Black God, White Devil

Glauber and his wonderful collaborators had in mind some sort of reaction to the international success of O Cangaceiro (The Bandit, 1953), a film by Lima Barreto distributed by Columbia Pictures. It was shot in São Paulo, in the southeast, for a story set in the northeast of Brazil. Rocha’s film was shot in the northeast and it seems to go against every trope embraced by a more classic type of western, while still being essentially a western. Its iconic characters Corisco, the White Devil, Antonio das Mortes, the original artwork, the soundtrack by Sergio Ricardo, the impact this film had on Brazilian cinema and how our films are perceived internationally through the Cinema Novo movement, heavily influenced by Italian Neo‑Realism. And to think that Glauber was shooting this film at the same time Eduardo Coutinho began work on Man Marked for Death, in the same northeast region…

-Kleber Mendonça Filho, Curator