Films of Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, The (Blu-ray)

Kino Lorber presents the complete oeuvre of Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, one of the most important figures in the Cinema Novo movement that transformed Brazilian cinema in the 1960s and 70s. Andrade’s oeuvre has been overshadowed to some extent by the success of his 1969 masterpiece, MACUNAÍMA, but his career encompassed four additional features, as well as numerous short films and the hour-long documentary GARRINCHA: HERO OF THE JUNGLE (1963), all of which are remarkable accomplishments that would suffice to establish his place in the pantheon of Brazilian filmmakers.

Hailing from a culturally prominent family in Rio de Janeiro, Andrade grew up in close contact with some of the country’s greatest artists, writers, and scholars. Abandoning his university education to pursue filmmaking, he would soon find himself at the heart of the proliferation of formally and politically audacious filmmaking that comprised Cinema Novo. Like those of his fellow Cinema Novo-associated filmmakers, such as Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Leon Hirszman, Ruy Guerra, and many others, Andrade’s films combined a sophisticated, modernist formal approach with an uncompromisingly political, often outrageous, and uniquely Brazilian sensibility that makes his work every bit as vital today as it was in the 1960s and 70s.

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