Natal da Portela

A comprehensive view of the situation of different ethnic groups in Brazil. In the testimonies gathered in the streets and neighborhoods of various capitals, black, white, mulatto, Portuguese, Italian and Japanese express their opinion and describe personal experiences involving relationship, racism, miscegenation and cultural exchange.

Between August 23 and 31, 1983, at the "Circo Massimo", in Rome, there was a musical event that brought together artists from Bahia. This film brings a recording of the event, also featuring backstage, rehearsals, testimonies and some relaxing moments of these great names in Bahia's music.

Two contrasting social groups get in touch: three architects and three street urchins, all struggling for survival.

Passively facing the repression imposed by military dictatorship in 1960s Brazil, a journalist enters a personal crisis, aggravated by his affair with an industrialist's wife, who doesn't want to leave her home because of her son.

A few weeks before Carnival, slum boys organize huntings for stray cats, whose leather can be used in Samba percussion instruments, like the Tamborim, a small drum.

The arrival of a chemical plant in a fishermen haven brings along social transformations, interfering with the local traditions. A landmark of Cinema Novo, the result of a partnership between Mario Carneiro and Paulo Cesar Saraceni.

Fortune takes four human beings to the last frontier of passion. There, where love becomes almost inhuman and divine. As if he was a comet, Rafael, the traveler, appears at the party for the cities patron saint, in a small town in the interior of Minas Gerais. He is the one who brings passion and crime, vanishing afterwards, leaving a poetic feeling in the air, which is always deadly to the ones who stay. Mrs. Ana de Lara, the proud rich widow, and Missy, still a child, whose beauty and innocence are like the Tiê-Sangue, a red bird, are the travelers victims. There is also Master Juca do Vale, a criminal, whose passion turns him incredibly human, in this story of love, death, forgiveness and resurrection.

Based upon the life story of Father Antonio Vieira, born in Lisbon in 1608 and deceased in Salvador, Bahia, in 1697. He's considered the first Brazilian writer and one of the most important aesthete of linguistic and of the Portuguese language of all times, a master in the art of metaphor, of verbal relations and analogy. He was persecuted and condemned by the Portuguese Court of Inquisition due to his position against native slavery, against the intolerance to the Jewish people and to the colonial politics of exploration.

Life and death of the jesuit who fought for the peaceful relationship between colonists and the indigenous peoples of Brazil.

In the city of Porto das Caixas, a woman seeks help from multiple lovers to murder her dirty husband. Desperate to free herself, she decides to put her plan into practice alone.

Adaptation of Machado de Assis’s classic novel “Dom Casmurro”. Bentinho and Capitu are friends since childhood and end up marrying. But Bentinho destroys his life when he starts suspecting Capitu has an affair with his best friend and that his son is not really his.

A bank manager has a secret. He is compelled to bite society women hands.

A folk festival in the city of Teresina in Piauí, is portrayed with all the elegance in the lens of photographer Pedrinho de Moraes and filmmaker Paulo Cezar Saraceni. A dance of colors, folklore and the beautiful nature of the region.

A lesson in conciseness, expressiveness, and humor on the inexhaustible theme of the dream of making movies. A parodic lesson, a Brazilian version of historical scenes filmed by the Lumiére brothers in 1895—the baby, the bath in the garden, the workers leaving, and the arrival of the train. The melodrama of a couple of lovers through time and the history of cinema. Many sequence shots, as preferred and taught by Cinema Novo. Everything about a film being made and being watched. The language of cinema (shot, reverse shot, tracking shot, editing, mixing, dubbing, etc.), interspersed with quotes from Humberto Mauro, Godard, Glauber Rocha, and Rossellini.

Nina, a typical woman of the big city, marries a powerful farmer and goes to live in the countryside of Minas Gerais. There, however, she is faced with a decomposing, decadent family who seems to dislike her.

On Carnival's eve, girl dreams of a man to stay with her during these four days. She meets a photographer, with whom she has an affair.