This week in class we watched Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil from 1964. Like the film Barren Lives by the other leading Cinema Novo figure, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, the film is set in a desert-like landscape where unprivileged Brazilians maneuver poverty and hierarchies of power and class mobility. Like some of the other films we have watched previously in class, such as Barravento, and Maranhão 66 which are also directed by Rocha, the film showcases multiple scenes of violence as implied by Rocha’s manifesto, Aesthetics of Hunger. Additionally, Barravento from last week reminded me a bit of the Luis Buñuel’s film Los Olvidados or the english title The Young and The Damned, as the film follows a group of children that also live in extreme poverty in Mexico city. Like Barravento, there is a scene where a chicken gets violently killed/decapitated at the hands of young people. This imagery reminded me Rocha’s manifesto and how poverty, violence and hunger are framed within the context of youth living in impoverished, developing countries.

This week in class we watched Glauber Rocha’s Barravento from 1962, and Arrial Do Cabo, from 1960. Although they are in different locations, Both of the films focus on the fisherman communities and fishing process in Brazil in the early 1960s. Arrial Do Cabo is a short that follows the preserving of fish, at the end of the film showing how the workers wind down after work. Although cinematically and compositionally the films are beautiful, they both have brutal subject matter-at least I found it hard to watch at times. The films both show the fish struggling to stay alive, on their last breath as they have been pulled out of the water in order to be preserved in salt for consumption. Additionally, Barravento shows an alive chicken being beaten to death. This sort of imagery reminded me of the short that was shown last week, Maranhão 66, which is also by Rocha. It shows extreme poverty in Brazil including children in slums, starved sick patients in hospitals and unpaid healthcare workers. This imagery aligns with Rocha’s manifesto, aesthetics of hunger, as it depicts the violence that is received and given by marginalized people in Brazil, as well as the conditions poor Brazilians live under hunger, both literal and in terms of social mobility.

Tea del Valle

This week we were introduced to Brazilian Cinema Novo and it’s leading directors including Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, and Ruy Guerra. We watched the documentary Cinema Novo from 2016 directed by Glauber Rocha’s son, Eryk Rocha. The film doesn’t follow classic documentary style conventions; there are no present-day interviews. Instead the film montages archival footage, Cinema Novo films from the 60s and 70s, behind the scenes footage, as well as clips of some directors talking about their work and the meaning of the Cinema Novo movement. Like Cinema Novo itself, the documentary takes account of the movement through non-linear storytelling, no use of title cards for the films, and little context is used to situate the history of the movement. Through the montage, Cinema Novo’s themes are presented such as the concept of hunger as both literal and metaphorical, and the role of violence is situated under colonialism and exploitation.

This week in class we watched Sara Gomez’s De Cierta Manera which follows the relationship between educated school teacher Yolanda, and Mario, a factory worker, living in 1970s post-revolutionary Cuba. The relationship between Yolanda and Mario exhibits the attitudes of men and women living in post-revolutionary cuba while still dealing with the consequences of patriarchy and misogyny in the family sphere. The relationship between Yolanda and Mario is comparable to the relationship of Sergio and Elena in Memorias del subdesarrollo (1968). Although both men in these films model the machista attitudes in Latin American society, Yolanda and Elena are very different women. Yolanda is a college-level educated woman, who works as a school teacher. It is safe to say that she does not live with her family as she has moved locations to teach. She even says it herself multiple times in the film, yo soy independiente. Yolanda is a much more independent woman than Elena, which ultimately impacts their relationship with men. Elena is atleast a few years younger than Yolanda, she is not college educated and she also has no job, thus no source of income. Additionally she lives with her family, unlike Yolanda. It is clear that because of these circumstances their relationships with their significant others is different; Elena is much more submissive to Sergio than Yolanda is to Mario. Throughout Memorias del subdesarrollo Elena looks uncomfortable and has uncomfortable body language when she is around Sergio, aside from mentioning that her and Sergio have a much bigger age gap than Yolanda and Mario. Additionally, Elena first agrees to see Sergio under the promise that he can help her find a job as an actress; Elena and Sergio are not equals, while Yolanda and Mario act more like equals; Yolanda stands her ground to Mario, telling him she will remain independent. She is not afraid of speaking to him directly; she even mocks the way Mario speaks towards his male friends. Yolanda is clearly more comfortable around her partner than Elena is, because of their different levels of independence and self-mobility. Additionally, both films use styles of fiction and documentary mixed together, as mentioned in the Ruby Rich article-”Cuban cinema has been widely, and rightly, acclaimed for its ability to invent new formal strategies, most notably the breakdown of documentary and fiction distinctions to arrive at an integrated style capable at once of unmasking the realism of traditional narrative and the verisimilitude of documentary.” This is clearly seen in both films, as they both include sequences with scripted scenes and unscripted scenes, as well as archival news footage and B-roll.

Today in class we watched 4 of Sara Gomez’s shorter documentaries. I was most taken back by Mi Aporte from 1972, which explores cuban women entering the workforce in the midst of the revolution. At the end of the film we see a group of four women discussing the conditions that make it possible or impossible for women to go to work. Followed by this we see a group of 10+ women in a theater discussing the scene that we have also just seen. This for me was a clear breaking of the 4th wall, even though it is not a fiction film, the scene of the audience at the end shows them clearly interacting with the rest of the film. I was most surprised by both the conversations from the groups of women. The discourse brings up several points that I think are still completely relevant in the present day. They bring up whether or not they should teach their sons how to do house chores, because it is considered a traditionally female duty, and their sons may be bullied for doing chores (cleaning, cooking, childcare) that women would do. The women question if they are upholding sexism themselves by not teaching their sons how to do “female work”. Some of the women are more than willing to work, but they do not have the necessary means as they have no one to take care of their children or their housework. They also mention how some of their husbands that are a part of the revolution still forbid their wives from working. I was interested by this discourse because it sounds like a conversation that women would still have to this day in 2025, over 50 years since the documentary was made. Maybe not necessarily mothers in New York City, but mothers in Latin America and maybe mothers in the sunbelt of the U.S. as sexism and gender roles are still very much alive, everywhere. This documentary reminded me a lot about the film Hasta cierto punto (Up to a certain Point) directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and released in 1983. The fiction film follows a cuban revolutionary, Oscar, who is making a documentary about female workers; he follows one female worker specifically, Lina, who is a single mother and is a dock worker. Oscar eventually falls in love with Lina and becomes possessive over her, contradicting his revolutionary values that he is basing his whole documentary on. I think this film clearly displays some of the hypocriticism that male Cuban revolutionaries had towards women, as it focuses on some of the same issues that are discussed in Mi Aporte.