Movies: Nelson Pereira dos Santos

In vivid images, the documentary-like story of a drover and his family in the northern badlands of Brazil during the drought. A family in the search of new hope and destiny....

Seventy critics and filmmakers discuss cinema around the conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic. Between 1998 and 2007, Kléber Mendonça Filho recorded testimonies about this relationship in Brazil, the United States ...

On a scorching summer day in Rio de Janeiro, five impoverished black boys venture out of their favela to peddle peanuts throughout the bustling city. As they navigate the various districts of Rio, they bear witness to a series of unfortunate events a...

A shockingly irreverent follow-up to the rural austerity of Barren Lives, dos Santos’ Godardian social satire owes more than a nod to the self-conscious antics of the French New Wave. The pampered son of a general, El Justicero is a hipster playboy w...

Augusto Matraga is a violent agressive farmer who, after being betrayed by his wife and trapped by several enemies, is bitten up and left for dead, being rescued by a couple of humble small farmers who nurse him for a long time until he is well again...

A talented songwriter of sambas is forced to face the social injustices of the city around him....

In Bahia, an educated black man returns to his home fishing village to try and free people from mysticism, in particular the Candomblé religion, which he considers a factor of political and social oppression, with tragic outcome....

Half a century ago, Brazilian composer and musician Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim (1927-1994) introduced bossa nova to a worldwide audience with "The Girl from Ipanema." This relaxed, cool, sensuous music blended jazz and samba. After recording an album...

Brazil, 1594. The Tupinambás natives are friends of the French and their enemies are the Tupiniquins, friends of the Portuguese. A Frenchman is captured by the Tupinambás, and in spite of his trial to convince them that he is French, they believe he ...

The critical success in France of How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman made possible dos Santos’ delirious science-fiction vision of free love in a post-apocalyptic wilderness besieged by flesh hungry zombies contaminated by an unnamed nuclear attack. W...

An authentically marginal cinema created in Catholic university in Brazil. One of the most intriguing and imaginative moments in modern cinema in the voice of some of its select conspirators—with Carlos Reichenbach at the lead—, and through the most ...

An ubiquitous folk singer narrates the tale of a young boy, who apparently becomes immune to gunfire after his mother arranges for him to have an amulet bearing Ogum's blessings. As time goes by, he becomes a valuable member of a mobster's hit-team, ...

The adventures of Pedro, a musician who is trying his luck in Rio de Janeiro, in the 1950's. He leaves his hometown Belo Horizonte to share a lodging with his brother Carlos in Rio. During one of his gigs, he meets Arlete, a singer in a vocal group a...

Documentary about Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha, one of the most important names in the Cinema Novo, with interviews with some of his friends and colleagues....

After a powerful outlaw dies, a reporter interviews his lover and gets three different stories about the legendary man....

A newlywed woman, frustrated after her honeymoon, decides to search for lovers on the streets and ends up causing a conflict between her husband, a baker and a black artist....

A deep investigation, in the way of a poetic essay, on one of the main Latin American movements in cinema, analyzed via the thoughts of its main authors, who invented, in the early 1960s, a new way of making movies in Brazil, with a political attitud...

In the 1930s, novelist and politician Graciliano Ramos is accused of being a communist sympathizer. He is then arrested and sent to the Ilha Grande prison, where he experiences the disturbing treatment reserved for common prisoners....

For six decades, the cinema of Nelson Pereira dos Santos has projected Brazil into the eyes of the world. Precursor of Cinema Novo, Nelson was, more than a director, he was an ideologue, a thinker of his country....

An extended research tour of US university film programs introduced dos Santos to the American avant-garde filmmakers, among them Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage, who would directly inspire his formally radical adaptation of an allegorical short story ...