Glauber rocha

Glauber Rocha was born on March 14, 1939 in Vitoria da Conquista, Bahia, Brazil. Baptized in the Presbyterian Church, he also experienced the influence of the majority Catholicism of the country, in school education, and in fact converted to Catholicism to proceed with his first marriage. With his parents and two of his sisters, he will move to Salvador, and already at school he begins to participate in theater performances. And at a very early age, thirteen years old, he shows his interest in cinema by intervening as a movie critic in the program “Cinema em Close-Up”, on Rádio Sociedade da Bahia. A sister will die of leukemia at the age of eleven, a fact that marks her, as it would, many years after the accidental death of the other in a fall down an elevator shaft.

The adolescent Glauber is very active, he wants to be a writer, he devises texts for a ballet, joins multiple associations, stages native poetry, and hangs out in film clubs. His activity is simply overwhelming. In 1956 he participated in the short A day on the ramp , by Luiz Paulino dos Santos . At the university he manages to do three law courses, and collaborates in various publications. It is also the time to start preparing a short, El patio , in which he uses unused remains from another film. 1958 sees the restless Glauber working in the chronicle of events for the newspaper Jornal de Bahía.

But Glauber likes movies, and in 1960 he was executive producer on La gran feria , by Roberto Pires . And he will have the opportunity to debut as a director inBarravento , when he replaces Luiz Paulino dos Santos, and gives a personal shape to a story of poor fishermen, where a guy who comes from the city wants to convey to them that there are other ways of living. The film, which earned the praise of the writer Alberto Moravia , clearly shows the filmmaker’s social concern, and the influence of directors like Luis Buñuel on him is noticeable .

1964 is the year of the outbreak of Cinema Novo. Rocha delivers hisGod and the devil in the land of the sun , and his companions Nelson Pereira dos Santos and Ruy GuerraThey also break into the Brazilian film scene with force. His works will have international repercussions, especially at festivals and among specialized critics. Rocha reflects on the programmatic and aesthetic bases of the movement in various essays such as “The aesthetics of hunger”, from 1965, where he also criticizes European paternalism in relation to the Third World. In his films, spiritual and earthly messianisms are captured, which try to drag the people behind them, but who seem to forget about specific people, whom they use to serve bastard interests. The filmmaker will not stop criticizing capitalism and socialism, and although he will always show Christian spiritual concerns, his vision of things is that of a cultural miscegenation that in the end, what he claims is simply justice,

He is also affected by the political upheavals in his country, with the coup that deposed President João Goulart. He is arrested for demonstrating against the new authorities, but letters of protest from his colleagues from the French Nouvelle Vague – François Truffaut , Alain Resnais … – achieve his prompt release. His political activity in the press, which he combines with that of an artist, plus the recent political change, are at the base ofTierra en trance , which is banned in his Brazil, despite the fact that it receives multiple praises. The following year he returns to the character of Antonio Das Mortes, present in God and the Devil… , and signsThe dragon of evil against the holy warrior , shot in color. Long films like this one he combines with smaller projects, of an experimental type and short films, that captivate him greatly, such as Cáncer and 1968 . Although he manages various projects, he even talks about a James Bond idea, aware of the lack of commerciality of his films, and the need to earn money.

Difficulties in his country force him to travel. In Spain he shoots Cut Heads , and in Congo The Lion with the Seven Heads . And the imprisonment of filmmaker Walter Lima pushes him to give up working in Brazil. He then thinks of shooting a documentary about the exiles, but ultimately the project remains unfinished. Claro , from 1975, arouses heated comments from critics, who accuse Rocha of unbearable narcissism. But in 1977 his short De él Sí won an award at Cannes. He is going to embark later, when he points out a process of political reopening in Brazil, in his latest project,The Age of the Earth (1980), an ambitious, colorful and variegated film, which in its screening in Venice unnerves the public and the specialized press. Too strange, too tedious, it doesn’t convince, which hurts Rocha, who declares: “My relationship with cinema ended in Venice. I take this opportunity to say a final goodbye to Brazilian cultural life. They will never see me again. Never”. At that time he thought about dedicating himself actively to politics, not only with his artistic work, even thinking about the Ministry of Culture. However, he is preparing a new project, Napoleon’s Empire , although his health has suffered, he has vomiting and other discomforts, a disease that is diagnosed as viral pericarditis. Transferred from Portugal to Brazil, he died on August 22, 1981.