Modernist echoes in Cinema Novo or Glauber Rocha, reader of Oswald de Andrade’s Anthropophagy

Abstract

In a text published in 1967, Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha (1939-1981) reacts to the critics of his recently released film Terra em Transe and compares the Cinema Novo movement, in which he emerges as the leading articulator and spokesperson, to the Semana de Arte Moderna of 1922. In this article, the parallel triggers the investigation of Glauber's readings and interpretations of the event established as the founder of Modernism in Brazil and one of its significant developments, Oswald de Andrade's Anthropophagy. This analysis focuses on the above-mentioned Terra em Transe and the unfinished film História do Brasil. Besides, it goes through the filmmaker’s critical texts and manifestos. Anthropophagy is taken as a theory of reading, according to Raúl Antelo's proposition, and as a condensation of a metaphor, a diagnosis, and a therapy, as claimed by Benedito Nunes.