Vidas Secas

Fernado Birri and I

All in all, an amazing day in class. I look forward to tomorrow. The consideration of gender construction is of especial interest.

I was talking with Lesley about Paolo Friere, and brought up the connection between his work with education of the poor, with Latin American film movements, especially Brazil's Cinema Novo. The New Latin American film movement was heavily influenced by post war Italian Neo-realist style, combined with Marxist political thought. In Argentina, Fernando Birri (Tire Die, 1958, and Los Inundados, 1961) and Fernando Solanas (La Hora de los Hornos, 1968) pioneered socially conscious documentaries and feature films which dealt with the poor. In Brazil, Carlos Diegues, Glauber Rocha and Nelson Perreira dos Santos (Vidas Secas, 1963) made films which underscored the bleak lives of the poor, especially in the North-East of Brazil, as well as undertaking a discourse on the nature of Brazilian culture and society sparked by Marcel Camus' Orfeo Negro, 1959. Although disliked in Brazil, Camus' film drew world-wide attention to Brazil, and started the spread of the Bossa Nova (Jazz Samba music). Orfeo Negro's all black cast drew attention to Brazil's racial problems. Diegues directed a number of Afro-Brazilian historical epics such as Quilombo (1984).

Birri and Rocha eventually wound up in Cuba, where the most radical reshaping of film was taking place. Cuban film is determinedly political resulting in a different approach to film making from Hollywood's. High spots might be La Ultima Cena (1976) and Fresa y Chocolate (1994), by Tomas Gutierre Alea, dealing with the position of gay people in the revolution, and racial oppression. Birri is ranked as the Father of New Latin American Cinema, and this cinema is almost without exception critical of government and society. In Chile, Miguel Littin directed the docudrama El Chacal de Nahueltoro, which dealt with joblessness, education and the death penalty.

These films all reflect societies which Friete would want radically changed through a Marxist educational intervention.

Many of these films are difficult to source, but Birri's are on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6-WYdzEzZk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFGy2i8rqHE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw1tHxpCOWc&feature=related