GLAUBER ROCHA discussion panel

In Praise of a Legend!

Cinema of Glauber Rocha

“I am Cinema Novo!” said Glauber Rocha the legendary Brazilian filmmaker and one of the most influential cineastes of Latin America.

Cinema Novo was created to oppose the Hollywood-style filmmaking of 1960s Brazil. Influenced by Italian Neo Realism and French New Wave, it quickly spread across Latin America and forever changed both narrative and style of filmmaking in the continent.

The International Diaspora Film Festival offers a rare opportunity to screen two recently restored films (Entranced Earth and Antonio Des Mortes) by Glauber Rocha, a key figure in the Brazilian Cinema Novo movement. Rocha influenced filmmakers internationally with his innovative style and his socially and politically conscious films which challenged the status quo. The screening of the highly acclaimed and ground breaking film Antonio Des Mortes will be followed by a panel discussion on the cinema of Glauber Rocha and his contribution to World Cinema, moderated by Ryerson Professor Brian Damude and includes Rocha scholar Dr Hudson Moura and Alfonso Jose Sean Cardosa, the Consul for Brazil in Toronto.

In 1965 Glauber Rocha theorized the concept, Aesthetic of Violence as the backbone of the Cinema Novo movement. In his essay “Aesthetic of Hunger” – that reflects the mentality of the era – he proclaimed:

For Cinema Novo, the precise behavior of the hungry is violence, and his violence is not primitivism … more than primitive and revolutionary, it is an aesthetic of violence. Here lies the starting point for the colonizer to understand the existence of the colonized … As long as he does not rise up, the colonized is a slave: there had to be a first dead policeman for the French to see an Algerian.

Entranced Earth, Sunday, 3 November 2013, 1:00 PM, Carlton Cinema

Antonio das Mortes, Tuesday, 5 November 2013, 7:00 PM, Innis Town Hall, Free admission

Cinema of Glauber Rocha, Tuesday, 5 November 2013, 9:00 PM, Innis Town Hall, Free admission