An Idea in the Head, A Camera in the Hand
Cinema Novo (“New Cinema”) was a groundbreaking and fiercely political film movement that erupted in Brazil during a period of intense social and political change in the late 1950s and 1960s. Influenced by Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave, a generation of young Brazilian directors rejected the polished, Hollywood-style commercial films (known as chanchadas) that had dominated their national industry. Instead, they took their cameras to the streets and the impoverished rural backlands (sertão) to create a cinema that was urgent, authentic, and unapologetically political.
The Aesthetics of Hunger
The movement’s guiding philosophy was famously articulated by its leading director and theorist, Glauber Rocha, in his 1965 manifesto, “The Aesthetics of Hunger.” Rocha argued that the polished, technically perfect cinema of the developed world was an inappropriate and dishonest language to depict the reality of a continent ravaged by hunger and colonialism. He wrote, “The hunger of Latin America is not simply an alarming symptom: it is the essence of our society.” Therefore, Cinema Novo embraced an aesthetic of imperfection and rawness. It was a cinema of harsh lighting, jarring edits, and sometimes shocking violence, which Rocha argued was the only authentic expression of the violence of poverty and oppression.
Key Phases and Directors
The movement is often divided into three phases:
- The First Phase (early 1960s): Focused on rural Brazil, depicting poverty, mystic fanaticism, and exploitation. Key films include Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Barren Lives (1963) and Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (1964).
- The Second Phase (mid- to late-1960s): Shifted focus to urban society and the failures of the populist government, just before and after the 1964 military coup.
- The Third Phase (late 1960s - early 1970s): Became more allegorical and surreal, developing what was called the “Tropicalist” style to critique the military dictatorship in a coded way.
The military crackdown in 1968 effectively ended the movement by forcing many of its directors into exile. However, its legacy as a cornerstone of political Third Cinema remains immensely influential.