Series Site
In the 1950s, the city of Salvador, Bahia, was in a state of cultural effervescence. For the first half of that decade, Alexandre Robatto Filho – virtually the only filmmaker in the state with a steady career – refined his filmmaking skills as he transitioned from commercial newsreels to more aesthetically ambitious documentary shorts. Meanwhile, film critic Walter da Silveira founded the Clube de Cinema da Bahia, where classic and avant-garde European films were shown and discussed, in a salon-like fashion, influencing a generation of future filmmakers.
Among those were Glauber Rocha, Roberto Pires and Luiz Paulino dos Santos. Inventive and eager to experiment, these filmmakers would shape the history of Brazilian cinema in the following decades, in congruence with other young filmmakers who were shifting away from the studio-era style of production that was still prevalent in the southeastern states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Throughout the decade, Salvador would witness the evolution of its filmmaking, from Robatto Filho’s documentary shorts to the first ever Bahian feature film, Roberto Pires’ REDENÇÃO.
Around 1957, when the production of REDENÇÃO began, a new wave of Bahian filmmakers and film enthusiasts would graffiti the walls around Salvador with the question “Você acredita em cinema na Bahia?” [Do you believe in cinema in Bahia?]. It served as a provocation as much as a call of action as Glauber Rocha’s and Roberto Pires’ films would go on to be consider landmarks of the incipient Cinema Novo movement which firmly cemented Bahia on the cinematographic map in Brazil.
Spectacle Theater, Cinelimite, and the Cinemateca da Bahia are proud to present, “Você Acredita em Cinema na Bahia? – The Cinema of Salvador (1953-1962)”.
Featuring films directed by Roberto Pires, Glauber Rocha, Alexandre Robatto Filho, Jose Hipolito Trigueirinho Neto, and Luiz Paulino dos Santos.