Series Site
Co-presented by the magazine Triple Canopy, this series commemorates the bicentennial of Brazil’s independence and the 100th anniversary of the legendary 1922 Modern Art Week in São Paulo, which inaugurated a new, uniquely Brazilian sensibility. The films on view highlight Brazilian modernism’s legacy of provocation, inventiveness, and contradictory pursuit of pluralism as a counterweight to colonial history. Spanning six decades of Brazilian cinema, the program includes the groundbreaking silent film Limite (1931), Cinema Novo classics from the 1960s that revisit the revolutionary 1920s spirit with Tropicalismo’s political consciousness, and two U.S. premieres: Cinema Marginal director Júlio Bressane’s Miramar (1997) and Searching for Makunaíma (2020), documenting the mythical Indigenous hero who inspired Mário de Andrade’s iconic 1928 modernist novel Macunaíma.
This program coincides with Triple Canopy’s publication of an excerpt from guest programmer Katrina Dodson’s new translation of Macunaíma: The Hero With No Character (New Directions, 2023), as part of “Unknown States,” the fictions that make up nations and nationalities.
Additional support from the Brazil LAB at Princeton University