O sertão das memórias
Brazil,
1996, 102 min
Shown in 1997
CREDITS
- dir
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José Araújo
- prod
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José Araújo, Michelle Y. Valladares
- scr
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José Araújo
- cam
-
Antonio Luis Mendes
- editor
-
Ismael Saavedra
- cast
-
Antero Marques Araújo, María Emilce Pinto, Ednardo Braga, Father Juvemar Matos, Walter Filho, Francisco Neto
- source
-
Media Luna, Friesenwall 83, D-50672 Cologne, Germany. FAX: 49-221-139-2224
-
COMMENTS
Skyy Prize Nominee.
OTHER
Jose Araújo's debut feature crystallizes the raw materials of his native Sertão (Brazil's drought-ridden northeast) into an allegory so riveting it resembles cinema vérité made by an all-seeing god. Maria (Maria Emilce Pinto) and Antero (Antero Marques Araújo) are ancient peasants whose paths cross in the white-hot center of events beyond their control: injustice, prophecies, suffering, visions and struggle. On the one hand is crushing poverty; on the other, insatiable greed. Such is the eternal disequilibrium of the Sertão. In the film's mythic present, the heroic pair of Maria and Antero manage to evade the nefarious “Dragon” and reach the promised land (but only if the audience believes in magic). Araújo combines unflinching camerawork (by Antonio Luis Mendes, cinematographer for Diegues, Guerra and Pereira dos Santos) and mesmerizing aural tonalities (by legendary Nana Vasconcelos) into an hallucinatory experience. Old Testament texts mingle with the folktales of the Sertão. Landscapes of Memory etches a spiritual X-ray of northeastern Brazil onto our retinas with black-and-white clarity. Part religious allegory, part political history, part autobiography (Araújo grew up in Miraima, where the film is shot, and studied for the priesthood in nearby Fortaleza), Landscapes of Memory brings a romantic originality to contemporary cinematic depictions of Brazil.
—B. Ruby Rich, Sundance Film Festival
FACTOID #107
Incubus, the only known film made in the Esperanto language (at least the only one starring William Shatner), played the 1966 San Francisco International Film Festival.
