Antonio Candido, Final Notes

Eduardo Coutinho was filming a movie with the same name in the Northeast of Brazil, in 1964, when there came the military coup. He had to interrupt the project, and came back to it in 1981, looking for the same places and people, showing what had ocurred since then, and trying to gather a family whose patriarch, a political leader fighting for rights of country people, had been murdered.

Otavio is an idealistic union leader trying to organize workers at a factory to resist the company's exploitative practices. His son, Tião, one of the employees, is more of a realist and doesn't want to risk losing his job by striking. This clash of perspectives puts the father and son at odds. Fortunately, Tião's mother, Romana, is on hand to act as a moderator between the two opinionated men.

A story about a man who hopes to see something extraordinary. Based upon the book of Henry James.

ABC of a Strike captures the 1979 metal workers strikes outside of São Paulo. The footage sat untouched until after the death of highly-regarded director Leon Hirszman in 1987, by which time the material had a new relevance. The gripping film captures the negotiations between the labor unions and the factory bosses and shows the birth of the region’s Worker’s Party, as well as the emergence of its charismatic leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Rising from extreme poverty, Lula gained national prominence as a union activist during the late 70s and early 80s. After being jailed during his time as a union leader, he eventually becomes Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010.

A cautionary tale for these times of democracy in crisis—the personal and political fuse to explore one of the most dramatic periods in Brazilian history. With unprecedented access to Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva, we witness their rise and fall and the tragically polarized nation that remains.

A personal essay which analyses and compares images of the political upheavals of the 1960s. From the military coup in Brazil to China's Cultural Revolution, from the student uprisings in Paris to the end of the Prague Spring.

Eldorado, a fictitious country in America, is sparkling with the internal struggle for political power. In the eye of this social convulsion, the jaded journalist Paulo Martins opposes two equally corrupt political candidates: a pseudopopulist and a conservative. In this context, Paulo is torn between the madness of the elite and the blind submission of the masses. But, in this complex tropical reality, nothing really is what it seems to be.

Besieged by cancer and nearing the end, the genius Argentine-Brazilian filmmaker Héctor Babenco (1946-2016) asks Bárbara Paz, his wife, for one last wish: to be the protagonist of his own death.

In New York City, an illegal immigrant gets into trouble because of his relationship with a self-destructive prostitute.

In Rio de Janeiro, over many days, the director Maria Ramos witnesses and films the judgment of several teenagers accused of stealing, trafficking and murdering. Underage youths are protected by the Brazilian laws and their faces can not be exposed; therefore, they are replaced by teenagers from poor communities.

Born a fully grown black man in a village in the Brazilian jungle, Macunaíma later magically transforms into a white man before making an adventure-filled trip to the city of São Paulo. Once there, he becomes something of a dandy, falling in love with Ci, a revolutionary who dies in an accidental bombing. After robbing a ruthless industrialist, Macunaima returns to his village where he finds his newly acquired knowledge and possessions of little use.

A new incarnation of Cangaceiro bandits, led by Coirana, has risen in the badlands. A blind landowner hires Antônio to wipe out his old nemesis. Yet after besting Coirana and accompanying the dying man to his mountain hideout, Antônio is moved by the plight of the Cangaceiro’s followers. The troubled hitman turns revolutionary, his gun and machete aimed towards his former masters.

Comedy in 4 segments. In "Arroz e Feijão" (Rice and Beans), owner of a boarding-house seduces her young countryboy tenant. In "As Três Virgens" (The Three Virgins) three spinsters are influenced by the behaviour of their teenager niece, whom they are lodging. In "O Arremate" (The Purchase) a colonist turns his virgin daughter in to a landowner, to have his debts forgiven. And, finally, in "Vereda Tropical" (Tropical Trail), a man becomes sexually obsessed by a watermelon, to the point of having sexual intercourse with it. The stories are based on prize-winner short stories, from a Playboy contest.

A white-robed preacher wanders and sermonizes across African lands; European communists and CIA spies conspire out of mutual self-interest to engineer the appointment of an African bourgeois to a puppet government presidency; and a revolutionary group marches in exile.

In the island of Paquetá, professor investigates the genital vocation of vegetables and fruits, maintaining sexual relations with a watermelon. In his experiences, he counts on the interlocution of an attentive student.