Rachel RandallBrazilian Cinema Lecture 2

27th January 2014

mYths of Origin:mYths of Origin:Meetings between The European and the índioMeetings between The European and the índio

‘Iracema’- Fortaleza, Ceará.

José de Alencar’s 1865 novel, Iracema, surrounded by further depictions of the story’s protagonist.

‘Cannibalist Manifesto’ (‘Manifesto antropófago’)

Quotations:

‘Tupi or not Tupi, that is the question.

‘Down with Anchieta singing of the eleven thousand virgins of Heaven, in the land of Iracema.’

‘Down with the histories of Man that begin at Cape Finisterre.’

- 1928.

Painting of Oswald de Andrade by Tarsila do Amaral (1922).

From left to right: an art installation by Hélio Oiticica; the cover of Caetano Veloso’s Tropicália; and a scene from Como era gostoso o meu francês.

Examples of: ‘Troplicalismo’

‘The film persistently inverts the traditional, positive romantic trope of the encounter between the Indian and the European.’

Forest fires and deforestation become a visual trope

A ‘Transamazônica’

A map which shows the partsof the Transamazonian

Highway still under construction.

Google maps satelliteImage of deforestationnext to the Transamazônica

Design for one of Iracema’s original DVD covers.

[Insert a still of forest on fire]

Images from and cover of Humberto Mauro’sO Descobrimento do Brasil.

Left: Engravings by Théodorus de Bry; Right: Woodcut from Hans Staden’s book.

At this point history took such a strange turn that I am surprised no novelist or scenario-writer has as yet made use of it. What a film it would make! A handful of Frenchmen… [who] now found themselves alone on a continent as unfamiliar as a different planet, knowing nothing of the geographical circumstances or the natives, incapable of growing food to keep themselves alive, stricken with sickness and disease and depending for all their needs on an extremely hostile community whose language they could not understand… were caught in a trap of their own making.’

- Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques

 

‘Lá no mar pelejei, de maneira que nenhum tupiniquim ficou vivo. Estendidos ao longo da praia, rígidamente, os mortos ocuparam cêrca de uma légua.’

– Mem de Sá,

Governador-Geral do Brasil 1557