Film
Macunaíma + Searching for Macunaíma
- 7PM
Take a deep dive into the legendary Brazilian modernist novel Macunaima in this special double-feature event with Katrina Dodson, which includes a book signing of her new translation between films!
Dir. Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, 1969, 95min
With Grande Otelo, Paulo José, Jardel Filho
In Portuguese with English subtitles
Cinema Novo pioneer Joaquim Pedro de Andrade adapts Mário de Andrade’s modernist masterpiece in a work of genre-bending Tropicalismo mixing myth, comedy, and a critique of Brazil’s 1960s military dictatorship—a tragicomic portrait of Brazil devouring itself. A box-office hit in Brazil, the film follows the famous hero with “no character” who embodies the fabled “three races of Brazil”—Black, Indigenous, and white—through fantastical transformations as he leaves his home in the Amazon and goes on a psychedelic adventure through the urban capitals of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
Dir. Rodrigo Séllos, 2020, 84min
In Portuguese, German, Spanish, and Indigenous languages Macuxi and Taurepang with English subtitles.
Follow Brazil’s most famous fictional character, the hero of Mário de Andrade’s modernist novel Macunaíma, back to his origins as Makunaíma, the mythic ancestor of Indigenous people in the northern Amazon. Winner of the Best Film Award at the 2020 Brasília Film Festival, Rodrigo Séllos’ documentary traces the iconic character through renowned film and theater adaptations and across Brazil’s sweeping landscapes, letting his centuries-old story unfold through interviews in Portuguese, German, Spanish, and in the Indigenous languages Macuxi and Taurepang.
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