solved...
in its most significant level,
not only to Latin America...
but to the whole worid
in the figure of Che...
who was, at the same time,
a political thinker...
and a political activist.
So Che became...
this extremely important myth...
for the whole worid
and the whole youth in the worid...
from East to West...
exactly because he embodied...
this... this...
he embody this contradiction
in himself.
He was a synthesis and
a new proposal for men.
And therefore he irradiated
a mythical force.
In fact...
in any social process...
the doctor, the engineer...
the aviator...
the sailor,
the telephone operator...
SALARY D0ESN'T W0RTH A THING the mechanic are
as important as the philosopher, the poet...
because society is made up
of all this, isn't it?
0ne of the biggest tragedies
of capitalist society...
is exactly this criminal
specialization of men.
You specialize in just one thing.
So you find, for example...
musicians who can't drive a car.
Athletes who are not
sensitive enough...
to appreciate music.
We find painters
who can't play music...
mechanics completely
concentrated in their machines.
This is an anomaly,
a complete disaster...
in the formation of men
in Brazilian society.
WAS IT AN ACCIDENT?
In all the capitalist worid...
specially in the
underdeveloped countries...
there is an economic class
with well-defined characteristics.
So, what happens is
that any man...
is capable of making music.
He's capable of making sounds.
Just like any man
is capable to paint...
any man is capable
to build a machine.
Any non-educated brain
still in its childhood...
has the integral capability
of developing in every sense.
So this is a deformation
in the education of men...
provoked by bourgeoisie society,
because men...
cannot develop himself fully...
in bourgeoisie society.
He can't have an education because
of the economical oppressin.
- So, since he's a child...
- In Latin America, four children die...
every minute because of
illnesses caused by malnutrition.
In 10 years, 20 million
children died for that reason.
It's the same number of people
who died in Worid War II.
Go on, go on, go on!
Come on!
Proving that an educated man...
in a liberating system,
can really...
be, at the same time,
an engineer and a painter.
This would give man
the plenitude...
over his own existence.
That is, science
does not exclude poetry.
CAY0 HUES0 QUARTER-
HAVANA
Sara of Cabo Hueso...
Sara of Brazil, Sara of America...
Sara of Africa.
Sara gives us do much vitality
that she didn't die.
She is here.
0ne of the first Cuban...
women...
to have the privilege...
to know...
what women liberation was.
Because it was very difficult...
not to mention her skin color,
a woman becoming a filmmaker.
And she did it.
IN A WAY
I don't know how she got into
cinema, because cinema...
is a media that demands...
a great technical complexity
and a series of mediations...
so you can get any idea across.
Sara would have loved to make
cinema without cameras...
without microphones,
without anything.
She would have loved
to make direct cinema.
She wasn't searching for our identity,
she was our identity...
on her skin.
0f course, it's ours roots. Without
them there's nothing, only fiction.
And anyone can
come up with fiction.
I never saw them together, but...
I learned later on, Sara told me.
We respected and
admired Glauber...
for his cinema,
which we had seen...
the Cinema Novo movement
and what he meant in it.
Meeting him was
very important to Sara.
As a filmmaker, as a director.
It was important...
more than seeing his films,
to know the man who made them...
to see how he was,
how he faced life and interacted...
with people.
For her and for us all...
it was very moving to meet him,
to see him...
and specially to hear him
in that constant poetic delirium...
that was typical of him.
Besides, there's something
my friend hasn't said yet:
the Cuban audience...
even the less educated...
is the Latin American audience
who best know...
Latin American cinema.
Not only Glauber Rocha...
but all the great Latin American
directors and artists.
- As friend, man and revolutionary!
- My directing style...
is deeply connected to
Brazilian popular culture...
and to the symbols.
Everything I consider symbol
and allegory are not abstractions...
but direct expressions
of popular culture.
It's cinema about the people...
with the cultural collaboration
of this people.
I, because of a professional
deficiency...
don't have the ability
to make documentaries...
so I make fictional films...
connected to the
Latin American reality...
with a language that
expresses the deepest myths...
of Latin American people...
inherited of the black culture
and the Indian culture...
of the images...
the visual imagination of...
Here in Cabo Hueso you'll find
people who can talk about him.
People who knew him and had
contact with him in the manors...
in the parks and corners
where people met.
0n that day I heard many verses
that he was improvising.
Everything he thought and did
was in terms of images and poetry.
All the time. I think his work
was one big poem.
He was a writer besides being
a filmmaker and a man of images...
who was searching for
a relation with the words...
and a worid beyond
the visible one.
I thought he was from Brazil,
but he said he was from Baha.
I didn't get that.
But then I found out...
that when you're from Baha
you're something else.
There's nothing to do
with Rio or...
He insisted on that.
He would say...
"I am not from Brazil;
I am from Baha!"
It's just like I said I'm
from Cabo Hueso, you know.
I never got that.
That was a long time ago.
Y0U CAN'T REC0RD MEM0RY
LIKE IN A FILM
...in the role of Jesus Christ...
reincarnated in the body
of Che Guevara.
You see? It's a kind of
surrealist "cangaceiro".
He was always talking about
"cangaceiros", always.
And I'd say to him, "But we
have 'cangaceiros' here, too!"
It was a Sunday,
we were all sitting here.
All of a sudden,
everyone was silent.
It's the oneiric journey to the mythic
center of Pan-American unconscious.
"Cutting Heads"
is a film about madness...
madness, my friends!
The madness of violence.
Art is, by the way, a symbol...
So much violence...
committed in the name of peace,
of humanism, of love...
of hope. "Cutting Heads"
is that. Do you understand?
It's about my paranoia,
my madness...
my fantasies.
It's a game against death.
Francisco Rabal in the role
of dictator Porfrio Diaz...
from exile to Eldorado.
No, Cuban cinema for me
is an opportunist cinema.
Some moments they
made good films...
in other moments
they could only keep...
Cuban cinema as such.
Cuba cannot be seen outside the
international economic context...
because Cuban people
is very into politics...
and depends on
the worid economy.
We are not like the people
of other countries who depend...
on their own economy.
There's no such thing
as beautiful art and ugly art.
The concept of beauty
is connected to the concept...
of "political truth".
The revolutionary truth...
is beautiful, and the real
theoretical assumption...
of a problem results in a style,
a beautiful style.
So, for example,
the current art crisis...
when you say that "theater is in
a crisis" or "cinema is in a crisis"...
"literature is in a crisis",
"poetry is in a crisis"...
what happens is...
A character.
Glauber Rocha was a character.
And Brazil has many millions
of people more than Cuba.
And in Brazil he was
a very important director.
In Brazil, with that many
millions of people!
lmagine it here! Nobody paid
much attention to him, because...
he was a normal guy who was
making his films.
We are Cubans and Brazilians.
I fell in love with his honesty...
...and his simplicity...
- His simplicity.
He was a simple human being.
He said he made movies
without petulance.
And the Cuban filmmakers
are like that.
Here we don't have this...
movie star thing.
We're lucky to be directors.
Revolution ended that...
-0f curse, cinema is of the people!
- ...and proved that...
first, we must be humans.
First, we are humans...
then we are directors.
If we are human...
we can be good directors, good
photographers, good lathe workers...
good drivers, good carpenters,
good physicians...
So, I think today
intellectuals must...
leave their privileged position...
and join the political process.
While they are...
entering the political process
and becoming...
combatants, revolutionaries,
political activists...
they will be...
entering collectivity.
They'll become a class
of men who work...
within a revolutionary process.
It's obvious they'll be studying...
contributing to the study...
and the elucidation of problems,
but without...
being on a privileged position.
Why? Because we're
in the middle of a process...
which doesn't end.
A process that put us nearer...
an ideal society where...
everyone can express
himself freely...
without coercin,
where people are...
more carefree and
live life more fully...
in its most important aspects.
That is, a society
we dream about...
but a society we don't have yet.
There's a moment in the film
is think is great:
it's the moment where
Sergio's reflections...
lead him to believe...
to think that...
in an underdeveloped society...
like the one
we keep on living in...
among other things, people...
need someone to think for them.
And that, for me, is a problem...
that we need to solve.
Every citizen need...
to think by himself.
When that happens,
the film will be very old...
and I will be very happy for it...
getting old and becoming...
just a testimony of a time of fight...
of a difficult time.
0UR PR0BLEMS
ARE THE PR0BLEMS
0F UNDERDEVEL0PMEN When intellectuals revolutionize...
demystify and become...
messengers...
a more profound and
coherent intermediary...
of the people's needs...
the activities of creation
and of spirit...
gain a much higher value.
It's clear the example...
of the non-intellectual, the
intellectual at the people's service.
In Cuba's history is obvious...
the figure of Jos Mart,
who is the best example...
of what a Latin American
intellectual would be.
But he can't be considered...
an "intellectual" under
a bourgeoisie perspective.
Mart is a poet and
a politician of the people.
For us, Glauber represented,
at that time...
a window to the worid,
a door out into the worid...
because we were living
in bad times...
with very little information.
The American embargo
had just begun...
and the cultural information
arriving was very little.
So, Glauber represented...
the main door to Latin America...
in Cuba, and the approach
to us, Cubans.
That was some 30 years ago.
Me met him 30 years ago
in Havana.
That's when he came to Cuba...
to show his films for the first
time, and to live here.
We would often meet at
Nancy Gonzlez's house...
which was a meeting point
for us.
We would meet playwrights,
filmmakers...
writers, poets...
Everyone came by here.
And a person who...
used to go to Nancy's was Titn,
Toms Gutirrez Alea...
who became a good
friend of Glauber's.
I was very nervous
when they told me...
that I was going to meet a famous
filmmaker, Glauber Rocha.
I was kind of shy...
because they said he was
a big cinema name...
a very important person
with many awards.
I was a little nervous.
But when I met Glauber...
he seemed like a big boy...
someone who needed
protection and love.
I think he really needed love.
And, above all...
he was thankful for the affection.
And he also thought
the house was agreeable...
and big, he enjoyed walking...
down the corridor
and observe...
because he really loved
the rooms of the house.
Sometimes he would
go up on the flagging...
Iook upon Havana
and start to tell stories.
He would tell stories
on the flagging...
thinking that, one day,
he could make a film with them...
or write a story.
I'll tell you this: in Brazil,
intellectuals have never...
had a very important role
in politics.
- Like now?
- No, like those days.
Like those days.
Also because the students movement
was created, above all...
inspired by the intellectual movements.
The spontaneous resistance...
was in the newspapers,
then in the cinema...
and in the theater,
with works...
of revolutionary
cinema and theater...
of a left-wing press
that grew a lot.
Theses groups
of intellectual labor...
met with the student masses...
and also with sectors
of the working mass.
The irritation in the country
was in a point...
that Costa e Silva,
pressed by the fascist sectors...
was forced to approve
the Institutional Act number 5.
This act closed Congress...
and granted dictatorial rights
to the President of the Republic...
made political crimes
distinct of civil crimes...
nullified habeas-corpus...
solidified dictatorship
and completely revoked...
the republican Constitution.
The Argentine newspapers
said today...
...and some would even
show cover stories...
that the big ones would...
the big ones are Brazil...
Living in the wild,
using guerrilla tactics...
facing the most famous
agrarian organizations...
like Cabeleira, Antonio Silvino...
Captain Lamarca leaves
Vanguarda Popular Revolucionria...
joins Movimento Revolucionrio
8 de 0utubro...
tries to install
a peasant resistance...
History moved on,
and it has to have a meeting point.
And with a critical position.
Because whoever made
self-criticism during militarism...
gained the right to maintain
his criticism.
- And to maintain his positions.
- And to maintain his positions.
Because repressin was brutal,
and in fact constituted...
the first figures...
the first movements
of a revolution.
I mean, in fact, repressin
acted to destroy...
repressin, getting to the
foundation of the vanguards.
Because I was born... I was born
more than 60 years ago...
IF Y0U WANT, C0ME N0W
and since I was born...
THR0UGH THE PATH 0F ILLUSl0N
I've heard about the agrarian reform...
drought and hunger in the Northeast.
So they had, at least,
60 years to solve it...
and so far they haven't done it.
So that's what we want.
They call us communists...
but we are not communists,
we are workers...
we are Brazilian workers.
Glauber immediately
wanted to prepare...
a film for which he had...
great passin:
It was his visin of Brazil
and its history...
but in a way to focus
on the contemporary period...
and the possible solutions.
I started to work with him in
When I got to the editing room...
I noticed there was
a huge amount...
of material, of archives...
photo-animations, montages...
all kinds of film.
Because he really had very little
material about Brazil.
He had to reconstruct a lot from
photos, papers and documents.
I was rounded by boxes of films.
So I asked him how we would start.
Glauber got a small matchbox...
and sat right behind me,
doing like this...
He was playing samba behind me.
And he also sang.
I believe they were songs...
Well, since I didn't know
any of them...
I imagined they were songs...
that had something to
do with the film and inspired him.
But I thought that was
very funny, because...
I was waiting for him
to tell me what to do.
At a certain point...
I had edited an animation
which already had...
some coherence,
I was able to do that...
but when I was about
to start something else...
I asked, "And now,
what should we do?"
He said, "Whatever you want".
And I said, "No...
what do you mean,
whatever I want?
We're working on the history
of Brazil, but I don't know it.
You have to help me". He said,
"No, the history of Brazil...
does not exist. We're gonna
write it now, you and me".
What happens is that
the country is split in two.
There is a part that,
without obstacles...
in social conflicts...
promotes the economical
development of the country...
a superficial development,
but a growing one.
And there's Nazism,
the nazi repressin.
Because it was very hard
for Brazilians...
during the dictatorship and everybody
was running away from that.
And when I think that
he would have...
other engagements,
political engagements, maybe.
Because in those days...
I remember Brazilians
who passed by here...
at ICAIC, and were
never seen again.
That is...
I guess some of them
must have been killed...
when trying to go back to Brazil.
Glauber, one last question...
about...
your opinion about the
revolutionary fight in Brazil.
Well, I know Brazil...
and today I am, definitely...
with all my time and my life...
devoted to the revolutionary
fight in Brazil.
He used to sit for hours
at this typewriter.
It was a very difficult moment
for Cuba.
There were no shops,
not even ink for the typewriter.
When he ran out of it,
he had to ask one at ICAIC.
I mean, the embargo is real,
imperialism is real. It does exist.
No human being, no Cuban...
the ones who are there
or the ones who are here...
nobody can deny that
this country is under an embargo.
It's a problematic country for
anyone who wants to accomplish...
any project or idea.
And Glauber lived among us,
he lived like us...
WITH0UT END EVERY 100,000
N0RTHEASTERNERS he ate what we ate.
9,000 PER M0NTH AND
A FEW HUNDRED PER DAY
70 PERCENT 0F THEM
G0 T0 THE C0UNTRYSIDE
Glauber always had
a story to tell.
And usually it had nothing to do
with cinema. Almost always...
it had to do with Brazilian culture.
I remember one day...
he stepped inside the house and said,
"I'm going to tell the history of Brazil.
How Brazil came to be.
Give me paper and pencil".
It was Nancy, me and
I don't remember who else.
We gave him paper and pencil...
and he started to draw
the map of Brazil and tell us...
how Brazil was formed.
How the country developed...
with the immigrants...
with all the ethnical variety...
all the ethnical groups, and went back
even further in the history of Brazil.
There's the clergy,
the communist party...
the workers associations,
you got it?
There's umbanda,
there's quimbanda...
there's the organizations, the rest
of the peasants organizations...
got it? There's the progressive
sectors of the Army...
there's a radical,
liberal middle class...
which is still positivist,
or romantic, or lyric.
There are several tendencies.
There are the several
political organizations...
which claim to be
Marxist-Leninist.
Glauber saw it as a big folly.
The history of Brazil...
was a history of folly,
which had a lot to do...
with the folly of our
Latin American countries.
- Popular unity!
- The revolutions...
in Latin America,
like in Uruguay...
in Chile and in Peru, all the
Latin America processes...
claiming to be left-wing...
the revolutionary unity
of the continent...
are very important today for
our fight, because the liberation...
of Brazil will be essential for
the destiny of Latin America.
The Air Force bombarded
the towers...
Latin America hasn't yet
solved a good part...
of its institutional problems,
the ones of political formation.
I think it's important,
I honestly do...
the validity...
of a thinking that
is slightly mad...
very passionate...
of a thinking and a feeling
with which I believed...
piously in Brazil,
above all things.
I piously believed in Latin America
and in the Third Worid...
committing themselves with attitudes
and not only with words:
the liberation fights
and the guerrilla movements...
existing in Latin America.
We felt like we were...
the audiovisual branch
of these movements.
With the commitment of a cinema...
artistically and politically
liberating...
renewing its structure
and of national liberation...
we started,
some sooner than others...
to realize we needed
to adjust our illusions.
The 1960's...
which started its martyrdom
precisely...
by late 1968,
when there was Golgotha...
which means "the right-wing triumph"
in an updated definition...
and, by all means,
the oppositions...
the fascist and neo-fascist
oppositions in the planet.
- The worid is no longer...
- No more...
the spirit of experimentation,
the patrons...
Iose room talking about
those who had the money...
and honoring them with
works of cultural reach.
The worid is not so...
With the dictatorships
in Latin America, it vanishes...
Hitkin, who ends up in exile,
Glauber Rocha...
exiled...
Everyone...
The most lucid people
ended up being expatriated.
The fact is that we thought...
it was possible...
That a film could change the worid.
That is, we knew it was a lie.
We weren't fooling ourselves.
No film can change the worid
or anything...
but you have to make a film
like if it was possible.
The passage from the capitalist
barbarism to a socialist society...
depends on this mass practice...
this ideological "feijoada" will
produce the banquet of Quarup.
People sublime their rebellion
in the mystic manifestations.
You are for democracy,
so what can you tell me about it?
I think it's a nice thing...
I think Brazilians
must rediscover...
and make again
a national project...
they must rediscover their
strength, their particularity...
rediscover the myth of their culture,
their social, political project...
their anthropological project.
As poet Carlos Drummond
de Andrade wrote...
he who is an oracle,
he who wrote "Claro Enigma"...
"We must forget Brazil
and rediscover Brazil".
I need to tell you a story.
Do you know who discovered Brazil?
Do you know who discovered Brazil?
Do you know who discovered Brazil?
Do you know who discovered Brazil?
Who discovered Brazil?
I want to work!
I want work!
I CLEARED SEVERAL TH0USAND
ENIGMAS IN A TH0USAND DAYS
I FALL ASLEEP SL0WLY REFLECTING
PATHS 0PENCL0SE
H0NEY R00T BURN 0N THE F0REHEAD
I was thinking,
before you asked me...
about visions.
0ur mind is...
involuntarily, a workshop
for many things, isn't it?
What's a visin? People who
didn't have visions, I thought...
they saw them as something
very distant, maybe...
because they had a very
rough image...
on what a visin is.
As if a visin was...
a ghost that materialized...
or something of the sort.
But visions are not quite like that.
Maybe visions are simply...
cinematographic impressions
we have...
when we are thinking
about something...
while we're looking at reality.
So, if this is visin...
I think there are many more
people than we suppose...
including ourselves,
who have visions.
Because they are projections
of thoughts...
which don't have this ectoplasm
condition materializing themselves.
They're like thoughts,
like printed dreams.
And if that's true,
then I had...
two similar visions with Glauber.
The first was soon after his death.
I was in Cuba, in a hotel
facing the Caribbean...
and there was this typical sunset,
it was very impressive.
The sunset there is wonderful...
because it's a sky that
cannot be reproduced...
by any great name
of classic painting.
It was blinding. Blinding.
I was facing one of these skies...
when, all of a sudden,
Glauber came up to me...
like in a kind of manifestation...
I don't exactly know what.
But we were for the new
Latin American cinema...
with big posters, like that.
Then Espinoza passed by with
a pster that read "Viva Sanjins".
Then it was, I don't know...
Sanjins passed by
with a pster that read...
"Viva somebody else"...
and it read "Viva Solanas", and
Solanas's read "Viva Gutirrez Sarra".
Each was carrying a pster
celebrating the other.
And Glauber passed by above us...
but he was an ngel.
He was all rolled up...
in films and film rolls
went down his tunic.
He had a megaphone
and he screamed:
"Dream with your eyes open!
Dream with your eyes open.
Dream with your eyes open".
And that happened twice.
Twice...
and I'm still waiting for him
to come and tell me that again...
because I'm sure he's out there
screaming that away.
"Tereza Teza Teca
I love you
Tereza Vanera
Teca Cubanera
Cubana Cuca de Buru
Buru in Teca's mind."
"A Xang for Teca".
"Tere que teca
Tere que teque teca
Tereza teca
Tecalaquela
Telemateca
Tere I want you, Tere I do."
He was always leaving me notes.
I knew, with Glauber,
the authenticity of people...
the truth of people.
To be what you say you are.
You can be wrong,
but, at least...
be coherent with yourself.
Sometimes he was wrong,
and he was something...
then he was something else...
and people didn't understand him.
But even in his contradiction
he was true to himself.
What I liked best in Glauber
was this primitivism...
this non-planned thing...
this spontaneity to express...
the things he felt
the way he felt them.
This freedom...
this I have never found
in anyone else.
And, undoubtedly...
for someone like me...
who...
was born and lived her life...
in one single way...
who lived in a society
just to survive...
I had to create some models...
and to have met someone
who followed no models...
and who was, I don't know...
spontaneous and rich
in his manifestation...
it was definitely something
that made me grow a lot.
I remember they invited him
to the parade on May the 1 st...
and I was marching there.
I remember that when
we met at the hotel...
he was very moved.
Marcos told me that
Glauber cried on the stands.
I remember that later
he hugged me and said:
"Teca, this is the first time
I see a Latin America people...
strong and happy".
And don't forget that he gave a
mystical touch to everything he saw.
It could be very real,
but he always gave this...
this touch...
I don't know,
it was his own origin.
He really needed to be
in contact with Brazil...
in regard to the
political decisions.
As an intellectual, he thought
he had a role to fulfill...
in regard to what was happening.
He didn't want to be left out...
he wanted to participate.
I was a witness of that.
Many nights...
when I woke up, I saw Glauber
walking around the bedroom...
very afflicted. And he said
he was thinking about Brazil.
He was a very demanding person...
punctual, and I remember Glauber...
It was impossible to open
his bedroom door...
or walk around it,
because it was all on the floor.
There were so many things!
And Glauber knew exactly
where everything was.
He was very organized in his mind.
I have never met anyone
as connected...
to his roots, to his land,
to Vitria da Conquista...
as Glauber was.
That's why he was
so authentic for me:
because even being a famous,
traveled man...
and cultured, he was, at the
same time, a simple man...
who never forgot
his Brazilian roots...
in regard to his land,
to the arid interior...
wherever he was living in.
His political bonds...
were beyond any organization,
any declaration.
It was essential because,
for him, it was his own life.
He always told me Cuba
was on his way.
Whenever he parted,
whenever he arrived...
he said Cuba was always
on his way.
He really felt at home here. When
we were walking down the street...
he would tell me,
"Smell it, Teca, smell it...
the smell of black beans.
Just like in Baha.
I feel so good here!
It's the only place...
where I walk by and feel
just like any other person".
"Beautiful Tereza
Girl with a ribbon
The guru love
Ugly cangaceiro of her heart
Tereza, cubaiana brunette princess
In the terreiro of my heart
My blood in your veins
My soul in your hands."
"Teca brunette with rounded eyes
Misty moon with rounded breasts
My heart beats for her
I feel passin, a rare bird
Cuba, February 14
Baha, March 14
Two fishes, one fishbowl
Glauguru and Tereza."
The influence in the pleasure
I feel in life...
and the...
contradictions that surround me...
about what's
authentic and what's not...
undoubtedly...
it all starts...
it all starts the moment
that I met Glauber.
Because Glauber touched me.
There's no destiny without blood.
There's no destiny without blood!
Cinema Novo exists as long as...
I think I am Cinema Novo.
I am alive and making new films.
What exists around me
is an intellectual piracy...
because the aesthetics here
in Brazil is the hunger one, right?
The cinema they are making
in Brazil is reactionary...
the cinema environment
of Cinema Novo...
that was a vanguard
in the 60's...
is now completely conventional.
The cinema criticism in Brazil
can no longer...
be practiced democratically.
So, you just can't say that a film is
bad, you can't open a discussin.
I broke up with Brazilian cinema,
Brazilian cinema broke up with me...
so that's "Cutting Heads"...
all the cutting heads are my past.
I am here playing with a child...
and I am interested
in the present and the future.
IN HAVANA
WALKING D0WN THE STREE Y0U ALWAYS GET T0 THE SEA
T0 STAY 0R T0 CR0SS
Subs. ripeados por bluciano para
...during the 60's...
in the cultural colonization,
the cultural underdevelopment...
But, in fact,
Latin American intellectuals...
are still colonized because
they keep...
obeying to the colonizing
bourgeoisie...
as their own action instrument.
They weren't able to be revolutionary
in face of the colonizing action...
and that was clear through
a colonizing language.
Not because they learned
to read French and English...
they learned the European
and American thinking...
that they applied this thinking
to study their own reality...
they were in contradiction,
paralyzed.
Because there wasn't a political
practice, because there wasn't...
a social and political revolution,
they couldn't envisin...
a new language
nor detach themselves...
from all this rationality
by the bourgeois culture.
...broadcast from America...
HAVANA - CUBA
from Havana, Cuba...
the first free territory
in America.
...of America...
Let's raise our heads...
because there is a lot
we must fight for...
a lot to do!
S0ME DAY IN N0VEMBER 1971
...free in America...
Latin American cinema...
reflects the Latin American
political situation.
The first two main Latin American
movements were:
Cuban cinema, which emerged
with the revolution...
and Brazilian Cinema Novo,
which came after Cuban cinema...
in 1962, 1963.
Working under different
conditions...
because Cuba is a socialist country
and Brazil is a capitalist country...
but these two cinemas related
in several aspects.
They had cultural independency...
from the imperialist system,
dealing...
directly with the social,
political and cultural problems...
in Latin America.
Also because...
they faced the same problems to gain
the market controlled by imperialism...
technical deficiency problems...
caused by technical
underdevelopment.
Both have problems,
but they are very organized.
A spontaneous organization,
because Latin American filmmakers...
are very united,
although with few differences...
aesthetical and ideological ones...
as to the situation of each country,
but they are united...
in the common ideal
to conquer...
Latin American market and free it
from the American occupation.
And this is related to the economical
liberation of the peoples...
and the substitution
of the imperialist language...
of the colonizer,
for a new language...
of Latin American cinema.
In the early 70's...
Cuba was diplomatically
isolated as a country.
But at the same time that
Cuba suffered...
these sanctions,
the country started to receive...
personalities from
the Latin American culture.
A Brazilian filmmaker,
Glauber Rocha...
To Latin Americans
it means that...
except for Cinema Novo,
which is extinct...
because it's filmmakers
are either in Brazil...
or out of Brazil,
secretly trying...
to keep fighting both
politically and in films...
and wanting this victory.
So, Latin American cinema...
will be in a few years,
a new phenomenon...
and a very important one,
politically speaking...
because it will be the first
cultural movement...
The first art movement
to unify culture and politics...
...in Latin America.
- Cinema?
Cinema.
As an artist,
he was a revolutionary...
CUBAN FILMMAKERS Because he
innovated the cinema language.
And he also was...
an essential revolutionary.
Glauber started his Cuban phase
just like one of us.
And his name was growing,
and Cuban cinema was surfacing.
"LATIN AMERICAN NEWSPAPER
ICAIC"
And we, from the start...
set our destiny together
with that of Latin America.
That is, we set our destiny...
more with Latin American cinema
than with socialist cinema.
Cuba, that is, Cuban cinema...
was the foundation...
of Latin American cinema,
economically speaking.
Latin American filmmakers
didn't have any money or support.
So, what they did was
they brought the film...
and edited it here,
because we had a lab...
a sound studio and so on.
All the post-production was done here.
NATl0NAL AND INTERNATl0NAL NEWS
It was like...
brothers helping each other.
And some of our films...
seem to have been influenced
by Cinema Novo.
They had a similar attitude...
You're asking me why I make films?
As a matter of fact, I make films
because of imperialism.
If there was no imperialism,
I wouldn't make films.
We weren't fighting just
to conquer socialism...
we were fighting
to conquer a system...
that was more independent from
the interests of the United States...
was it capitalist or socialist...
but what we really
wanted to achieve...
was the true independency
of our continent.
Stories of the revolution...
from which we have an epopee
of a whole people...
in the final days of the fight
against the long nights of pain.
Since the start
we were conscious...
that we couldn't compete
with a cinema...
that had all the resources
in the worid.
And we didn't have that.
We just had a very rich reality.
I have no problem with your business,
but we're trying to work...
We hoped we had enough creativity
and essential elements...
to make films that
were interesting...
and that were
in a different level...
...of the American cinema.
- It's hard to get him out of there!
I don't want anything with you!
So get lost! Get lost!
Don't make me lose my temper!
...nor the buses parked
here on the street. Nothing.
In 1968, Cuban cinema
was out in the worid.
It was discovered in many places.
There is a prestige,
a history and a tradition...
that I think we owe it
basically to documentaries.
IF
THE BLACKS
H0W? THE BLACKS? The disintegration
of American imperialism.
The vanguard rebellion,
the total revolution.
The political revolution,
the human revolution.
The Third Word revolution.
We all, in a certain way,
came from Italian neorealism...
thanks to the strength that,
in the 40's and 50's...
neorealism had in cinema
woridwide, specially...
in Latin America.
I think that, in that time...
we were looking...
our own authenticity,
our own way...
to express our feelings...
our thoughts and our reality.
Glauber filmed
"Black God, White Devil" in 1964.
That meant he was ahead of us...
in regard to...
to Italian neorealism.
And I can remember...
Glauber as one of the first
to exteriorize...
his disavowal and make
a moral contribution.
To meet Glauber was like...
to see the light
at the end of the tunnel.
He was a pioneer.
He was a storm, a cyclone.
He theorized, because it was not
just his films...
it was also his sense of aesthetics.
The "aesthetics of hunger" moved...
many filmmakers
and really contributed...
so that we saw cinema
in a more objective way...
in face of the
Latin American needs.
And Glauber was the one
who did that, in my opinion.
He was very important.
It was a wave of feelings...
and affirmation...
of the authenticity, of the
authenticity of each country...
of the authenticity
of each country's culture.
Each was looking
for its own image.
We didn't want to see
a mirror that reflected...
our most external side...
we wanted to see ourselves
in a poetic mirror...
one that reflected the deepest
side of ourselves.
That was our thesis,
mine and Glauber's.
The vanguard intellectuals
of today...
they don't want to be called...
intellectuals.
Not that they feel guilt...
for being intellectuals
or for not deserving it...
not because they think
their function is useless...
to engage in philosophical
and artistic speculations...
or in scientific research.
No, on the contrary.
It's, above all,
because they value more...
this capacity that man has
to produce for the collectivity...
which is what intellectuals
don't want to be anymore...
an elite character.
And "elite" in quotes...
because he was always
submissive...
economically or morally
to the interests of aristocracy...
or of bourgeoisie.
So the intellectual...
is no longer that and...
became a man integrated
to society...
like a working man
or any other man.
And when he gives up
this position...
and identify socially
with the other classes...
of men who...
work in the society,
he identifies and penetrates...
more deeply into these problems...
and produce an art that,
for example...
does not talk about the people,
but be the voice of people.
That is, it's no longer
the artist's work...
where art is revolutionary...
where social science
is revolutionary...
where philosophy is revolutionary.
There's a ideological and
professional community...
that justifies my presence
in Cuba...
because I've come to Cuba
to work for a while...
with my friends here.
I feel at home here...
because I feel there's
no difference...
either ideologically
nor technically...
nor professionally
or culturally in my work...
or in the dialogue
with Cuban filmmakers.
The performing arts...
like, for instance,
cinema, theater...
and music are kinds of art
which can only develop...
with the collective creation.
That is, it's impossible...
to make a theater about
the people, for example...
or for the people,
without the people...
having an effective
participation in it.
Because the artist always
approach reality...
without the scientific knowledge.
And this lack of scientific
knowledge prevent him from...
it's true, it prevents him from having
a rigorous knowledge of society...
and because he lacks
this knowledge...
he can have a further intuition...
and conscience about
certain problems.
Art today is backwards.
Art must transform itself...
into a simple synthetic and
dialectic expressin...
of all this knowledge.
C0MMITTEE F0R THE DEFENSE
0F THE REV0LUTl0N
Art is individual.
If art is enlightened,
it enlightens some people...
or all the people.
But I can't think
of cinema or art...
which I think is a sacred,
divine activity...
I think you cannot think about
money with art.
I would love if people
saw my foreign work...
which is a work of
"cultural de-colonization"...
HAVANA, 1971
a Brazilian moviemaker...
filming abroad the great apocalypse
of Cinema Novo...
the fatal and final beheading
of colonizing cinema...
so, just for this mystic activity.
Since my cinema is clearly
a revolutionary cinema...
which was tested
in many screens...
and by many audiences
around the worid...
I am an independent filmmaker.
I am neither led nor patrolled...
neither am I a patroller, I'm minding
my own business, doing my job.
I have accepted that
the Brazilian audience...
don't know my work,
let alone the critics.
I mean, just a few people...
know my films here in Brazil...
which are far
more famous abroad...
unfortunately for me
and for Brazilians...
but we are far more known...
seriously known...
He walked around talking
with everyone in Havana.
He saw the film with the audience,
to feel their reaction.
He'd be standing by the door.
Everybody knew him.
Then he stayed for two hours...
discussing the film
with many people.
Glauber Rocha became
a Havana character.
He's very much admired here.
At least by those who know
a little about cinema, because...
it was a cinema that was...
First of all, it was new for us.
Besides, this cinema
portrayed...
a very problematic character,
one of difficult presentation...
but who was very likable:
the "cangaceiro" killer.
And I say the character
was complex because...
"cangaceiros" were thieves,
but they were also peasants...
who fought against...
the exploration of countrymen,
in a way.
And it was surprising how he...
was able to make this character,
who was a hit man...
to be so likeable.
Beyond the rebellions
driven by religion...
by the end of last century...
the first groups of "cangaceiros"
appeared on the countryside.
They came to build the Northeast
with heroism and kindness.
But what was the origin
of "cangaceiro"?
Here in Cuba some Brazilian
novels were published...
like "Cangaceiro", which
explained a little that character...
very cruel and wild...
who was typical in Brazil
at a certain time.
A CRITIC REVIEW
0F BRAZILIAN CINEMA
So, "Cangaceiro" was known here.
Not only because of cinema,
but also thanks to literature.
In my case,
in film critic reviews...
and in cultural magazines
I have access to...
every time they talk
about our cinema...
or mention our history
or make some reference to Titn...
or any other Argentine filmmaker,
I notice...
Glauber Rocha's omnipresence.
He set a new path for
Latin American cinema.
With the strength of his characters...
with the combination,
with the music...
the way he presented that film
that was so violent.
I saw him some 20 years ago,
I think.
Then I never saw him again.
I remember it because of the name
and the impressin he caused me.
It was very good cinema.
Unfortunately...
he disappeared.
We never heard or saw
anything by him again.
In fact, I haven't filmed
in Brazil for ten years.
Eleven years, because the last
film I made in Brazil...
was "Antonio das Mortes"
in 1968...
which was awarded Best Direction
at Cannes Festival in 69.
Then I went to Africa...
where I filmed
"The Lion Has Seven Heads"...
and then on to Spain,
where I filmed "Cutting Heads".
I came back to Brazil,
"Cutting Heads" was prohibited...
and I realized that
it was not possible...
to keep on working here.
0r else my head would be cut.
Then I went abroad and filmed
partly in Havana, Cuba,
partly in Italy.
I filmed "Claro", in Italy...
and completed the edition
of "Cncer".
The negatives of "Black God,
White Devil", "Anguished Land"...
"Antonio das Mortes"...
and "Claro"...
all my work is abroad! I had
to take them away from Brazil...
because they were threatening
to destroy it, burn it!
It was in Rio de Janeiro,
August 1968.
There was a commotion, students
and workingmen on the streets...
There were workers occupying
factories in Minas Gerais...
workers occupying factories
in So Paulo and students...
It was Costa e Silva's dictatorship,
he was the second dictator...
after Castelo Branco, he had
put president Jango down...
he who was doing
the revolution in 64.
I mean, president Jango was doing
the revolution in 64...
it wasn't Marechal Castelo Branco...
who was a reactionary marshal.
So it was a big mess,
the students on the streets.
The leader was Vladimir Palmeira.
There was Marcos Medeiros...
Elinor Brito, psychoanalyst
Hlio Pellegrino...
Franklin Martins,
all the heavyweight guys.
But it wasn't a revolution,
it was just a commotion...
there was this French too,
it was a big mess.
People used to say that
it was a revolution...
but of the radical middle class,
the liberal, reformist bourgeoisie.
And the workers, there were peasants
starving in the Northeast...
and they're still starving today.
They've been starving for 400 years.
And the intellectuals were there
at Museu de Arte Moderna...
that night, discussing art...
revolutionary art...
because it was the start
of Tropicalism, that big wave.
Then I got to Havana, at ICAIC...
the synchronization was done
by Raul Garcia...
and I edited it with
Tineca and Mireta.
It took me four days to shoot
and four hours to edit...
and synchronize. The title
I chose was "Cncer".
I would love to see that film...
after so many years.
I've never seen it edited.
I remember parts of it.
In 1971, the director at ICAIC,
Alfredo...
asked me to help him
with a film...
that had sound problems.
He had the film rolls...
and the original recordings.
He had been in Italy
and England...
trying to synchronize the sound...
but he wasn't able to do it
in those studios.
I got a take from a person
talking in the foreground.
I rolled the tape
in a different speed...
like that...
and I told him,
"It's a different speed.
It's too slow. It's in sync,
but it's too slow".
And Glauber did like this.
He loved it that it was in sync
but with a different speed.
The quality of Glauber
and the work...
we were working on
had some kind of magic...
nobody would let go of.
The work was feasible,
it was within the idea.
What happens in cinema
is this:
making a movie is a process
both theoretical and practical.
It's an intellectual and technical
production process...
because the technique is also
a form of intellectual production.
Electricity was discovered
by Edison...
cinema was invented
by a working man.
So, Lumire is as important
to cinema...
for having developed its technique
as Eisenstein...
for having created its aesthetics.
So technique and aesthetics...
for instance,
they go hand in hand.
So, when you make a film,
they talk a lot about the director...
but they practically forget...
all the other people
who participated in it.
That in a film where
200 or 300 people participated...
people who will keep anonymous.
You need cameramen,
set designers, editors...
grips, gaffers...
In this process where intellectuals
are servile to the powerful...
the issue of reason...
was also put as something created
by the bourgeoisie society...
to justify its own class ideology.
For this reason,
which is determined...
by a political, a aesthetic
or a philosophical behavior...
the same thing happened
in the cinema.
The cameras were created
and then...
a whole production structure
was created...
a film dramaturgy and a
distribution system was created...
according to this reason.
The whole cinema dramaturgy
was created by imperialism...
it was conventional, according
to the interests of the bourgeoisie.
With a whole psychological,
dramatic scheme...
a behavior... The film
directors were like...
matres d'htel. They just said,
"You sit on the right...
You sit on the left".
So cinema became something
mechanic, boring, useless...
with dramatic conversions,
"I love you" in close-ups...
and something completely absurd
that does not reflect...
the true behavior of men.
People always say that
I film irrational scenes.
And I say they are irrational
in relation...
to the rationalism
of bourgeoisie culture.
For me, the bourgeoisie reason
is what's irrational.
If you give a camera
to a peasant...
or to a worker and tell him
to film his life...
he'll make something different
than an imperialist film.
He'll make a different
kind of film.
Specially if he doesn't have...
the education of bourgeoisie
cinema in his head.
I am doing this
as an intermediary...
because the moment
hasn't come yet...
people haven't had the opportunity
to make cinema.
So, the strange
form of the film...
is due to a closer
interpretation...
of what normal people
would really do.
I think Cuban audiences can
understand the film very well...
because the Cuban people is connected
to the African traditions...
and to the simplicity
of things as well.
Maybe something that might be strange
to a civilized white person...
to a civilized intellectual...
may not seem strange
to a sensitive person...
who is more used to it.
Your film "The Lion Has Seven Heads"
is being shown.
Could you tell us...
what kind of film it is?
It's my first film in Africa...
where you really see
the African political struggle...
from the point of view
of a Latin American man...
coming from the Third Worid,
like me, with African blood.
"The Lion Has Seven Heads"
is a film about...
colonialism in Africa
and the African revolution.
Anyone who has a notion...
about Marxism and
the dialectical method...
will see that the film
is a dialectical discussin...
on the African reality,
based on solid facts...
which provokes new qualities.
And new qualities are
a new kind of language.
So in this film I placed
a camera and a white canvas...
so the people could
express themselves.
So it's a kind of film
where people really...
mark their own scene,
do their dialogues...
which is different than imperialist
cinema, bourgeoisie cinema...
where the director determines,
in his mind...
how people should behave.
The film was improvised.
All the scenes where
the Africans participate...
were created by them.
I explained to them...
the themes, we also
worked with actors...
of different political
inclinations...
and they improvised
the political discussin.
There's no difference
between theater and cinema.
In theater, the representation
happens onstage...
in cinema, it's onscreen. People
judge if it's cinema or not...
because imperialist cinema
created a kind of narrative...
and said that
that was cinema.
But I think you can
switch the camera on...
facing a stage
a let people act.
I was accused of making
an intellectual film...
but who accused me
of being "intellectual"...
were the intellectuals
connected to the bourgeoisie art.
The film is a complete
liberation...
of a dramatic system,
and I think...
that, in this film, I broke
away with the language...
of European cinema
and imperialist cinema.
- No to colonialism!
- No to colonialism!
- No to colonialism!
- No to colonialism!
- No to colonialism!
- No to colonialism!
I thought it was the best way...
to propose the revolutionary cinema
to the Third Worid.
IS A BLACK REV0LUTl0NARY
MYTH IN BRAZIL
I PUT THE NAME
0N THE AFRICAN LEADER
T0 MAKE A CULTURAL RELATl0N
Because Guinea-Bissau
is a new state...
Mozambique is a new state,
Angola, all Africa is new.
I filmed in Africa
because of the African problem...
but I could have filmed in Bolivia,
about the Bolivian problems...
or in Brazil.
The Afro-Latin problems
interest me a lot...
and I thought I had
to go to Africa...
also as a political and cultural
act of collaboration...
to the notion of
intercontinental fight.
History is implacable.
When the intellectuals
themselves revealed...
all the political contradictions
in Latin America...
the solutions to the problems
in Latin America...
could not be limited
to criticism...
they needed a historical
transformation. So...
the first thing the Latin
American intellectual...
has to do is demystify himself
in his role...
of interpreter and critic
of History...
without actually participating
in the politics of this History.
This contradiction was solved...
in its most significant level,
not only to Latin America...
but to the whole worid
in the figure of Che...
who was, at the same time,
a political thinker...
and a political activist.
So Che became...
this extremely important myth...
for the whole worid
and the whole youth in the worid...
from East to West...
exactly because he embodied...
this... this...
he embody this contradiction
in himself.
He was a synthesis and
a new proposal for men.
And therefore he irradiated
a mythical force.
In fact...
in any social process...
the doctor, the engineer...
the aviator...
the sailor,
the telephone operator...
SALARY D0ESN'T W0RTH A THING the mechanic are
as important as the philosopher, the poet...
because society is made up
of all this, isn't it?
0ne of the biggest tragedies
of capitalist society...
is exactly this criminal
specialization of men.
You specialize in just one thing.
So you find, for example...
musicians who can't drive a car.
Athletes who are not
sensitive enough...
to appreciate music.
We find painters
who can't play music...
mechanics completely
concentrated in their machines.
This is an anomaly,
a complete disaster...
in the formation of men
in Brazilian society.
WAS IT AN ACCIDENT?
In all the capitalist worid...
specially in the
underdeveloped countries...
there is an economic class
with well-defined characteristics.
So, what happens is
that any man...
is capable of making music.
He's capable of making sounds.
Just like any man
is capable to paint...
any man is capable
to build a machine.
Any non-educated brain
still in its childhood...
has the integral capability
of developing in every sense.
So this is a deformation
in the education of men...
provoked by bourgeoisie society,
because men...
cannot develop himself fully...
in bourgeoisie society.
He can't have an education because
of the economical oppressin.
- So, since he's a child...
- In Latin America, four children die...
every minute because of
illnesses caused by malnutrition.
In 10 years, 20 million
children died for that reason.
It's the same number of people
who died in Worid War II.
Go on, go on, go on!
Come on!
Proving that an educated man...
in a liberating system,
can really...
be, at the same time,
an engineer and a painter.
This would give man
the plenitude...
over his own existence.
That is, science
does not exclude poetry.
CAY0 HUES0 QUARTER-
HAVANA
Sara of Cabo Hueso...
Sara of Brazil, Sara of America...
Sara of Africa.
Sara gives us do much vitality
that she didn't die.
She is here.
0ne of the first Cuban...
women...
to have the privilege...
to know...
what women liberation was.
Because it was very difficult...
not to mention her skin color,
a woman becoming a filmmaker.
And she did it.
IN A WAY
I don't know how she got into
cinema, because cinema...
is a media that demands...
a great technical complexity
and a series of mediations...
so you can get any idea across.
Sara would have loved to make
cinema without cameras...
without microphones,
without anything.
She would have loved
to make direct cinema.
She wasn't searching for our identity,
she was our identity...
on her skin.
0f course, it's ours roots. Without
them there's nothing, only fiction.
And anyone can
come up with fiction.
I never saw them together, but...
I learned later on, Sara told me.
We respected and
admired Glauber...
for his cinema,
which we had seen...
the Cinema Novo movement
and what he meant in it.
Meeting him was
very important to Sara.
As a filmmaker, as a director.
It was important...
more than seeing his films,
to know the man who made them...
to see how he was,
how he faced life and interacted...
with people.
For her and for us all...
it was very moving to meet him,
to see him...
and specially to hear him
in that constant poetic delirium...
that was typical of him.
Besides, there's something
my friend hasn't said yet:
the Cuban audience...
even the less educated...
is the Latin American audience
who best know...
Latin American cinema.
Not only Glauber Rocha...
but all the great Latin American
directors and artists.
- As friend, man and revolutionary!
- My directing style...
is deeply connected to
Brazilian popular culture...
and to the symbols.
Everything I consider symbol
and allegory are not abstractions...
but direct expressions
of popular culture.
It's cinema about the people...
with the cultural collaboration
of this people.
I, because of a professional
deficiency...
don't have the ability
to make documentaries...
so I make fictional films...
connected to the
Latin American reality...
with a language that
expresses the deepest myths...
of Latin American people...
inherited of the black culture
and the Indian culture...
of the images...
the visual imagination of...
Here in Cabo Hueso you'll find
people who can talk about him.
People who knew him and had
contact with him in the manors...
in the parks and corners
where people met.
0n that day I heard many verses
that he was improvising.
Everything he thought and did
was in terms of images and poetry.
All the time. I think his work
was one big poem.
He was a writer besides being
a filmmaker and a man of images...
who was searching for
a relation with the words...
and a worid beyond
the visible one.
I thought he was from Brazil,
but he said he was from Baha.
I didn't get that.
But then I found out...
that when you're from Baha
you're something else.
There's nothing to do
with Rio or...
He insisted on that.
He would say...
"I am not from Brazil;
I am from Baha!"
It's just like I said I'm
from Cabo Hueso, you know.
I never got that.
That was a long time ago.
Y0U CAN'T REC0RD MEM0RY
LIKE IN A FILM
...in the role of Jesus Christ...
reincarnated in the body
of Che Guevara.
You see? It's a kind of
surrealist "cangaceiro".
He was always talking about
"cangaceiros", always.
And I'd say to him, "But we
have 'cangaceiros' here, too!"
It was a Sunday,
we were all sitting here.
All of a sudden,
everyone was silent.
It's the oneiric journey to the mythic
center of Pan-American unconscious.
"Cutting Heads"
is a film about madness...
madness, my friends!
The madness of violence.
Art is, by the way, a symbol...
So much violence...
committed in the name of peace,
of humanism, of love...
of hope. "Cutting Heads"
is that. Do you understand?
It's about my paranoia,
my madness...
my fantasies.
It's a game against death.
Francisco Rabal in the role
of dictator Porfrio Diaz...
from exile to Eldorado.
No, Cuban cinema for me
is an opportunist cinema.
Some moments they
made good films...
in other moments
they could only keep...
Cuban cinema as such.
Cuba cannot be seen outside the
international economic context...
because Cuban people
is very into politics...
and depends on
the worid economy.
We are not like the people
of other countries who depend...
on their own economy.
There's no such thing
as beautiful art and ugly art.
The concept of beauty
is connected to the concept...
of "political truth".
The revolutionary truth...
is beautiful, and the real
theoretical assumption...
of a problem results in a style,
a beautiful style.
So, for example,
the current art crisis...
when you say that "theater is in
a crisis" or "cinema is in a crisis"...
"literature is in a crisis",
"poetry is in a crisis"...
what happens is...
A character.
Glauber Rocha was a character.
And Brazil has many millions
of people more than Cuba.
And in Brazil he was
a very important director.
In Brazil, with that many
millions of people!
lmagine it here! Nobody paid
much attention to him, because...
he was a normal guy who was
making his films.
We are Cubans and Brazilians.
I fell in love with his honesty...
...and his simplicity...
- His simplicity.
He was a simple human being.
He said he made movies
without petulance.
And the Cuban filmmakers
are like that.
Here we don't have this...
movie star thing.
We're lucky to be directors.
Revolution ended that...
-0f curse, cinema is of the people!
- ...and proved that...
first, we must be humans.
First, we are humans...
then we are directors.
If we are human...
we can be good directors, good
photographers, good lathe workers...
good drivers, good carpenters,
good physicians...
So, I think today
intellectuals must...
leave their privileged position...
and join the political process.
While they are...
entering the political process
and becoming...
combatants, revolutionaries,
political activists...
they will be...
entering collectivity.
They'll become a class
of men who work...
within a revolutionary process.
It's obvious they'll be studying...
contributing to the study...
and the elucidation of problems,
but without...
being on a privileged position.
Why? Because we're
in the middle of a process...
which doesn't end.
A process that put us nearer...
an ideal society where...
everyone can express
himself freely...
without coercin,
where people are...
more carefree and
live life more fully...
in its most important aspects.
That is, a society
we dream about...
but a society we don't have yet.
There's a moment in the film
is think is great:
it's the moment where
Sergio's reflections...
lead him to believe...
to think that...
in an underdeveloped society...
like the one
we keep on living in...
among other things, people...
need someone to think for them.
And that, for me, is a problem...
that we need to solve.
Every citizen need...
to think by himself.
When that happens,
the film will be very old...
and I will be very happy for it...
getting old and becoming...
just a testimony of a time of fight...
of a difficult time.
0UR PR0BLEMS
ARE THE PR0BLEMS
0F UNDERDEVEL0PMEN When intellectuals revolutionize...
demystify and become...
messengers...
a more profound and
coherent intermediary...
of the people's needs...
the activities of creation
and of spirit...
gain a much higher value.
It's clear the example...
of the non-intellectual, the
intellectual at the people's service.
In Cuba's history is obvious...
the figure of Jos Mart,
who is the best example...
of what a Latin American
intellectual would be.
But he can't be considered...
an "intellectual" under
a bourgeoisie perspective.
Mart is a poet and
a politician of the people.
For us, Glauber represented,
at that time...
a window to the worid,
a door out into the worid...
because we were living
in bad times...
with very little information.
The American embargo
had just begun...
and the cultural information
arriving was very little.
So, Glauber represented...
the main door to Latin America...
in Cuba, and the approach
to us, Cubans.
That was some 30 years ago.
Me met him 30 years ago
in Havana.
That's when he came to Cuba...
to show his films for the first
time, and to live here.
We would often meet at
Nancy Gonzlez's house...
which was a meeting point
for us.
We would meet playwrights,
filmmakers...
writers, poets...
Everyone came by here.
And a person who...
used to go to Nancy's was Titn,
Toms Gutirrez Alea...
who became a good
friend of Glauber's.
I was very nervous
when they told me...
that I was going to meet a famous
filmmaker, Glauber Rocha.
I was kind of shy...
because they said he was
a big cinema name...
a very important person
with many awards.
I was a little nervous.
But when I met Glauber...
he seemed like a big boy...
someone who needed
protection and love.
I think he really needed love.
And, above all...
he was thankful for the affection.
And he also thought
the house was agreeable...
and big, he enjoyed walking...
down the corridor
and observe...
because he really loved
the rooms of the house.
Sometimes he would
go up on the flagging...
Iook upon Havana
and start to tell stories.
He would tell stories
on the flagging...
thinking that, one day,
he could make a film with them...
or write a story.
I'll tell you this: in Brazil,
intellectuals have never...
had a very important role
in politics.
- Like now?
- No, like those days.
Like those days.
Also because the students movement
was created, above all...
inspired by the intellectual movements.
The spontaneous resistance...
was in the newspapers,
then in the cinema...
and in the theater,
with works...
of revolutionary
cinema and theater...
of a left-wing press
that grew a lot.
Theses groups
of intellectual labor...
met with the student masses...
and also with sectors
of the working mass.
The irritation in the country
was in a point...
that Costa e Silva,
pressed by the fascist sectors...
was forced to approve
the Institutional Act number 5.
This act closed Congress...
and granted dictatorial rights
to the President of the Republic...
made political crimes
distinct of civil crimes...
nullified habeas-corpus...
solidified dictatorship
and completely revoked...
the republican Constitution.
The Argentine newspapers
said today...
...and some would even
show cover stories...
that the big ones would...
the big ones are Brazil...
Living in the wild,
using guerrilla tactics...
facing the most famous
agrarian organizations...
like Cabeleira, Antonio Silvino...
Captain Lamarca leaves
Vanguarda Popular Revolucionria...
joins Movimento Revolucionrio
8 de 0utubro...
tries to install
a peasant resistance...
History moved on,
and it has to have a meeting point.
And with a critical position.
Because whoever made
self-criticism during militarism...
gained the right to maintain
his criticism.
- And to maintain his positions.
- And to maintain his positions.
Because repressin was brutal,
and in fact constituted...
the first figures...
the first movements
of a revolution.
I mean, in fact, repressin
acted to destroy...
repressin, getting to the
foundation of the vanguards.
Because I was born... I was born
more than 60 years ago...
IF Y0U WANT, C0ME N0W
and since I was born...
THR0UGH THE PATH 0F ILLUSl0N
I've heard about the agrarian reform...
drought and hunger in the Northeast.
So they had, at least,
60 years to solve it...
and so far they haven't done it.
So that's what we want.
They call us communists...
but we are not communists,
we are workers...
we are Brazilian workers.
Glauber immediately
wanted to prepare...
a film for which he had...
great passin:
It was his visin of Brazil
and its history...
but in a way to focus
on the contemporary period...
and the possible solutions.
I started to work with him in
When I got to the editing room...
I noticed there was
a huge amount...
of material, of archives...
photo-animations, montages...
all kinds of film.
Because he really had very little
material about Brazil.
He had to reconstruct a lot from
photos, papers and documents.
I was rounded by boxes of films.
So I asked him how we would start.
Glauber got a small matchbox...
and sat right behind me,
doing like this...
He was playing samba behind me.
And he also sang.
I believe they were songs...
Well, since I didn't know
any of them...
I imagined they were songs...
that had something to
do with the film and inspired him.
But I thought that was
very funny, because...
I was waiting for him
to tell me what to do.
At a certain point...
I had edited an animation
which already had...
some coherence,
I was able to do that...
but when I was about
to start something else...
I asked, "And now,
what should we do?"
He said, "Whatever you want".
And I said, "No...
what do you mean,
whatever I want?
We're working on the history
of Brazil, but I don't know it.
You have to help me". He said,
"No, the history of Brazil...
does not exist. We're gonna
write it now, you and me".
What happens is that
the country is split in two.
There is a part that,
without obstacles...
in social conflicts...
promotes the economical
development of the country...
a superficial development,
but a growing one.
And there's Nazism,
the nazi repressin.
Because it was very hard
for Brazilians...
during the dictatorship and everybody
was running away from that.
And when I think that
he would have...
other engagements,
political engagements, maybe.
Because in those days...
I remember Brazilians
who passed by here...
at ICAIC, and were
never seen again.
That is...
I guess some of them
must have been killed...
when trying to go back to Brazil.
Glauber, one last question...
about...
your opinion about the
revolutionary fight in Brazil.
Well, I know Brazil...
and today I am, definitely...
with all my time and my life...
devoted to the revolutionary
fight in Brazil.
He used to sit for hours
at this typewriter.
It was a very difficult moment
for Cuba.
There were no shops,
not even ink for the typewriter.
When he ran out of it,
he had to ask one at ICAIC.
I mean, the embargo is real,
imperialism is real. It does exist.
No human being, no Cuban...
the ones who are there
or the ones who are here...
nobody can deny that
this country is under an embargo.
It's a problematic country for
anyone who wants to accomplish...
any project or idea.
And Glauber lived among us,
he lived like us...
WITH0UT END EVERY 100,000
N0RTHEASTERNERS he ate what we ate.
9,000 PER M0NTH AND
A FEW HUNDRED PER DAY
70 PERCENT 0F THEM
G0 T0 THE C0UNTRYSIDE
Glauber always had
a story to tell.
And usually it had nothing to do
with cinema. Almost always...
it had to do with Brazilian culture.
I remember one day...
he stepped inside the house and said,
"I'm going to tell the history of Brazil.
How Brazil came to be.
Give me paper and pencil".
It was Nancy, me and
I don't remember who else.
We gave him paper and pencil...
and he started to draw
the map of Brazil and tell us...
how Brazil was formed.
How the country developed...
with the immigrants...
with all the ethnical variety...
all the ethnical groups, and went back
even further in the history of Brazil.
There's the clergy,
the communist party...
the workers associations,
you got it?
There's umbanda,
there's quimbanda...
there's the organizations, the rest
of the peasants organizations...
got it? There's the progressive
sectors of the Army...
there's a radical,
liberal middle class...
which is still positivist,
or romantic, or lyric.
There are several tendencies.
There are the several
political organizations...
which claim to be
Marxist-Leninist.
Glauber saw it as a big folly.
The history of Brazil...
was a history of folly,
which had a lot to do...
with the folly of our
Latin American countries.
- Popular unity!
- The revolutions...
in Latin America,
like in Uruguay...
in Chile and in Peru, all the
Latin America processes...
claiming to be left-wing...
the revolutionary unity
of the continent...
are very important today for
our fight, because the liberation...
of Brazil will be essential for
the destiny of Latin America.
The Air Force bombarded
the towers...
Latin America hasn't yet
solved a good part...
of its institutional problems,
the ones of political formation.
I think it's important,
I honestly do...
the validity...
of a thinking that
is slightly mad...
very passionate...
of a thinking and a feeling
with which I believed...
piously in Brazil,
above all things.
I piously believed in Latin America
and in the Third Worid...
committing themselves with attitudes
and not only with words:
the liberation fights
and the guerrilla movements...
existing in Latin America.
We felt like we were...
the audiovisual branch
of these movements.
With the commitment of a cinema...
artistically and politically
liberating...
renewing its structure
and of national liberation...
we started,
some sooner than others...
to realize we needed
to adjust our illusions.
The 1960's...
which started its martyrdom
precisely...
by late 1968,
when there was Golgotha...
which means "the right-wing triumph"
in an updated definition...
and, by all means,
the oppositions...
the fascist and neo-fascist
oppositions in the planet.
- The worid is no longer...
- No more...
the spirit of experimentation,
the patrons...
Iose room talking about
those who had the money...
and honoring them with
works of cultural reach.
The worid is not so...
With the dictatorships
in Latin America, it vanishes...
Hitkin, who ends up in exile,
Glauber Rocha...
exiled...
Everyone...
The most lucid people
ended up being expatriated.
The fact is that we thought...
it was possible...
That a film could change the worid.
That is, we knew it was a lie.
We weren't fooling ourselves.
No film can change the worid
or anything...
but you have to make a film
like if it was possible.
The passage from the capitalist
barbarism to a socialist society...
depends on this mass practice...
this ideological "feijoada" will
produce the banquet of Quarup.
People sublime their rebellion
in the mystic manifestations.
You are for democracy,
so what can you tell me about it?
I think it's a nice thing...
I think Brazilians
must rediscover...
and make again
a national project...
they must rediscover their
strength, their particularity...
rediscover the myth of their culture,
their social, political project...
their anthropological project.
As poet Carlos Drummond
de Andrade wrote...
he who is an oracle,
he who wrote "Claro Enigma"...
"We must forget Brazil
and rediscover Brazil".
I need to tell you a story.
Do you know who discovered Brazil?
Do you know who discovered Brazil?
Do you know who discovered Brazil?
Do you know who discovered Brazil?
Who discovered Brazil?
I want to work!
I want work!
I CLEARED SEVERAL TH0USAND
ENIGMAS IN A TH0USAND DAYS
I FALL ASLEEP SL0WLY REFLECTING
PATHS 0PENCL0SE
H0NEY R00T BURN 0N THE F0REHEAD
I was thinking,
before you asked me...
about visions.
0ur mind is...
involuntarily, a workshop
for many things, isn't it?
What's a visin? People who
didn't have visions, I thought...
they saw them as something
very distant, maybe...
because they had a very
rough image...
on what a visin is.
As if a visin was...
a ghost that materialized...
or something of the sort.
But visions are not quite like that.
Maybe visions are simply...
cinematographic impressions
we have...
when we are thinking
about something...
while we're looking at reality.
So, if this is visin...
I think there are many more
people than we suppose...
including ourselves,
who have visions.
Because they are projections
of thoughts...
which don't have this ectoplasm
condition materializing themselves.
They're like thoughts,
like printed dreams.
And if that's true,
then I had...
two similar visions with Glauber.
The first was soon after his death.
I was in Cuba, in a hotel
facing the Caribbean...
and there was this typical sunset,
it was very impressive.
The sunset there is wonderful...
because it's a sky that
cannot be reproduced...
by any great name
of classic painting.
It was blinding. Blinding.
I was facing one of these skies...
when, all of a sudden,
Glauber came up to me...
like in a kind of manifestation...
I don't exactly know what.
But we were for the new
Latin American cinema...
with big posters, like that.
Then Espinoza passed by with
a pster that read "Viva Sanjins".
Then it was, I don't know...
Sanjins passed by
with a pster that read...
"Viva somebody else"...
and it read "Viva Solanas", and
Solanas's read "Viva Gutirrez Sarra".
Each was carrying a pster
celebrating the other.
And Glauber passed by above us...
but he was an ngel.
He was all rolled up...
in films and film rolls
went down his tunic.
He had a megaphone
and he screamed:
"Dream with your eyes open!
Dream with your eyes open.
Dream with your eyes open".
And that happened twice.
Twice...
and I'm still waiting for him
to come and tell me that again...
because I'm sure he's out there
screaming that away.
"Tereza Teza Teca
I love you
Tereza Vanera
Teca Cubanera
Cubana Cuca de Buru
Buru in Teca's mind."
"A Xang for Teca".
"Tere que teca
Tere que teque teca
Tereza teca
Tecalaquela
Telemateca
Tere I want you, Tere I do."
He was always leaving me notes.
I knew, with Glauber,
the authenticity of people...
the truth of people.
To be what you say you are.
You can be wrong,
but, at least...
be coherent with yourself.
Sometimes he was wrong,
and he was something...
then he was something else...
and people didn't understand him.
But even in his contradiction
he was true to himself.
What I liked best in Glauber
was this primitivism...
this non-planned thing...
this spontaneity to express...
the things he felt
the way he felt them.
This freedom...
this I have never found
in anyone else.
And, undoubtedly...
for someone like me...
who...
was born and lived her life...
in one single way...
who lived in a society
just to survive...
I had to create some models...
and to have met someone
who followed no models...
and who was, I don't know...
spontaneous and rich
in his manifestation...
it was definitely something
that made me grow a lot.
I remember they invited him
to the parade on May the 1 st...
and I was marching there.
I remember that when
we met at the hotel...
he was very moved.
Marcos told me that
Glauber cried on the stands.
I remember that later
he hugged me and said:
"Teca, this is the first time
I see a Latin America people...
strong and happy".
And don't forget that he gave a
mystical touch to everything he saw.
It could be very real,
but he always gave this...
this touch...
I don't know,
it was his own origin.
He really needed to be
in contact with Brazil...
in regard to the
political decisions.
As an intellectual, he thought
he had a role to fulfill...
in regard to what was happening.
He didn't want to be left out...
he wanted to participate.
I was a witness of that.
Many nights...
when I woke up, I saw Glauber
walking around the bedroom...
very afflicted. And he said
he was thinking about Brazil.
He was a very demanding person...
punctual, and I remember Glauber...
It was impossible to open
his bedroom door...
or walk around it,
because it was all on the floor.
There were so many things!
And Glauber knew exactly
where everything was.
He was very organized in his mind.
I have never met anyone
as connected...
to his roots, to his land,
to Vitria da Conquista...
as Glauber was.
That's why he was
so authentic for me:
because even being a famous,
traveled man...
and cultured, he was, at the
same time, a simple man...
who never forgot
his Brazilian roots...
in regard to his land,
to the arid interior...
wherever he was living in.
His political bonds...
were beyond any organization,
any declaration.
It was essential because,
for him, it was his own life.
He always told me Cuba
was on his way.
Whenever he parted,
whenever he arrived...
he said Cuba was always
on his way.
He really felt at home here. When
we were walking down the street...
he would tell me,
"Smell it, Teca, smell it...
the smell of black beans.
Just like in Baha.
I feel so good here!
It's the only place...
where I walk by and feel
just like any other person".
"Beautiful Tereza
Girl with a ribbon
The guru love
Ugly cangaceiro of her heart
Tereza, cubaiana brunette princess
In the terreiro of my heart
My blood in your veins
My soul in your hands."
"Teca brunette with rounded eyes
Misty moon with rounded breasts
My heart beats for her
I feel passin, a rare bird
Cuba, February 14
Baha, March 14
Two fishes, one fishbowl
Glauguru and Tereza."
The influence in the pleasure
I feel in life...
and the...
contradictions that surround me...
about what's
authentic and what's not...
undoubtedly...
it all starts...
it all starts the moment
that I met Glauber.
Because Glauber touched me.
There's no destiny without blood.
There's no destiny without blood!
Cinema Novo exists as long as...
I think I am Cinema Novo.
I am alive and making new films.
What exists around me
is an intellectual piracy...
because the aesthetics here
in Brazil is the hunger one, right?
The cinema they are making
in Brazil is reactionary...
the cinema environment
of Cinema Novo...
that was a vanguard
in the 60's...
is now completely conventional.
The cinema criticism in Brazil
can no longer...
be practiced democratically.
So, you just can't say that a film is
bad, you can't open a discussin.
I broke up with Brazilian cinema,
Brazilian cinema broke up with me...
so that's "Cutting Heads"...
all the cutting heads are my past.
I am here playing with a child...
and I am interested
in the present and the future.
IN HAVANA
WALKING D0WN THE STREE Y0U ALWAYS GET T0 THE SEA
T0 STAY 0R T0 CR0SS
Subs. ripeados por bluciano para